Keith McWhirter

I mean seriously…if someone walked into the room holding a cell phone in front of them with the “record” button flashing on the screen, trying to engage you in conversation, would your instinct be fight, or flight.

As cool as the concept of wearable technology is, how does society react when it is not focused on the user, but rather, on those around them. Even the plethora of surveillance cameras that we encounter each day only allow little more than a glimpse of our comings and goings without sidling up to us with a “hey how ya doin?” which then becomes a (promoted) vine clip seconds later.

This new channel of engagement is different. The user is safe behind the lens while the google-able masses are stuck in the crosshairs.

One of the first discoveries I had once I started delving into the CRM world was the (not so) subtle differences in the approach of these initiatives. Being a fan of comedy (mostly British) I have always appreciated the concept of ... timing. This is the key difference between customer experience, and customer relationship management, and also defines what you actually wish to achieve with the info.

CRM is focused on the collection of data (after a transaction occurs) to drive effectiveness and efficiency, while CEM is geared towards engaging the customer (at or before a transaction) in order to understand what their expectations are. Again ... timing. This is why the CEM approach is a much better fit for our goals which are to "know what we don't know" in order to shrink the gap between our customers expectations and our (current) service offerings. In the end, some service delivery will no doubt need to improve, but not all. Better communication, and conversations, will be geared to help set acceptable expectation levels and therefore bringing us more inline with our customers.

Couple of great quotes and definitions ...

Christopher Meyer and Andre Schwager  "Understanding Customer Experience" (Harvard Business Review, February 2007): 

CEM ... what customer thinks about a company. CRM ... what a company knows about a customer

Peter Gurney writes, “CRM, meet CEM”:

The idea at the center of CRM can be stated in the following way: Every time a company and a customer interact, the company learns something about the customer. By capturing, sharing, analyzing and acting upon this information, companies can better manage individual customer profitability.

So ... I am forging my way into the nebulous world of Customer Experience Management (CEM, CXM ... whatever) and I must say that I find it a bit daunting.

While I have been managing the experiences of my customers for the past 23 years, scaling the practice to an enterprise level will be a big learning curve, with a steep, bumpy, uphill slope. Have always loved a challenge.

The reason (one of them anyway) that I have started this blog it to help myself track my progress and, if anyone is listening, elicit some feedback and mentoring on what people's experience has been (past & present) with formalizing a CEM initiative. Mine will be undertaken in the IT department of a decentralized, established educational institution, but I have a feeling that the challenges we will face have been felt (and conquered?) but others from a wide range of backgrounds and environments. Luckily, I am awash in available resources to help start me down my path, and I hope to attend the Gartner "Customer 360" Summit this coming May. During that time I imagine I will be posting at a fairly franetic pace ... stay tuned.