As a business is managed by people you would expect them to know what goes into a typical buyer's mind when he makes a purchase and keeps adding to your revenues.....in fact very few can exactly pinpoint what goes into making a purchase..much less how to insure that the customer comes back for seconds.. Well that's the harsh reality of today's world filled with customers who want more than lip-service and demand a superior experience with their purchase. This management of the complete buy, experience and service cycle that a typical customer goes through is known as Customer Experience Management.
Now CX or CEM is a very broad term and actually complements the CRM initiative for an organization. So much so that both are at times used interchangeably but the major difference lies in the fact that CRM initiatives are inside out whereas CEM is outside in. Well..to put it simply, CRM is the organization's perspective at what it needs to do to sell more to their customers and increase revenue. CEM, on the other hand, is the way of looking at the customer's perspective and trying to understand what the customer really wants when he does business with you. CEM then begins to evolve as an initiative meant to manage customer touch-points in a favorable way for the customer or in other words, manage "moment of truth" interactions that the customer has with the brand or organization.
Now I have already covered in brief about CEM in an earlier blog and will cover more in later blogs when we try to understand it's importance in each of the different industries.
That brings us to the most important building block of CEM viz. "MOMENT OF TRUTH". Simply put, moment of truth is an instance of interaction between the customer and the brand that gives the customer an opportunity to form an opinion about the brand or organization.
This term was first used by CPG retailers and coined by P&G to segregate the different instances at which the customer experiences the product.
The first moment of truth (FMOT) is the point at which the customer has awareness of your product based on targeted marketing and walks up to the aisle and adds the product to their shopping cart.
Further, the second moment of truth (SMOT) is when the customer uses the product after the purchase.
However, the biggest moment of truth for the customer in certain industries is how the organization manages to resolve their service requests.
And now Google has jumped into the fray with proposing the Zeroth Moment of Truth which deals with how the customers perceive your brand even before they have encountered it. ZMOT is about how customers today search and find out about the product online before they make a buying decision.
In effect, we are talking about each and every interaction with the customer (it maybe with the product, sales process or service resolution).
In the real world, the customer's MOT is not just restricted to a few interactions but encompasses a much broader range for eg..
The initial phone contact......did you keep the customer waiting for too long? and then did you finally resolve their query? most importantly ...did you identify the customer and were able to provide information that was useful??
OR
When they walk in through the door......did they like what they saw? are they greeted immediately? do they feel welcome? how quickly were their problems taken care of?
OR
Discussion with the support/sales staff.....did you understand their requirements? were you able to listen to their requirements/issues? did you provide them a resolution in a reasonable time frame?
In effect the process of evaluating customer's MOT is relatively simple. On the other hand...the ability to influence MOT to drive a mutually beneficial interaction is much more complex and encompasses all the business entities across the enterprise and hence requires C level participation to get it right. The benefits from such a initiative would be huge....and would justify the heavy lifting required to get a strategy in place for managing customer experience...maybe it is time too....
Now CX or CEM is a very broad term and actually complements the CRM initiative for an organization. So much so that both are at times used interchangeably but the major difference lies in the fact that CRM initiatives are inside out whereas CEM is outside in. Well..to put it simply, CRM is the organization's perspective at what it needs to do to sell more to their customers and increase revenue. CEM, on the other hand, is the way of looking at the customer's perspective and trying to understand what the customer really wants when he does business with you. CEM then begins to evolve as an initiative meant to manage customer touch-points in a favorable way for the customer or in other words, manage "moment of truth" interactions that the customer has with the brand or organization.
Now I have already covered in brief about CEM in an earlier blog and will cover more in later blogs when we try to understand it's importance in each of the different industries.
That brings us to the most important building block of CEM viz. "MOMENT OF TRUTH". Simply put, moment of truth is an instance of interaction between the customer and the brand that gives the customer an opportunity to form an opinion about the brand or organization.
This term was first used by CPG retailers and coined by P&G to segregate the different instances at which the customer experiences the product.
The first moment of truth (FMOT) is the point at which the customer has awareness of your product based on targeted marketing and walks up to the aisle and adds the product to their shopping cart.
Further, the second moment of truth (SMOT) is when the customer uses the product after the purchase.
However, the biggest moment of truth for the customer in certain industries is how the organization manages to resolve their service requests.
And now Google has jumped into the fray with proposing the Zeroth Moment of Truth which deals with how the customers perceive your brand even before they have encountered it. ZMOT is about how customers today search and find out about the product online before they make a buying decision.
In effect, we are talking about each and every interaction with the customer (it maybe with the product, sales process or service resolution).
In the real world, the customer's MOT is not just restricted to a few interactions but encompasses a much broader range for eg..
The initial phone contact......did you keep the customer waiting for too long? and then did you finally resolve their query? most importantly ...did you identify the customer and were able to provide information that was useful??
OR
When they walk in through the door......did they like what they saw? are they greeted immediately? do they feel welcome? how quickly were their problems taken care of?
OR
Discussion with the support/sales staff.....did you understand their requirements? were you able to listen to their requirements/issues? did you provide them a resolution in a reasonable time frame?
In effect the process of evaluating customer's MOT is relatively simple. On the other hand...the ability to influence MOT to drive a mutually beneficial interaction is much more complex and encompasses all the business entities across the enterprise and hence requires C level participation to get it right. The benefits from such a initiative would be huge....and would justify the heavy lifting required to get a strategy in place for managing customer experience...maybe it is time too....