Integrated Customer Management
What Is The Method For Customer Experience Management?
Integrated customer management can be referred to as a business strategy to improve the support via sharing information between the discrete departments. Integrated customer management brings three different principles of business; customer-centricity, agility and alignment. In the year 2004, the phrase integrated customer management was being coined by Amdocs. In communications industry, the phrase is quite common. The experience of the customers is entirely an emotional concept that manifests them in different ways, based on the industrial aspects. For retailers like Tesco, a positive experience of the consumers can be demonstrated as adding more products to their online baskets or by signing up for membership cards.
On the other hand, for vehicle dealers customer experiences can be increasing charges for brokerage or referring to the friends or peers. According to Shobeiri, Mazaheri and Laroche (2018), it is immensely important to define the experiences of the consumers at measurable terms, whatever may be the goals or objectives. By measurable terms, they meant a composite of several variables, which impact the business. The purpose of the study is to analyze the existing literatures on Integrated Customer Experience and the areas related to it. Various articles are being reviewed in order to gain a detailed understanding of the topic and presented in this study.
According to Weill and Woerner (2018), integrated customer experience is the major aspect of each and every company’s daily operations. Companies should take the experiences of the consumers into consideration, for their success. Customers now a day, directly interact with the companies through several channels, from websites to the physical stores, social media websites and mobile applications. The fashion retailer of United Kingdom, Oasis, combines their e-commerce sites, mobile applications, in store iPads, physical stores and online ‘seek and send’ services, in order to keep in touch with their target consumers. This particularly gives an idea that the organizations are dealing with their consumers’ feedbacks by combining these sources.
By collating these data sets, the companies now a day, are able to map their continuous journey of the consumers. This, in turn enables the organizations to predict the behaviors or attitudes of the consumers, helping them to personalize their experiences. Moreover, it also assists in boosting the loyalty of the consumers. Most importantly, the data sources are to be used when available, at an incremental fashionable way, instead of waiting for the sources to merge. As per Terblanche’s (2018) opinion, by utilizing the part modeling concept or idea on the journey of customers’ map, the businesses can invent new paths that drive the overall experiences of the customers.
The Concept of Customer Experience
In addition to this, the organizations should ensure that they are segmenting their target consumers on the basis of their demographics, tenure or survey. This will allow them to tie up the relationships with the customer paths, experiences or profiles. It is important for the companies to develop their data driven action plans. Moreover, in the words of Alnawas and Hemsley-Brown (2018), the correlation between the profiles of the consumers, their interaction journey and experiences has been quantified. Then, the companies can create a document of the favorable as well as unfavorable paths for each profile of the consumers. This can prove to be highly beneficial for the companies in order to prioritize their consumers as well as their actions, having a higher impact on the organizations.
On the contrary, Bijmolt et al. (2018) opined that continuous learning of the consumers’ behaviors or attitudes, their feedbacks can lead to improvement. Once all these methods are being placed on time, the companies can easily assess their improvement chances and keep a track of their target consumers’ feedbacks. Enhancing the experiences of the consumers is obviously not a one-time job; instead it is necessarily a big time exercise. It can be said that consumer experience is a continuous journey that evolves constantly in order to keep updated with the new technological developments, analytical developments and analytical habits.
In the words of Warnaby and Shi (2018), each and every interaction with the customers, no matter how big or small, must be monitored consistently. It is immensely important for the organizations to ensure that they are connecting the dots for building an evolving system in order to improve each encounter. Moreover, Stouthuysen et al. (2018) stated that the way of communication has been changed due to digital disruptions and also, how the brands communicate with their target consumers. The organizations can no longer ignore the queries of their customers and hide behind their well built marketing campaigns. A well placed Facebook post or tweet from a single customer have the power to tarnish the brand’s image or expose poor practices of the brand.
According to Surridge et al. (2018), majority of the businesses see this free speech as their liability. On the contrary, they commented that it is an amazing asset for the companies, which would help in improving their services or products. This is what sets different brands apart and thus; it helps in creating customer experiences and a personal identity of the brand. Without these mentioned factors to support the market offerings, the customers may choose other brands, which create better and memorable experiences for them. The connecting or bonding with the customers must be a major part of every company’s mission and enhancing those connections falls under the responsibility of each and every organizational member. This is not just the domain of marketing or sales teams, but for the entire organization.
Segmentation of Target Consumers
On the contrary, Terblanche (2018) stated that the companies should think of its employees as their brand ambassadors. In this manner, they can increase their customer outreach or marketing potential efforts exponentially. Moreover, if the employees are turned into true brand ambassadors, the existing hierarchies or walls fall to a certain level. It is highly important to integrate the consumers’ experiences into the entry levels of business. The customers’ journey starts with the product’s conception and winds up in a positive loop, ideally, in terms of relationship maintenance. In addition to this, every person in the organization need to do something more for their brands in order to cater to the most number of target customers.
The organizational managers or leaders need to undertake innovative measures in order to restructure the departments, so that it works closely. This would enable them to spend more and more time talking with the customers and resolving their issues or queries, if any. The office administrators should have the opportunities to gather feedback from the vendors or other individuals who happen to cross their areas. As per Bhattacharya, Srivastava and Verma (2018), each and every organizational member must have the abilities of taking ownership of their roles and also add value to the experiences of the consumers.
The organizations may not only work for sending monthly newsletters, but also they must be able to connect those dots, which exist between their consumer outcome and work. The businesses need to prioritize some practices in order to become more and more customer centric, which are being discussed by Röllecke, Huchzermeier and Schröder (2018). Encouraging the employees across all the levels of customer services will help in achieving their individual goals, objectives or mission. In addition to this, allowing the employees to engage into interdepartmental meetings or crowd source ideas is considered to be immensely important for the organizations, on a regular basis.
Dedeoglu et al. (2018) opined that innovation can generate from anywhere and in addition to this, the employees can engage into these matters for creating a feeling of accountability and improve the productivity levels or job satisfaction. Moreover, trying out for new ideas can benefit the organizations to a huge extent, in order to understand the consumer experiences. In addition to this, successful organizations like Kabbage and Facebook are not afraid of trying out new concepts or ideas to stay in front of the consumers and that too, in more exciting manner. The social media contents, blogs, reviews, eBooks, papers and other are considered to be the most crucial aspects of marketing and thus, the business leaders must keep these factors into consideration.
Connecting Dots to Build an Evolving System
Similarly, as mentioned by Kandampully, Zhang and Jaakkola (2017), truly understanding the needs or demands of the consumers can help the companies to improve or enhance not only their buying experience, but at the same time their bottom line. An organization’s relationship with its target consumers is much more than just about improving the ratings of the products or decreasing their wait times. Gaining an understanding of the overall journey of the consumers and learning what they experience since the beginning of the purchasing time and then buying it, can be beneficial for the companies. Moreover, it must be done in the simplest, clear as well as efficient manner as per Jain, Aagja and Bagdare (2017).
Mahrous and Hassan (2017) defined the concept of consumer experience as the interactions between organizations with its customers, all throughout the business relationships. The interactions may include discovery, awareness, advocacy, cultivation, service and purchases. The customer experience is being regarded as the most integral part of the customer relationship management and this is the reason, why businesses try to maintain a positive relationship with their target consumers. Homburg, Jozi? and Kuehnl (2017) mentioned that if the companies want to stay loyal, it is important for them to invest a significant amount in analyzing the experiences of their target consumers.
Conclusion
To conclude, it can be said that the happier a customer is with a particular brand, the longer the brand stays with him/her. If any company treats its customers in a poor manner or simply ignore their queries or service emails, then the customers are most likely to change their brand preferences. This is the major reason, why the companies deliver their customers with superior services as well as experiences that outperform their competitors. In most of the cases, the customers tend to connect with the employees of any company, by either visiting the stores or by talking over phone. This provides the businesses with opportunities for delivering excellent services to the target consumers.
However, the customer service is one aspect of the customer experiences. In modern days, the concept of customer experiences has changed to a certain level, at the market place. It is more than just person to person services and thanks to information technologies, the companies now can connect with their target consumers, using several platforms. Therefore, it can be said that customer experiences help in bringing in new ways of strengthening their relationships, through technical breakthroughs.
References
Alnawas, I. and Hemsley-Brown, J., 2018. The differential effect of cognitive and emotional elements of experience quality on the customer-service provider’s relationship. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.
Bhattacharya, A., Srivastava, M. and Verma, S., 2018. Customer Experience in Online Shopping: A Structural Modeling Approach. Journal of Global Marketing, pp.1-14.
Bijmolt, T.H., Krafft, M., Sese, F.J. and Viswanathan, V., 2018. Multi-tier loyalty programs to stimulate customer engagement. In Customer Engagement Marketing (pp. 119-139). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Dedeoglu, B.B., Bilgihan, A., Ye, B.H., Buonincontri, P. and Okumus, F., 2018. The impact of servicescape on hedonic value and behavioral intentions: The importance of previous experience. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 72, pp.10-20.
Homburg, C., Jozi?, D. and Kuehnl, C., 2017. Customer experience management: toward implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(3), pp.377-401.
Jain, R., Aagja, J. and Bagdare, S., 2017. Customer experience–A review and research agenda. Journal of Service Theory and Practice, 27(3), pp.642-662.
Kandampully, J., Zhang, T. and Jaakkola, E., 2017. Customer experience management in hospitality: a literature synthesis, new understanding, and research agenda. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, (just-accepted), pp.00-00.
Mahrous, A.A. and Hassan, S.S., 2017. Achieving superior customer experience: An investigation of multichannel choices in the travel and tourism industry of an emerging market. Journal of Travel Research, 56(8), pp.1049-1064.
Röllecke, F.J., Huchzermeier, A. and Schröder, D., 2018. Returning Customers: The Hidden Strategic Opportunity of Returns Management. California Management Review, 60(2), pp.176-203.
Shobeiri, S., Mazaheri, E. and Laroche, M., 2018. Creating the right customer experience online: The influence of culture. Journal of Marketing Communications, 24(3), pp.270-290.
Stouthuysen, K., Teunis, I., Reusen, E. and Slabbinck, H., 2018. Initial trust and intentions to buy: The effect of vendor-specific guarantees, customer reviews and the role of online shopping experience?. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 27, pp.23-38.
Surridge, M.J., Verrall, A.T., Smith, C.D., Hedges, G.J. and Te Booij, M., Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc, 2018. System and method for customer experience management. U.S. Patent Application 15/714,913.
Terblanche, N.S., 2018. Revisiting the supermarket in-store customer shopping experience. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 40, pp.48-59.
Terblanche, N.S., 2018. Revisiting the supermarket in-store customer shopping experience. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 40, pp.48-59.
Warnaby, G. and Shi, C., 2018. Planning and Implementing Pop-up Activities: The Pop-up Experience. In Pop-up Retailing (pp. 63-68). Springer, Cham.
Weill, P. and Woerner, S.L., 2018. Is Your Company Ready for a Digital Future?. MIT Sloan Management Review, 59(2), pp.21-25.
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