Experience management

Last updated

Experience management is an effort by organizations to measure and improve the experiences they provide to customers as well as stakeholders like vendors, suppliers, employees, and shareholders. The concept posits that experiences comprise distinct economic offerings that create economic value and competitive advantage. [1] [2]

Contents

Organizations have begun to collect experience data in addition to operational data, since experiences are seen as a competitive advantage. [3] [4] Experience management platforms provide various services to automate the process of identifying and improving experiences across an organization. [5]

Broader than customer experience, experience management now encompasses customer experience along with other areas, such as brand experience, employee experience and product experience, which are all seen as interrelated. [6] [7] [8]

History

In 1994 Steve Haeckel and Lou Carbone collaborated on a seminal early article on experience management, titled "Engineering Customer Experiences", where they defined experience as "the 'takeaway' impression formed by people's encounters with products, services and businesses  a perception produced when humans consolidate sensory information." They argued that the new approach must focus on total experience as the key customer value proposition. [9]

The concept reached a wide audience in 1999, when it was popularized by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in their book Experience Economy . [9] In the same year, Bernd Schmitt published Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, and Relate to Your Company and Brands. [10]

In the 2000s, experience management emerged as a complex field unifying the experiences of brands, employees, products and more. It was acknowledged that generating new experiences for end customers requires designing better experiences for internal players of an organization. Value is created by focusing on the experiences of everyone involved in or affected by a new offer, such as customers, employees, suppliers, and other stakeholders. [11]

Management

To create and manage the experiences, businesses must evaluate, implement, integrate, and build experiences from a fragmented landscape. [12] Such needs are met by experience management platforms, by companies such as Unisys, which help automate the process of measuring and improving experiences across an organization by coordinating content, customer data and core services, and unifying marketing, commerce and service processes. [13] [14] [5]

Experience management platforms compare multiple layers of data and statistics to enable organizations to identify any experience gaps. They connect operational databases with human feedback, analyzing respondents' emotions, beliefs, and sentiments for a holistic view of the experiences they provide. Their methods include artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and statistical models. [15]

Other uses

While the term experience management is predominantly used in business, it has another meaning. It is used for a special kind of knowledge management that deals with collecting, modeling, storing, reusing, evaluating, and maintaining experience. [16] In that sense, the term is interchangeable with expertise management. [17]

Related Research Articles

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marketing</span> Study and process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to customers

Marketing is the act of satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.

An experience economy is the sale of memorable experiences to customers. The term was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy.

A management information system (MIS) is an information system used for decision-making, and for the coordination, control, analysis, and visualization of information in an organization. The study of the management information systems involves people, processes and technology in an organizational context. In other words it serves, as the functions of controlling, planning, decision making in the management level setting.

In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.

Marketing communications refers to the use of different marketing channels and tools in combination. Marketing communication channels focus on how businesses communicate a message to its desired market, or the market in general. It is also in charge of the internal communications of the organization. Marketing communication tools include advertising, personal selling, direct marketing, sponsorship, communication, public relations, social media, customer journey and promotion.

In a corporation, a stakeholder is a member of "groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist", as defined in the first usage of the word in a 1963 internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute. The theory was later developed and championed by R. Edward Freeman in the 1980s. Since then it has gained wide acceptance in business practice and in theorizing relating to strategic management, corporate governance, business purpose and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The definition of corporate responsibilities through a classification of stakeholders to consider has been criticized as creating a false dichotomy between the "shareholder model" and the "stakeholder model", or a false analogy of the obligations towards shareholders and other interested parties.

Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns that emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales transactions. It differentiates from other forms of marketing in that it recognises the long-term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages. With the growth of the Internet and mobile platforms, relationship marketing has continued to evolve as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels such as tools for managing relationships with customers that go beyond demographics and customer service data collection. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing, a combination of search optimization and strategic content, public relations, social media and application development.

Enterprise feedback management (EFM) is a system of processes and software that enables organizations to centrally manage deployment of surveys while dispersing authoring and analysis throughout an organization. EFM systems typically provide different roles and permission levels for different types of users, such as novice survey authors, professional survey authors, survey reporters and translators. EFM can help an organization establish a dialogue with employees, partners, and customers regarding key issues and concerns and potentially make customer-specific real time interventions. EFM consists of data collection, analysis and reporting.

Bernd Herbert Schmitt is a professor of international business in the marketing department at Columbia Business School, Columbia University in New York. He is known for his research and books, as well as speaking and consulting on customer experience, customer happiness, branding, innovation. He is noted for his work in Asia on Asian markets and consumers. He wrote several influential books in these areas like Experiential Marketing, Customer Experience Management, Big Think Strategy and Happy Customers Everywhere.

Engagement marketing, sometimes called "experiential marketing", "event marketing", "on-ground marketing", "live marketing", "participation marketing", "Loyalty Marketing", or "special events", is a marketing strategy that directly engages consumers and invites and encourages them to participate in the evolution of a brand or a brand experience. Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and co-creation of marketing programs, developing a relationship with the brand.

A touchpoint can be defined as any way consumers can interact with a business organization, whether person-to-person, through a website, an app or any form of communication. When consumers connect with these touchpoints they can consider their perceptions of the business and form an opinion.


Customer experience is the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral customer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages.

Enterprise engagement is a sub-discipline of marketing and management that focuses on achieving long-term financial results by strategically fostering the proactive involvement and alignment of customers, distribution partners, salespeople, and all human capital outside and inside of an organization. Enterprise engagement is distinct from the traditional sub-disciplines of financial management, marketing, sales, operations, and human resources in that it seeks to achieve long-term success by integrating these various traditional business disciplines to consistently focus the organization on identifying and meeting target audience needs. Enterprise Engagement is related to brand engagement, a term developed in Great Britain in the 2000s to describe an integrated external and internal marketing approach to achieving long-term success for a brand. Enterprise Engagement applies similar principals to the achievement of an organization's overall financial objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qualtrics</span> Experience management company

Qualtrics is an American experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah, in the United States. The company was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, and Stuart Orgill.

Corporate architecture refers to the use of architectural design to construct physical spaces that can promote the corporate image of a corporation. During the 20th century corporate architecture was able to transition from designs with mainly function in mind to more creative endeavours, which are able to be an architectural expression of the firm’s institutional identity and play a role in stakeholders’ image of the organisation.

Employer brand is branding and marketing the entirety of the employment experience. It describes an employer's reputation as a place to work, and their employee value proposition, as opposed to the more general corporate brand reputation and value proposition to customers. The term was first used in the early 1990s, and has since become widely adopted by the global management community. Minchington describes employer brand as "the image of your organization as a 'great place to work' in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market. The art and science of employer branding is therefore concerned with the attraction, engagement and retention initiatives targeted at enhancing your company's employer brand."

Experiential interior design (EID) is the practice of employing experiential or phenomenological values in interior experience design. EID is a human-centered design approach to interior architecture based on modern environmental psychology emphasizing human experiential needs. The notion of EID emphasizes the influence of the designed environments on human total experiences including sensorial, cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral experiences triggered by environmental cues. One of the key promises of EID is to offer values beyond the functional or mechanical experiences afforded by the environment.

Massification is a strategy that some luxury companies use to expose their brands to a broader market and increase sales. As a method of implementing massification, companies have created diffusion lines. Diffusion lines are an offshoot of a company or a designer’s original line that is less expensive in order to reach a broader market and gain a wider consumer base. Another strategy used in massification is brand extensions, which is when an already established company releases a new product under their name.

A social employee is a worker operating within a social business model. Following an organization's social computing guidelines, social employees use social media tools both for internal workflow and collaboration purposes and for external engagement with customers, prospects and stakeholders through a combination of social media marketing, content marketing, social marketing, and social selling. Social employee programs are considered to be as much about culture and engagement as they are about business processes and best practices. In addition to increased leads and sales, social employee best practices are said to improve business outcomes important to social media marketing, such as increased connections and web traffic, improved brand identification and "chatter", and better customer advocacy.

References

  1. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore (July–August 1998). "Welcome to the Experience Economy". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  2. Dan Miller (12 July 2011). "Avaya Updates Its Suite of Experience Management Software". Opus Research. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  3. Bruce Rogers (2 March 2017). "Ryan Smith's Qualtrics Capitalizes On The Rise Of The 'Experience Economy'". Forbes. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  4. "Experience Management". Haaga-Helia. Archived from the original on 23 October 2019. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  5. 1 2 Bradley Cooper (21 March 2017). "Intel webinar zooms in on digital experience management platforms". Digital Signage Today. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  6. Maria Kreuzer (November 2009). "An embodied cognition approach to the study of consumer brand knowledge" (PDF). Marketing Trends Congress. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2023. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  7. Linda Heska (10 April 2009). Enhancing the Employee Experience: Organizational practices that contribute to employee engagement. VDM Verlag. ISBN   978-3639138160.
  8. Jennifer Kilian, Hugo Sarrazin, and Hyo Yeon (September 2015). "Building a design-driven culture". McKinsey&Company. Retrieved 29 March 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. 1 2 Schmitt, Bernd (2011). Experience Marketing: Concepts, Frameworks and Consumer Insights (PDF). Columbia Business School. p. 87.
  10. Bernd Schmitt (1999). "Experiential Marketing: How to Get Customers to Sense, Feel, Think, Act, and Relate to Your Company and Brands". Columbia Business School. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  11. Ramaswamy, Venkat; Gouillart, Francis (October 2010). "Building the Co-Creative Enterprise". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  12. Mark Grannan, Danielle Geoffroy (16 May 2016). "Vendor Landscape: Digital Experience Platforms". Forrester. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  13. "Business Process Solutions". www.unisys.com. 2022-11-01. Retrieved 2023-08-25.
  14. MCorpCX (3 February 2017). "11 Tech Trends You Can Bet Your Customer Experience Budgets On, Today through 2020..." Loyalty 360. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  15. Karissa Neely (2 March 2017). "Qualtrics quantifies and enhances the 'experience economy' in new platform". Daily Herald. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 25 March 2017.
  16. Bergmann, Ralph (2002). Experience Management. Google Books: Springer. p. 1. ISBN   9783540457596.
  17. Lisa Gianakos (March 2015). "Experience Management: Build, Buy, or Abandon?". Legal Solutions. Archived from the original on 24 December 2015. Retrieved 24 March 2017.