How is Customer Experience Management (CEM) different from Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

No matter how big or small your business, the customer is always at the center of it all. Hence, customer satisfaction is of paramount importance when it comes to increasing revenue. 

Understanding the needs and expectations of the brand helps companies improve their strategies and monitor their progress amidst the changing market trends. Two ways to monitor this customer-brand relationship are Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). People often use these terms interchangeably; however, there are monumental differences between the two procedures. 

From a layperson’s point of view, CRM talks about how a customer views the company and CEM is how a company views a customer. Today we are going to deep dive into how the two tools, despite having different objectives, affect each other and the overall company’s performance. So, let’s dive right in!

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

The concepts, procedures, and rules that a corporation adheres to while communicating with its consumers are referred to as customer relationship management (CRM).

This complete connection, as seen from the organization’s perspective, includes direct interactions with consumers, including sales and service-related procedures, forecasting, and the examination of consumer trends and habits. CRM’s goal is to improve the customer’s experience in general.

In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in the usage of CRM software to improve a brand’s relationship with new and existing customers.

The main purpose of CRM is to maintain consistent sales. Its entire framework is based on initiating strategic business insights in order to establish strong relationships with customers.

Aim of CRM

Lead Generation: CRM provides a range of strategies to improve a brand’s campaigns, tracking, and analytics. As a result, companies get more conversions, which helps in boosting sales. CRM guides in tracking the inconsistencies in the marketing framework.

Closing more sales: Numerous CRM software tools store zillions of consumer data, including their past shopping history with the company, which helps monitor the results and predict future projects, campaigns, etc. This saves a lot of time for the sales team and increases productivity.

Streamlined Customer Support: Customer Support is the face of any company. Structured customer support will automatically build great rapport among customers. With a good CRM system in place, the team will have all the important information to resolve a customer’s issue and therefore, deliver exemplary service. 

What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)?

It is a set of actions taken by a business to give consumers a tailored and easy experience at every touchpoint, right from a product’s manufacture to its sale. CEM ensures that every department runs smoothly and avoids any oversights. 

This system’s primary goal is to make the difference between the intended and real customer experiences that you deliver. CEM is about accumulating all this experience data, whether it be through direct feedback, reviews, surveys, or other kinds of communication, in order to comprehend consumer viewpoint, improve the customer journey, and foster brand loyalty.

Aim of CEM

User Intent: Any successful business must answer three important questions in order to become successful. Who is my target audience? What do they need? And how do I provide it to them? It is essential to monitor your customer’s behavior and tap into their psychology to understand what they are looking for. Once you find those answers, you can build a loyal customer base.

Customer Engagement: Adding a personal touch helps the companies build a bond with its customers. For example, a lot of brands send push notifications on their apps to remind users of sales, offers, renewing memberships, etc. Regular engagement acts as a reminder for the customers. 

Examine the Feedback: Receiving real-time feedback assists the brands to act on it in a timely manner and avoids future mishaps. Additionally, having a digital presence and getting input from these channels is crucial in the digital age.

Difference between CRM and CEM

So far, we have already understood that CRM is a holistic experience management strategy and CEM uses more of a customer-centric approach. Now, let us understand how both differ on other parameters:

Structural basis: CRM focuses more on catering to customer needs by establishing a customer management platform (e.g., customer support), configuring software systems, and establishing analytics tools. While, on the other hand, CEM deals with every touch-point between the company and the customer for which it builds customer-wise surveys (e.g., Mystery Shopping), feedback, company metrics, etc. 

Functional basis: CRM attempts to align internal business processes and policies with an Inside-out approach, while, CEM devises strategies and plans that shape the product and service offerings. CEM employs an outside-in approach. 

What is the role of customer experience management in CRM?

Even though typical CRM models provide a broad overview of the client contacts; they don’t provide the details as to why certain events take place the way they do. CX answers the questions here by analyzing the good and bad feedback and recalculating countless strategies so that the department focuses only on the process that improves the customer experience rather than wasting time and effort on methods that are useless. 

Therefore, we can illicit that CRM and CX go hand in hand even if they solve distinct problems, follow different protocols, adhere to different tech stacks, and utilize different data. They effectively collaborate to build durable, reliable client connections.

Mystery Shopping: A gateway to building holistic CEM strategy

A covert collection of consumer data can be used to figure out an effective CEM strategy. The reason is, mystery shopping not only helps keep a particular brand’s customer experience in check but gathers useful info on competitor’s marketing models as well. Now that is a smart way to draw comparison graphs. 

Brands can either develop their internal program or partner with external mystery shopping services (e.g., HS Brands Asia). the mystery shopping services oversee the entirety of shopper programs. This entails designing a survey with questions unique to the company, recruiting participants, checking the accuracy of completed surveys, and examining data to identify areas for improvement.

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction is at the core of every successful business and mapping their behavior can offer various insights into improving every aspect of the product or service. Therefore, employing effective CRM and CEM strategies would be a good plan for enhancing business acumen. 

Since customer experience is a multi-faceted process; the addition of mystery shopping audits helps businesses plunge into the psyche of their customers and make shopping a delightful experience for them.

If you are a business owner or even remotely interested in the market, you might have heard the terms market research and market intelligence. And, often, people mistake the two as the same thing. However, they are far from being similar. For starters, marketing research is a sub-category of marketing intelligence. 

While marketing research is a primary focus for larger, established firms, market intelligence is equally important for start-ups, small businesses, and organizations servicing specific industries.

And, marketing intelligence is highly useful in increasing your business revenue. In this blog, you will find out how marketing intelligence, when clubbed with market research, helps you stand out.

Marketing intelligence vs Marketing Research

Before we deep dive into the interdependent nature of the two, let’s understand the basic difference between marketing intelligence and marketing research.

Market intelligence provides a detailed report on the changing market as a whole. On the other hand, market research derives company-specific knowledge pertaining to the company’s target audience, consumer behavior, and the success or failure of a company-specific strategy.

Market intelligence is market-specific. Its goal lies in analyzing changing market trends around the world, competitors’ strategies, customer behavior, and future prospects in the industry. It is a constant process because the market is ever-changing; it wouldn’t stop functioning if your business decides to take a vacation. Hence, constantly gathering market info is necessary.

On the contrary, market research is consumer-centric; it analyses the company-specific strategies, a customer’s response to the said strategy, consumer behavior, their response, etc. Market research is beneficial in determining whether a new product or service will be profitable in the long run or not. It relies on the consumer’s response to identify pitfalls and rectify them.

How are marketing intelligence and marketing research interrelated?

Marketing research and intelligence work together to optimize your product or service for the marketplace.

Let’s say you’ve got a new product idea, and want to make sure it will be successful on the market. You could start by conducting market research to gather information about who your target audience is, what they need from your product and how much they are willing to pay.

Once you have this kind of information in hand, you can use marketing intelligence tools like predictive analytics software to analyze all that data. For example, by using a statistical model that tells us “85% of my target audience will buy this if I price it at 4500 INR” or “The best way to get more traffic is by improving my SEO ranking on Google Search results page.”

Competitive intelligence and its impact on market research 

As the name suggests, competitive intelligence involves collecting and analyzing a company’s competitor’s data over various parameters.

Out of all the types of marketing intelligence, this has been known to generate the most traction. By gathering numerous data from credited and uncredited sources, you can keep track of your competitor’s next move and also plan ahead to build effective strategies to mitigate risks before they get out of hand. This also helps you dive deeper into consumer behavior.

How does Marketing Intelligence help in Marketing Research?

So far, you would’ve probably understood that both need to work in synergy to outshine your competitors. Now let’s focus on how market intelligence is helpful in market research.

It Aids in competitor analysis which encourages you to make informed decisions for your product or service.

It Helps you understand the company’s potential to grow in the face of fluctuating market trends.

It Helps you strategize better.

It Helps your company makes decisions by guiding it through the market’s noise.

It Offers a consistent flow of data on the target market, the competitive landscape, consumer trends, and particular buyer profiles.

It Enhances the position of your business by assisting with the correct project investments and loss prevention.

Because of this infallible marketing tool, even traditional marketers are switching to new strategies. Additionally, the rise of AI-enabled marketing analytics tools has ensured faster growth in less time. Thus, in order to grow your business, it is only relevant that you employ ideal marketing tactics.

Conclusion

Both marketing intelligence & marketing research is invaluable to a business and its optimization strategies. It can help you understand your customers better, discover new opportunities and make more informed decisions. Market intelligence data gives you a better understanding of the marketplace as well as how your company stacks up against competitors.