A Guide to Experience Management

Take a moment and think how much of your time you spend interacting with companies – whether working for them or spending money on their products and services. How many of these companies perform in a way that meets expectations? And, what is a business to do when your interaction with it is not exactly satisfactory? To answer this question, the world’s most successful companies implement a process called experience management.

What is Experience Management?

Experience management is a systematic process that enables organizations to strategically manage every interaction people experience with the company with the intention to identify opportunities for improvement.

A successfully implemented experience management process will provide you with the insights to better understand how customers perceive their experience with your company and its products or services as well as how your employees feel about their professional relationship with you. Capturing this kind of data will let you make informed business decisions to optimize experiences across the board and, therefore, grow your business.

Why is Integrated Feedback so Important?

Experience management requires a steady flow of data to deliver results. After all, you cannot manage the experience unless you first understand how it is perceived. In order to gain that deeper understanding, you should enable yourself to listen to what people think and feel about their experiences and the best tool to do that is feedback. In simple terms, experience management cannot exist without integrated feedback.

Breaking Down the Experience Management Process

As a process, experience management can be broken down into the following steps:

Identify interaction points

Start by identifying the points in which interactions occur whether it be face-to-face, through your website, an app, or any other communication outlet. This is especially important in the digital era which creates and amplifies opportunities for multiple interactions – from social media channels to customer support. You can then assess which of these interaction points, if not all of them, should be used to measure the experience. 

Measure the experience

After you have identified the interaction points for which you would like to have more information in terms of how the experience is perceived, then you can create a feedback process designed to capture experience metrics and data. This step will help you monitor how individuals feel about their interaction with your company on a personal level. In order to get reliable data, experience measurement should follow a systematic and not a one-off approach.

Analyze data

In this step you dig into the experience data you have gathered, to uncover insights that might help you get the full picture and identify actions you can take to improve your offering, address repeat problems, and improve your business.

Act on insights  

Last but not least, make sure you act on the insights you captured in the previous step to drive meaningful action and improvement The only way for this step to be successful and impact business results is to ensure that the insights are redirected to the hands of the right people who can set action plans in motion.

Why does CRM Matter?

Traditionally, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems have been used as stand-alone tools to manage the company-customer relationship. In today’s hyper-competitive business market, customers increasingly demand a more personalized, elevated experience that requires new business models that allow for systems to integrate and data to flow seamlessly between them. That is the reason why CRM and experience management are a match made in heaven.

Enhance CRM data with experience data to optimize and customize the end-to-end experience.

How can I make the most of my experience management platform?

Your experience management platform should give you the tools to close the experience gap and impact your bottom line. Here’s how to maximize your investment in an experience management platform:

Measure every experience

Every interaction matters and so, every experience matters. Use your experience management platform to open a dialogue not only with your customers but with prospects and employees as well. After all, prospects might become your customers and employees spend most of their time being there for your customers. Why limit yourself in only measuring the customer experience when you can use the same platform to measure the

• Employee experience
• Onboarding experience
• Partner experience
• Sales experience

Integrate with other systems

Take your experience management platform to the next level by integrating with other business-critical systems you already have in place. Experience data is even more valuable when combined with other data. Integration between systems will help you get the full picture and allow you to make better decisions. A good place to start is by connecting your experience management platform with your:

• CRM system
• ERP system
• Marketing automation software
• Business reporting tool

Develop unique solutions

An out-of-the-box solution is not always what your company needs. Most businesses face unique challenges that require unique solutions and drive value. Tailor your experience platform to fit your needs and use it to develop solutions for your problems. If, for example, you’re looking to identify training needs for your customer service team, use the capabilities of your platform to build-in that type of feedback into your post support experience survey.  

Moving forward, experience management will become a focal element in business strategy and will drive business initiatives. The sooner you start prioritizing the experience, the better your chance to hold on to your customers and increase different stakeholders’ satisfaction with your business.