5 CXM Stats for Why CXM Matters

Why is CXM so important?

One of the top CXM experts, Esteban Kolsky of thinkJar, has compiled research on the matter, a host of stats to be exact, that speak to why CXM really does matter. Here are five of his fifty that show the driving reason for why we need to move to CXM—essentially that customers, not companies, should be driving the way you manage your customers.  

1. 84% of organizations are now embracing the customer experience model. That’s a big number (are you surprised?). But many of these companies, over 70% actually, are using a company-centric method for implementing it. Kolsky explains leaders are using sledgehammer with their customers rather than a magnet and driving customers away in their efforts rather than drawing them closer to their brand.
2. Research shows that 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed good experience. Woah. Stop right there. So customers are no longer happy with just a good experience—they will pay for the guarantee. What does that say about the shift in engagement between companies and customers? Customers, not companies, are in charge, and the journey is no longer about getting customers to do what the company wants, but it’s about providing the infrastructure and opportunity for the customer to engage how and when they want.  
3. Customer frustration leads to the following: 13% tell 15 or more people if they’re unhappy. Conversely, 72% of consumers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people. Map these numbers over the experiences your customers have with your brand. What are people talking about? What experiences are you allowing them to have that they can talk about? Where can they talk about it?
4. 75% of brands do not know what engagement means – but are measuring “it.” This is a frightening statistic. How is it that so many of us are talking about this subject yet still unsure what we really mean? No worries, if you’re on that boat, clearly you’re not alone.
5. 55% of customer requests for service on social media are not acknowledged. This stat alone shows a lack of awareness for just how crucial running your social media is and completing each conversation to the end is as well. Not only are requests not acknowledged, but another statistic he points out is that 72% of Facebook interactions are never completed, in any channel. How can we be doing such a poor job of allocating budgetary dollars to deal with these and many of these other key business stats?

Moving from customer experience to the importance of CXM…
The Huffington Post highlights one of the most popular definitions of CXM from CXM expert and bestselling author of Selling CRM at the Speed of Light, Paul Greenberg, “Customer Experience Management (CXM) is a business science that has the purpose of determining the strategy and programs that can make the customer feel good enough about the company to want to continue to do business with the company.”

Cumulative Experience not Touchpoints
We’ve all heard the buzz about the growing number of touchpoints that a given customer now must juggle as they interact with a company—and how to optimize those early on, how to not overwhelm the customer, and how selective as a result, the average consumer has become when it comes to which brands they will engage with.

But the talk about touchpoints needs to stop. At least, it needs to go deeper, and much deeper. Yes, business executives understand that the customer experience is crucial but is that experience, their experience as they interact with your brand priority? And what ways are you giving them to interact? That’s what CXM is all about.

Here are a couple questions that can help you determine that.

• Do we use social media as a megaphone or as a telephone?
• How do we invite customer interaction about our brand and our products?
• What percentage of your customers validate the infrastructure you provide for communication about your brand? Your products?
• What infrastructure do you provide? Cloud? Mobile? Social? Apps? Other?

The Harvard Business Review in the Truth about Customer Experience sums up the importance of focusing more strategically on customer experience (which we are using to drive the importance of harnessing the shift to CXM) by tying it to the results that it delivers:

In our research and consulting on customer journeys, we’ve found that organizations able to skillfully manage the entire experience reap enormous rewards: enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenue, and greater employee satisfaction. They also discover more-effective ways to collaborate across functions and levels, a process that delivers gains throughout the company.

We know that you likely have a boatload of questions, like for one, how does this look in my organization? Great! We were hopeful you’d come to that. Why not tell us what you want us to know and we can go from there. Click here to set up your 35. Or keep reading in our series, because the next thing we talk about are some real life examples of CXM implementations in organizations big and small.