Customer Experience Management Guide

When it comes to Customer Experience Management (CEM), you often hear about the importance of delivering a perfect, frictionless experience for customers throughout their entire journey with a brand. But, while this is an ideal state for many businesses, it is certainly easier said than done.

Studies show that 81% of businesses will soon compete primarily on customer experience. So, how are you and your brand getting ready to embrace this approach?

In this guide, we'll walk you through some key areas of CEM :

• What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)?
• How to implement a CEM program.
• What to look for in a CEM platform.
• How to track the success of your CEM program.

Ready to dive in? Keep reading for full insights, or download our CX Toolkit for the tools you need to build a powerful CX program below.

What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)?

Customer Experience Management (CEM) refers to the strategies, processes, and technologies that companies use to oversee and enhance every customer interaction with their brand - whether it’s in-person, online, over the phone, or through third-party channels. 

Effective CEM involves aligning the entire organization around a customer-centric approach, ensuring all departments work together to deliver a seamless and positive customer experience.

Companies use a variety of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of their CEM efforts. These KPIs can include Net Promoter Score®  (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), and more.

In some industries, KPIs are directly connected to operations because customer satisfaction depends heavily on how well things run. 

Take the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry, for instance. KPIs like order accuracy, speed of service, and food quality are crucial for keeping customers happy and ensuring a great experience. Therefore, it's vital to manage and improve any factors that might affect these areas.

Curious how exceptional customer experience drives key metrics in quick-serve and fast-casual restaurants? Dive into our Annual Drive-Thru Report here and discover the insights!

5 Benefits of Customer Experience Management

Implementing a Customer Experience Management (CEM) program brings many benefits, such as satisfied customers and staying ahead of the competition. Here are five key advantages: 

1. Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty

It's clear that one of the main benefits of a well-designed CEM program is that it boosts customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Loyal customers usually spend more over time, which increases their Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). They also become brand advocates, sharing their positive experiences and bringing in new customers, which helps the business grow steadily.

2. Streamlined operations

CEM also helps identify inefficiencies and optimize operational processes. By understanding the entire customer journey and pain points, brands can streamline operations, reduce costs, and improve service delivery. 

3. Enhanced Brand Perception and Reputation

Consistent, positive experiences strengthen brand reputation. When a brand consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations, it builds a positive perception in the customers' minds. This enhanced reputation can attract new customers, especially in today’s digital age, where word-of-mouth travels fast.

4. Higher revenue and profitability

Seamless experiences can lead to higher sales, as happy customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and spend more per transaction. They can also open up opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. 

Building trust is not only a competitive advantage, but customers are also more likely to consider additional products or services offered by the brand.

5. Boost employee engagement

Employees in a customer-focused culture are often more motivated and engaged. They understand the value of their role in providing a great customer experience. Happy employees typically provide better service, further enhancing the customer experience. 

Studies show that businesses with highly engaged employees have higher customer engagement rates and loyalty, making happy and motivated employees an essential part of creating an effective CEM program.

How to Implement a Customer Experience Management Program 

Every business is aware that the experience a customer has with their brand affects the likelihood that they will be a repeat customer.

So, where should you start? When it comes to customer experience management, your foundation and source of truth will forever be your customer base. So start by listening to them.

1. Listen

What matters most to your customers? You likely have an idea, but fair warning: consumer habits and priorities are changing faster than ever. This is why the backbone of any strong customer experience management program is to continuously listen to your customers to get a deeper understanding of their needs.

Kick Off the Conversation

Collecting customer feedback using a survey tool is a great way to explore your customers' preferences and understand why they choose to bring their business to you. This survey will equip you with real-time customer insights rather than impressions and intuition.

For example, customer surveys may confirm that your cost compared to competitors is a primary driver. Still, you may learn that a particular item you stock more frequently is another significant reason consumers frequent your business. Regularly measuring customer behavior will allow you to focus any effort you put into a CEM program on what actually matters to your customers.

Consider All Channels

Already have a program to collect feedback from customers, or do you want to step up your game even more? Don’t forget about unsolicited feedback. Your customers are most likely providing you with unsolicited feedback via various channels, such as:

• Social Media
• Email Inquiries
• Online Reviews

Reputation management platforms can help you collect this feedback; some even provide sentiment analysis to help you easily categorize and organize this data based on customer emotions towards your brand.

Dig Deeper

An invaluable form of operational measurement is mystery shopping, which can provide a more targeted look into your daily operations. 

Feedback from day-to-day customers will be predominantly from higher-traffic times of day and centered around their own reason for visiting on any given day. Mystery shopping programs allow you to determine what you want to measure and gain valuable insights into it, ensuring a seamless customer experience.

Alternatively, operational auditors are overt investigators who can go places mystery shoppers can't and evaluate how internal processes may affect the overall experience.

Auditors can ask questions of your staff that regular customers would not and provide any documentation you might require, such as photographs of different areas or item inventory counts.

Interpret

Now that you’ve collected feedback, you’ll need a way to distill it into actionable insights. Disjointed data makes it difficult, if not impossible, to track trends and prioritize initiatives that will have the biggest impact on your customer’s experiences. 

For example, a sudden influx of feedback about long checkout lines can make it look like adding additional cashiers should be a priority. However, analyzing feedback over a few months could reveal that your customers frequently comment on difficulties navigating your store and finding the items they want, leading to bad customer experiences.

Work Smarter

A major time saver when collecting and analyzing data from interactions with customers is a robust CX Platform that refines raw data into simple, easy-to-read reports. It also combines data from external sources to give you a holistic picture of your customers’ experiences.

What is most important is ensuring that the customer experience technologies you choose help you highlight the key metrics related to what matters most to your customers and allow you to track these over time.

Remember, metrics that are important to one team may not be relevant to another. Don’t be afraid to build different dashboards for team members to avoid clutter and help them easily find what they need.

Act

Once you’ve collected data from various channels and pushed it into a customer experience platform for analysis, it’s time for all your work to culminate in action. 

Effective customer experience management includes updating your operational procedures to align with the insights you’ve derived from the previous two stages.

For example, if you’ve discovered there is a tendency for checkout lines to have longer than normal wait times during specific hours, have a recurring task for a supervisor to monitor line lengths during those hours and open up an extra cash register whenever they exceed what you consider to be an acceptable length.

Embrace the Digital Age

Mobile inspection software is a powerful tool for managing operational procedures on an ongoing basis. This application can turn any smart device into a checklist or audit form. 

Unlike paper or traditional office software, it is connected to a database that allows you to roll out updates and collect submissions from a central hub. This way, you can easily update any form and quickly take action once it is submitted.

Let’s take the example of recurring audits. Perhaps you’ve identified, through ongoing customer feedback analysis, that they often complain about the limited availability of sale items during a specific time in your flyer cycle. 

Mobile inspection software will allow you to roll out a recurring audit to all locations just before that time. Since submitted audits feed into a central hub, you can quickly see if any locations lack the required stock to cover the remainder of the sale and react accordingly.

Streamline Your Solution

A great way to relieve some of the manual burden at this stage is to leverage automation. Many mobile inspection and audit solutions come with built-in features. 

For example, if a submitted stock audit shows that an item is below a pre-set accepted level, software automation can send an alert to the relevant party to reach out to your suppliers for more. 

This means your operations team can spend less time acting as traffic controllers and more time optimizing existing procedures and implementing changes based on your ongoing analysis of customer feedback.

5 Key Features to Look for in a CEM Platform

As you can see, choosing a robust CEM platform is essential to customer experience success. 

With interconnected pieces, you need a unified approach to collecting, organizing, and analyzing customer and operational data. This will ensure a functioning Customer Experience Management program—‘functioning' being the operative word. 

Here are 5 key features to look for in a CEM platform to ensure a successful program:

1. Multi-location management.
2. Real-time data and analytics.
3. Case management.
4. Automation hub.
5. Data integrations.

1. Multi-Location Management

If your business operates across multiple locations, it is vital that your CEM platform supports the management and tracking of customer experiences at all sites from a single interface. Look for features like:

• Pre-built location dashboards: These provide a comprehensive view of performance metrics for each location.
• Flexible location management: This allows easy addition, modification, or removal of locations as your business evolves.
• Granular permissions: Ensures that the right people can access the right data, facilitating better management and operational efficiency.

With these features, operators can gain specific insights to improve their individual locations, while the executive team can maintain a big-picture view of brand performance across all sites. This enables you to identify high-performing locations and those that require additional support to meet brand standards.

2. Real-Time Data and Analytics

Real-time data and analytics allow you to access up-to-date information about your performance whenever you need it. Dynamic dashboards should show you current trends and key metrics so you can quickly make adjustments and stay on track.

In addition, an effective CEM platform should also help you understand how customers feel about your brand. 

Sentiment analysis can show whether feedback is positive, negative, or neutral. Word clouds can highlight common words or phrases from customer comments, making it easier to spot trends and understand what customers are saying and feeling about their interaction.

3. Case Management

Effective case management is essential for addressing issues that impact customer experience. Look for features that facilitate:

• Automatic case assignment: Ensures that cases are directed to the right team members without delay.
• Prioritization rules: Helps manage cases based on their urgency and importance.
• Collaborative tools: Features like adding photos and comments ensure comprehensive case management and quick resolution.

By streamlining case management, you can ensure that customer issues are resolved efficiently, enhancing operations and overall customer satisfaction.

4. Automation 

An automation hub within your CEM platform can significantly enhance productivity by handling routine tasks automatically. Important features include:

• Automated workflows: Streamlines processes by setting predefined actions in motion based on specific triggers.
• Task triggers: Automates repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on more important activities.

Automation helps keep operations running smoothly and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks, contributing to a more efficient customer experience management process.

5. Data Integrations

Seamless integration with other tools and platforms is crucial for a holistic view of customer experiences. Key integration features include:

• CX data integration: Ability to connect data from various customer experience initiatives, such as digital checklists, feedback surveys, and mystery shopping programs.
• 360-degree view: Brings all your data together in one place, enabling comprehensive analysis and better decision-making.

Effective data integration ensures that you have all the necessary information at your fingertips to manage and improve customer experiences effectively.

Selecting a CEM platform with these key features will empower you to manage and enhance customer experiences more effectively, leading to happier customers and a stronger brand.

>> Learn more: 7 Must-Have CX Software Features You Can't Ignore.

Addressing Common CEM Challenges

Managing customer experience (CX) across an organization can be complex, especially when aligning initiatives with business goals across multiple locations and teams. 

Here are a few tips on how to tackle some common challenges when implementing a CEM program:

Aligning CX Objectives with Business Goals

One major challenge is aligning CX objectives with overall business goals. Different departments—such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product development—often work in silos. 

Each department might have its own objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs), making it difficult to ensure that CX initiatives align with the broader business strategy.

To overcome this, it’s essential to set clear CX program objectives that support the company’s overall goals. Make sure these objectives are well-defined and aligned with the broader business strategy. 

Establishing clear KPIs and following industry benchmarks can help measure progress and keep everyone on the same page. This alignment ensures that CX's efforts contribute directly to the company’s success.

Gaining Operational Management Support

Implementing a customer-centric approach often involves change management. 

Employees and leadership teams used to traditional business goals may resist shifting focus to CX. To address this, it’s important to gain support from the operational management team. Their buy-in can drive the cultural shift needed for successful CX initiatives.

As Mellow Mushroom’s Kevin Sugarman, Director of Operations Services, well states in one of our recent webinars, “[...] Operators understand that it's all about them, and it's a tool for them to get better and strive for perfection every day.” 

This perspective highlights how CX initiatives can be seen as beneficial for continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Read our blog, How to Improve QSR Guest Experience with Data From the Field, and discover how Mellow Mushroom has successfully implemented CX strategies and got operators on board.

Scaling CX Programs Across Multiple Locations

Maintaining quality and consistency across multiple locations can be challenging, making it difficult to ensure a uniform customer experience. 

Using a CEM platform can help scale your CX program effectively. As mentioned earlier, these platforms provide centralized data integration and analytics capabilities, which help address issues like data silos and inconsistent data quality. 

One key benefit of using a CEM tool is its ability to benchmark different locations. Operational leaders like you can gain data-driven insights into what works well in specific regions and apply those successful strategies across similar locations.

By leveraging customer data, you can implement CX strategies and make more informed business decisions. This approach ensures that all locations adhere to the same standards and continuously improve their customer experience.

Key Metrics for Evaluating CEM

Evaluating customer experience requires focusing on key metrics that provide insights into how well your CX strategies are performing. 

Tracking these metrics helps you understand customer satisfaction, loyalty, and overall engagement. Some of the most common KPIs include:

• Net Promoter Score® (NPS): Measures customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend your brand.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Gauges overall satisfaction with a product or service.
• Customer Effort Score (CES): Assesses how easy it is for customers to interact with your brand.
• Customer Churn Rate: Tracks the percentage of customers who stop using your service over a specific period.

To get a comprehensive view of the right KPIs to measure and how they can drive improvements, check out our detailed blog on essential KPIs for evaluating customer experience here.

Customer Experience Management Driving Business Success

A robust Customer Experience Management program should never be a one-time initiative but rather “snowball” and build over time. As your brand standards and operational procedures evolve, so will your CEM program. 

Consumers will continue to bring their business to companies that actively demonstrate alignment with their priorities and values. This continuous refinement will make you stand out from your competitors, attract new customers, and retain existing ones.

With over 40 years of experience, Intouch Insight is trusted by over 300 of the world's most-loved brands in retail, restaurants, grocery, petro-convenience, hospitality, finance, and automotive, to name a few.

Let’s chat and discuss how we can help you design an effective and successful Customer Experience Management (CEM) program.