In a CX Minute – Episode 18
It comes a time in every weekly column where you have nothing – NOT A THING – to include in the column. I have no links, I am not going to release any videos until next week (two weeks release schedule, well – week-ish), and I have nothing to share because – well, let’s be honest… who releases new stuff in the summer?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc – after this, because of this if you are not one of us – we find ourselves at the mercy of my need for ~1200 words and a blank sheet of paper. You will have to suffer my writing…
I often find myself trying to explain to people two things: what and why. What is CX, and why now. This is a good a time as ever to cover this, especially because we have been answering those questions extensively here at Narrative HQ ™ lately. The make up the core, the basis, the heart of what we are trying to do here at SAP for CX.
What is CX? How does it differentiate from CRM? Where did it come from?
I recorded a video with analyst to the stars Ed Thompson from Gartner (OK, maybe I will share a video from my new collection).
It was not just for fun, Ed and I wrote a paper in 2001 called a Primer on Customer Experience Management (CEM) (if you have a Gartner account you may be able to find it in deep archives, but I have not checked for some time whether it is still available) which was published 20 years ago last week (that was the reason for the video). In that paper we put on our erudite hats and attempted to collect all that was known about CEM (back then we were still heavy on management and control, on the heels of CRM) and how it would affect organizations. I’d be remiss to say it was great (although, it was for the time – since no one had written much about this and we were mentioning it only on the side), but it was a good start.
I am brining this up because it was the research (mostly academic, and it started my love for behavioral sciences books) that started CX (nee CEM) from the point of view of management and control. Fast forward about a decade later and an unknown independent analyst who had been trying to figure out customer experiences from the side of the customer then wrote a seven-part series on an obscure blog advocating for designed experiences – so much better than CEM because we worked WITH customers instead of telling them what to do – as a way to further CX (we were then starting to see the first ones emerge) strategic initiatives in organizations.
Another decade and many, many, many more behavioral books later – and the same obscure, unknown independent who had started in 2021 is writing this weekly column telling you how all this evolved (including the most masterful piece on engagement other than Paul’s book on it). And this evolution is critical to understand CX (also fun to tell the tale and gives me creed with fellow kids). And this is the critical part to understand what CX really is:
CX is an evolution from CRM, we leverage the core functionality from CRM (front office: sales, service, marketing, and commerce) and we add data and process manipulation to make it about experiences, not relationships.
Now, to understand the evolution beyond what I said above (CRM, to CEM, to CX based on behavioral science and business evolution) we need to answer the second questions: Why CX?
This is an easy answer, and one that features prominently in our narrative on why we are changing the way we do CX at SAP. And you probably, probably, probably are tired of listening to me say this but – it’s because a convergence of events led us here. No, not a perfect storm – nothing like that, a slow and methodical progression of changes in the marketplace and workplace that culminated where we are.
Briefly, in case you heard me say this before, these are the four events that led us here:
- Customers taking control of the conversation after we popularized online communities, social media, and peer-to-peer interactions (I have another great video you will see next time I write about this)
- Digital transformation being finally done as far as hype (I told you recently that 90% or more of companies are done creating their digital strategies – and this is great because we need to start using data, not just accumulating it)
- Business transformation – at least this iteration – coming about for a landing (and it leverages digital transformation outcomes, so – even better!)
- The hype over AI and ML and all other bots-taking-over-the-world-and-we-welcome-our-new-overlords is starting to taper off (and remember, it is not AI – just analytics and ML that you are doing 99/100 times)
This confluence of events led us to a place where organizations can focus on three outcomes (and we have been refocusing our message around this for over a year now): A) Understand the customer, B) engage them as they please, and C) deliver to their expectations while balancing the organization’s strategic outcomes.
And here is where the final answer of Why CX begins to be answered in earnest, and why every organization is interested in finding their solution for this quandary: if you need to balance your organization’s strategic outcomes (operationally efficiency) with customers’ expectations (effective interactions), learn from those so you can understand the customer (brand promise meets customer trust and intimacy) and provide a way for them to build their own experiences using optimized processes in real time (ad-hoc experiences versus buyer journeys) dynamically, and make sure everyone walks away with something they wanted going one (value co-creation)– who are you going to call?
No, not Ghostbusters – but CX.
That’s right – the confluence of front-office interactions effectively managed, relying on insights stemmed from careful analysis of clean data, married with an understanding of what customers want individually, and lessons learned from every previous interaction that was carefully built as needed is the domain of CX – even more so when done at scale, hyper-personalized (hate that, but hate million-markets-of-one or long-tail more), and relying on an ecosystem.
And, for fun, this is the conclusion that comes from the video I recorded with Ed, and the starting spot for the work we are doing here at Narrative HQ™.
What says you? Anything to add? Do you see CX differently?
Comments below, Linked-in somewhere, email me direct, yell at me on the street – many ways to have this conversation… engage!
Talk to you soon, hopefully (for your sake) I find more interesting research to share so I won’t bore you with more of this s— stuff.
