customer experience management principlesCustomer satisfaction as a business concept has been around for more than 20 years — but customer experience management (CEM) has only been discussed over the past several years. So it’s no wonder that CEM is often equated with earlier concepts. The articles listed below can be instrumental in clarifying customer experience as a unique set of truths, essential for business success with 21st century customers.

1. Perspective: customer experience is defined entirely by the customer, not the solution provider.

2. Preventive: customer experience gravitates toward the easiest and nicest methods to get and use solutions that address customers’ needs.

3. Duration: customer experience encompasses the point from which customers become aware they have a need until they say that need is extinct.

4. Dynamic: customer experience evolves with the customers’ context – the purpose and circumstances of their need, and overall experience reference points.

5.Choice: customer experience is built on trust and mutual respect for variety; share of budget is more important than loyalty.

6. Multi-faceted: customer experience is measured by functional and emotional (social and personal) judgments related to the customers’ expectations.

7. Operational: customer experience is shaped by all the contributors to an organization’s processes, policies and culture, in addition to the physical product or service associated with the customer’s need.

8. Integrative: customer experience is impacted by the degree of alignment among departments, technologies, channels, etc.

9. Anticipatory: customer experience is ongoing, where the present and future are equally or more important than the past.

10. Transparent: customer experience sees through the solution provider’s motives and intentions, and favors genuine sincerity for the customer’s well-being.