I’m detecting an exciting shift in the marketing technology landscape — less of an emphasis on back-office analytics, and more of a focus on delivering compelling customer experiences in the front-office. To be sure, analytics support that mission; but they don’t dominate it. I think this is a really important step forward.
Earlier this month, Brian Walker of Forrester released a report on The Emergence of Customer Experience Management Solutions that discusses some of the dynamics of this shift.
What struck me most from the report, however, was this terrific graphic that does a beautiful job of visualizing the different touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle, along with some of the communications vehicles that play a role at each point:
Forrester defines a customer experience management (CXM) solution this way:
“CXM solutions are the technology solutions that allow businesses to manage and optimize the customer experience through content management, customer targeting, analytics, personalization, and optimization capabilities across customer touchpoints — online, through mobile devices, through Internet-connected interfaces, and through digitally support customer interactions such as contact centers and in-store or branch interfaces.”
I’m slightly skeptical on the breadth of the category for labeling a specific set of software solutions — many, many categories of marketing technology feed into this — but as a management approach, I couldn’t agree more with an emphasis on customer experience.
It does, however, let us say things like: the CMO wants ROI from our SaaS CXM, especially SEO and PPC initiatives driving to our LPO programs. That’s kind of fun.
