Customer experience

Definitions and Foundational Elements of Customer Experience

• Customer experience consists of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral responses during all stages of consumption.
• Dimensions of customer experience include senses, emotions, perceptions, cognitive evaluations, and behavioral intentions.
• The anticipation experience is the pleasure or displeasure from savoring future events.
• The remembered experience is the recollection of memories about previous events and experiences.
• Customer experience is the totality of customer responses.
• Forrester Research identifies six key disciplines for a remarkable customer experience: strategy, customer understanding, design, measurement, governance, and culture.
• A remarkable customer experience increases consumer spending and inspires brand loyalty.
• Barbara E. Kahn's customer centricity maturity model includes four stages: product orientation, market orientation, customer experience, and authenticity.
• Customer experience is a vital strategy for retail businesses facing competition.
• Holbrook & Hirschman define customer experience as the whole event a customer comes into contact with when interacting with a business.
• Steve Haeckel and Lou Carbone refined the concept of customer experience as the take-away impression formed by encounters with products, services, and businesses.
• Pine & Gilmore describe experience as unique and involving emotional, physical, intellectual, or spiritual aspects.
• Customer experience is the stimulation created by a company for the senses of consumers.
• Kotler et al. state that customer experience adds value through customer participation and connection.
• Customer experience management is relevant in the public sector, especially in the age of digitalization.

Realms of Customer Experience

• Pine & Gilmore introduce four realms of customer experience: esthetic, escapist, entertainment, and educational.
• The entertainment realm aims to captivate customers through immersive experiences.
• The educational realm focuses on enhancing knowledge and personal growth.
• The esthetic realm emphasizes visual and sensory aspects to elicit positive emotional responses.
• The escapist realm offers customers an escape from their everyday lives.

Designing Customer Experience

• Customer service and a brand's ethical ideals are elements associated with the shopping experience.
• Designing customer experience involves creating touchpoints suited to consumers to enhance their experience.
• Creating an experience can lead to greater brand loyalty and recognition.
• Customer experience design is relevant in both the private and public sectors.
• Organizations need to understand service users and their activities in the wider value constellation.

Customer Experience Management

• Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) is the process that companies use to oversee and track all interactions with a customer during their relationship.
• CEM involves building strategies around the needs of individual customers.
• According to Jeananne Rae, companies are realizing that building great consumer experiences is a complex enterprise, involving strategy, integration of technology, orchestrating business models, brand management, and CEO commitment.
• The global CEM market was valued at $7.54 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 17.5% from 2021-2028.
• Top companies in the customer experience industry include Adobe, Clarabridge, Medallia, NetSuite, Oracle, Tech Mahindra, and Zendesk.

Monitoring and Measuring Customer Experience

• CEM can be monitored through surveys, targeted studies, observational studies, or voice of customer research.
• Voice of customer data, including customer surveys, contact data, internal operations process and quality data, and employee input, can be used to quantify the cost of inaction on customer experience issues.
• The aim of CEM is to optimize the customer experience, gain customer loyalty, and create advocates who engage in word-of-mouth marketing.
• However, common efforts at improving CEM can have the opposite effect.
• Utilizing surroundings, such as visuals, displays, and interactivity, can enhance the customer experience and create a memorable experience.

Customer experience Data Sources