• 40 percent of customers say that they have stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer service.

  • Customer experience management (CXM) is the discipline of understanding customers to increase satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty.

  • CEO of The Customer Experience Professionals Association, Greg Melia, teaches the first professional qualification in Customer Experience.

Customer experience management, as a practice, has the potential to define what any specific company looks like to a customer. This is achieved by creating a positioning strategy that puts the customer at the heart of marketing, sales, and customer support in order to drive brand advocacy, escalate loyalty and ultimately repeat business.

Recent studies suggest that 40 percent of customers noted that they have discontinued doing business with a company due to poor customer service. This indicates that customer experience likely has a direct impact on business success since practicing CXM wields a significant influence over general business performance. In the current world of digitization and technology, more and more businesses are opting to switch their support channels from personal to online; however, studies show that customer experience professionals may be more relevant than ever before.

As professionals, customer experience personnel aim to bridge the gap between a customer and any specific brand or business. This entails multiple points of contact throughout the customer journey, ensuring that each step in the process is engaging, efficient, and effective. A successful professional in the field has the capacity to enhance business customer satisfaction rates, improve customer loyalty, and gain advocacy through referrals - increasing business revenue.

Is CXM the Key to Business Success?

CXM is likely to be the key to success since a business can not exist without its customers. Customer expectations are rapidly evolving, and more companies are using customer experience to create a competitive advantage and win market shares. Recent research suggests that customers today expect every interaction, from their initial search to final purchase, to be a positive and seamless experience.

As a practice in action, customer experience management efforts aid in understanding any particular business's customers. An effective strategy is one that creates an experience that customers want to go through again and again.

What The Experts Say

Most businesses and brands understand the concept of customer experience and its impact on business succession, but more often than not, they struggle to turn the concept into workable solutions to positively impact their strategy. Through his teachings, leading customer experience expert Ian Golding has increased business exposure to the ever-evolving customer experience profession. As a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Golding is the first person in the world authorized to teach a professional qualification in customer experience – authorized by the CXPA.

Customer expectations are higher than ever; this suggests that as the customer becomes even more empowered, customer experience management becomes more essential.

According to Steve Curtain, "CXM is the art and science of coaxing lifetime loyalty from daily transactions”. As the author of Delight Your Customers, Curtain is another esteemed leader in the customer experience professionals industry with years of expertise in the field.

Customer experience professionals agree that CXM within a business strategy offers long-term customer retention that leads to increased revenue gains and positively impacts every aspect of any business. Through an optimized customer journey, clear strategic vision, and nurturing an emotional connection between the customer and the brand, companies can create unforgettable customer experiences that reduce churn and raise revenues.

Now Customer Success Can Be A Part Of CPD:

Continuous Professional Development across numerous industries can now include customer success. This is an evolutionary step, considering the fact that both government and private institutions traditionally included customer service in standard CPD learning paths. Customer success is the next level for those who are already succeeding in basic customer care, as well as newcomers to any industry.

Ian Golding
Ian Golding Ian Golding

Final Thought

Today, we are in an era where both businesses and customers are granted the option of interaction through omni channel opportunities. However, despite the convenience of improved communication, the increased complexity of monitoring experiences has been added to the mix.

By raising a new generation of trained professionals and experts, businesses have the capacity to access the latest research, align to particular brand CXM strategies, and adapt them to the dynamics of any particular business environment. These professionals have the potential to utilize data and make the predictive analyses necessary for the competitive and efficient performance of any unit within the organization. Ultimately, a company's CXM strategy can truly set it apart from late adopters.