Imagine a customer calls your business to ask a quick question. After a few confusing transfers, they hang up in frustration — without an answer to their question.
Moments like this are why customer experience management matters. CXM refers to the strategies businesses use to track, analyze, and improve customer interactions. It covers the entire customer lifecycle with the goal of improving customer retention and loyalty.
Sometimes people confuse CXM with CRM, or customer relationship management. CRM typically focuses on managing customer data to help sales and marketing efforts. CXM zooms out to focus on managing every interaction, from calls, texts, emails, and live chat, to shape the customer’s perception of your business.
CXM is critical for small businesses, since it has a significant impact on the bottom line. We’ve got tips for creating a strategy that drives results, plus some common pitfalls to avoid.
Why customer experience management matters
When customers feel heard and valued, they’re more likely to stick around. CXM provides structure so every interaction is consistent, helpful, and on-brand.
With good processes in place, a customer experience program:
- Reduces customer churn by providing customers with fast, personalized experiences
- Increases customer lifetime value and brand loyalty, since customers will spend more, renew more, and pay for upgrades or add-ons
- Improves collaboration by giving your team a 360-view of customer interactions
- Streamlines operations by helping you spot bottlenecks and efficiency gaps quickly so you can make improvements and provide proactive customer service
Research from Zippia found that companies that focus on CX have an 80% increase in revenue. In short, prioritizing CXM will have a huge impact on your profitability.
Common pitfalls SMBs face with customer experience management
Many small businesses want to deliver top-tier services. However, CXM can easily break down because they don’t have the right systems or processes in place.
No single source of truth
Customer data is scattered across multiple tools, like phone logs, spreadsheets, and emails. Without a unified view, it’s nearly impossible to understand the full customer journey or see what’s working. It’s also hard to spot issues before customers churn.
Inconsistent experiences across channels
Without clear CX standards and training, support reps’ responses might not align with your brand and tone. Even worse, if your customers are active on different channels than your brand, you’re missing out on customer engagement.
Using the wrong tools
Many SMBs overpay for customer experience software that’s too complex for their needs. While tools are necessary for customer experience automation, they need to be easy to set up and maintain.
Quo, formerly OpenPhone, offers powerful yet affordable CX tools designed for small businesses. You can sign up for Quo online in minutes and immediately start building better relationships with customers.
Treating CX as a support team problem
Customer experience impacts every team, including sales, marketing, and product. Effective CX comes from company-wide initiatives to provide a delightful customer experience and increase customer value.
💡 Not sure which CXM software is right for the job? Check out our list of customer experience platforms.
3 steps to create a customer experience management strategy
Not sure where to start? Here are a few ways to improve CXM, no matter what type of business you’re running.
1. Research and understand customers
An effective CX strategy starts with knowing your customers inside and out. Start with a Voice of the Customer, or VoC, project to capture insights about customers’ interactions with your company.
You can collect VoC data through:
- Post-call or post-chat surveys
- Mobile app or email feedback
- Direct conversations across phone, text messaging, or chat
As much as you can, you should automate customer service research. Customer feedback surveys should be sent via marketing automation, such as email or chatbots, while the interaction is fresh in the customer’s mind.
In Quo, you can review AI-powered call transcripts and summaries to quickly understand conversations without listening to every recording. Call tags automatically flag customer sentiment, whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral. That way, you can see trends in overall customer satisfaction.
If you identify areas of negative feedback or negative customer sentiment, you can work to improve the customer experience. Your customers might be experiencing confusing onboarding steps or slow responses, for example. With that information, you can make changes.
💡 Pro Tip: CX isn’t just for interactions with your customers. Employee experience matters too. Empowered, supported teams will deliver better customer experiences. Check out our guide to setting up a customer service training manual for best practices.
2. Map the customer journey
To manage the customer experience, you need to understand it. With customer journey mapping, you identify every touchpoint and brand experience, from the first call to additional purchases to questions on social media.
Start by segmenting your customers by different stages in the customer lifecycle. A first-time buyer will have different customer touchpoints than long-term customers. You can also create fictional personas to represent how your customers approach interactions. For example, if you run a hair salon, one persona might be a busy professional. You can create customer profiles based on a data analysis of past interactions.
Next, identify where and how each persona in each stage interacts with you. Customer touchpoints might include calling, texting, commenting on social media, or reaching out through live chat.
With Quo’s shared phone numbers and inboxes, every team member can see customer interactions in one place, whether it’s a call, text, or voicemail. This gives your team more visibility into the communication journey for every customer. Plus, Quo can integrate with your CRM and other tools. That way, you can track customer needs and interactions with an omnichannel approach.
As you map the customer journey, ask yourself: What are customers’ pain points? Do they fall through the cracks after a sales call? Does customer service always follow up? Fixing these problems is part of customer service management and customer advocacy.
3. Gather feedback and measure results
You can do the research and map the customer journey, but CXM isn’t a one-and-done task. You need systems in place to measure and optimize a unified customer experience over time.
Here are a few things to put in place:
Automatically sync customer interaction data
Use customer service management software that automatically captures customer communication.
Quo natively integrates with Salesforce and HubSpot, logging calls, texts, and voicemails directly in your CRM. With this information, you’ll have an end-to-end view of customer interactions. If you use a different tool, such as CXM software, you can use Quo’s API to connect.
Track key metrics
KPIs like CSAT, NPS®, response times, and resolution rates will tell you whether your improvements are working. For example, you might see an increase in word-of-mouth referrals, which indicates that your team is providing great customer experiences.
On your Quo dashboard, you can see real-time call volume, your busiest times, and other trends. That way, you can spot bottlenecks and make adjustments to meet customer expectations.
Use AI-powered customer insights
Instead of manually reviewing hundreds of calls, sentiment analysis tools can identify customer sentiment and categorize interactions. You can use this artificial intelligence data to pinpoint issues or gain insights into customer behavior, customer loyalty, and more.
You have to act on what you learn. Adjust your internal training, clarify customer support processes, or fine-tune operational efficiency. You might also offer self-service options or change your internal workflows to better serve your customers. Small tweaks can have a big impact on the entire customer journey.
Improve customer experience management with Quo
A successful CXM strategy depends on a combination of the right strategy and the right tools. Quo is built for small businesses: the features you need without enterprise-grade complexity or cost.
With shared inboxes, your team sees every customer interaction in context. AI call tags and transcripts give you insight into customer conversations. CRM integrations and APIs ensure all of your data is synced and remove data silos in your business. No matter your strategy, Quo gives you the tools you need to improve CXM.
Ready to try it for yourself? You can sign up for a free seven-day trial of Quo today.
FAQs
Customer experience management, or CXM, is how businesses track, analyze, and improve every customer interaction. It covers the entire customer lifecycle, from initial contact to follow-ups with existing customers and feedback requests.
A customer experience manager analyzes customer data to identify opportunities for improving the customer journey. Then, they form strategies to create more consistent, positive interactions at every touchpoint.
CRM and CEM have significant overlap but are different. Think of CRM as the tool for tracking who your customers are and what they’ve purchased. CEM is the broader strategy for ensuring every touchpoint — from phone calls to experiences with your product or service — meets customer expectations.
The 4 P’s of customer experience are:
– Product: What you’re selling and how well it meets customer needs
– Process: How easy and efficient it is for customers to interact with your business
– People: The quality and consistency of interactions with your team
– Perception: The overall impression customers form based on all touchpoints
The biggest CXM mistakes include:
– Treating it as just a support team responsibility when it requires company-wide commitment
– Scattering customer data across disconnected tools without a single source of truth
– Delivering inconsistent experiences across different channels due to a lack of clear standards
– Not defining clear goals
