Institute of Customer Experience Management

Post Graduate Programme in Business Management

FAQs

Mr. Subir GhoshDATE: 12TH JANUARY 2011

A chat with

Subir Ghosh, President of Aegis Global Academy, answers questions on ‘TheRole of Customer Experience Management (CEM) in building CustomerLoyalty’ and other generic questions that students have to ask him as he setsout to chat online with them.

We bring you the snapshot of the same chat on www.Timesjobs.com

Q & A

• Q: What are the benefits of ‘Experiential Marketing’ over ‘Traditional Marketing’ ?

• A: Traditional marketing is all about the 4P's i.e. product, price,

placement and promotion. It entails profit from sales volume /

cost efficiency that forms the crux of the product lifecycle.

Experience marketing is about the 3C's namely customer

centricity, customer experience and customer lifetime value. It

works on the customer lifecycle paradigm which is a function

of customer affinity and need for the product/service over a

certain period of his life. It works on finding products for

customers vis-a-vis finding customers for products in the

traditional approach to marketing because products come and

go but customers endure.

Q & A

• Q: How is CRM (Customer Relationship Management) different from CEM (Customer Experience Management)? Which one is better to employ?

• A: CRM is a data capture, data analysis and data interpretation tool, while CEM encompasses the people, products, and the operating policies of the organization including CRM. CRM is thus an enabling tool in the whole CEM process.

• Q: Is Customer Experience Management (CEM) a core marketing function or an integrated approach? Please explain.

• A: CEM is a management philosophy that embraces the core reality of business which is that the only guy who pays all the bills in a business is a customer and hence he must be the focal point of every activity in the company.

Q & A

• Q: Are there dedicated CEM courses for working professionals? How can I train

my human capital on this new-age marketing form?

• A: The institute of customer experience management

www.aegisglobalacademy.com facilitates all persons who are engaged or

wishing to be engaged in the discipline. Please log in for more details.

• Q: Is Experiential Marketing still novel for Indian businesses? If no, then do

we really have an experientially aware economy?

• A: It is still novel as the age of consumerism arrived only 5 to 7 years back in

this country contrasted to the US where it is about 4 decades old and

customers thus have massive choice in every product/service and

information through media proliferation thus compelling firms to look at

their business from a customer's viewpoint if it wants to survive and flourish.

I see the same phenomenon play out in India within the next 3 years, latest.

Q & A

• Q: What practices should I embrace to create real business value? Please elaborate.

• A: Become customer centric, as the definition of value creation in business is the difference between the cost of your product / service and what the customer is willing to pay for it. Value is created in the marketplace and not in the factories or companies.

• Q: What are the different methods of CEM?

• A: CEM is a management / organization philosophy and not a method. It is about orienting every aspect of your business to meet / exceed customer expectations.

Q & A

• Q: Customer Experience Management is an inevitable function of service industry. Does that mean it adds no or little value to other industries?

• A: No, and I say this because people don't buy products; they buy solutions to their lives' problems/issues. Moreover product features tend to be points of parity or at best certain obligations which a firm is bound to fulfill, while focusing on the entire pre and post consumption experience. This is where differentiation can occur on a sustained basis as it involves the human aspect to a very large degree, and perhaps only real differentiator between organizations will always be people.

Q & A

• Q: Can CEM be implemented on employees within an organization to achieve overall and holistic growth? Please explain

• A: CEM is as much about practicing internal customer centricity

without which external customer centricity is not possible.

Thus there would ideally be only two ways that job roles

in such organizations ought to be viewed; the roles that

directly enable the customer and the ones that enable those

that enable the customer. Such firms work purely on the

basis of each level of the organization enabling the

next level.

Q & A

• Q: What core considerations need to be addressed while designing experiential

marketing strategies for B2B markets?

• A: The core consideration don't change i.e. keeping the customer interest at the

core of every initiative/procedure the firm undertakes. The idea is how to meet

and exceed expectations with a view to building a long term mutually rewarding

relationship. The approach should always be to accurately know what are the

customers expectations, how have these expectations been created and design

the firms products, process, people behavior and the physical environment to

meet and exceed expectations.

• Q: Can I take help from external CEM consultancies to design experiential marketing

strategies for my organization? If yes, then how affordable would that be?

• A: You could get in touch with the institute of customer experience

www.aegisglobalacademy.com for this. The charges are very assignment scope

specific.

Q & A

• Q: What is 'Service Recovery Experience'? How is it related to Customer Experience Management?

• A:

• Q: How important is an organization's operational design in creating positive customer experiences?

• A: As I said earlier a firm has to orient not just its people's mindset but its entire set of policies, procedures , reward and recognition programmes and its physical/digital architecture to achieve this.

Service recovery is a process in the whole experience

journey. It operates on the principle that every problem is a

potential opportunity to bond with a not so happy/irate

customer.

Q & A

• Q: Does Customer Experience have measurable effects? How?

• A: Financial outcomes of customer experience is entirely measurable through a theory called the service profit link.

• Q: Is CEM going to change the total scenario of the service industry?

• A: I say this with a lot of conviction after spending more than a decade in telecom, retail and banking at very senior levels including that of a CEO. This is simply because there is no other way for service firms to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

Q & A

• Q: What can be done to differentiate one's CEM strategies from that of

competition?

• A: Have yours and your organizations' ear continuously tuned into the

customer and marketplace.

Lets Begin…

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