Experiential or Experience Management?

"Experience" has many meanings. As a profession, Experience Management is applied to 3 stakeholders every organization relies upon: customers (CX), employees (EX), and partners (PX).

Everyone has an "experience" throughout their day: micro moments of goodness or lack of goodness.

What's goodness? Automatic judgments each person makes relative to their aims.

• Aims are ultimate outcomes favored by the customer in CX, by the employee in EX, and by the partner in PX.
• Aims are also known as Job-To-Be-Done (JTBD) in the big-picture (end-to-end journey) -- not to be confused with Tasks To Be Done (micro moment steps).

Good experience matches aims for the full journey most of all, and for micro moments as well.

Does this ring true for you as an employee? Use this question as the litmus test for CXM. If it's uncomfortable to be applied to you as an employee, then it's likely a bad practice for customers and partners as well.

Experiential Marketing

Experiential Marketing came on the scene strongly with the One to One Future 1993 book by Don Peppers , Customers.com 1998 book by Patricia Seybold, The Experience Economy 1999 book by Pine & Gilmore, Customer Winback 2001 book by Michael Lowenstein, PhD CMC & Jill Griffin , Managing the Customer Experience 2002 book by Shaun Smith & Joe Wheeler , Building Great Customer Experiences 2002 book by Colin Shaw & Ivens, and Customer Experience Management 2003 book by Bernd Shmitt.

Experiential Marketing relies on behavioral science to engage customers for the micro moments via UX, viral marketing, demand gen, CRM, loyalty marketing, and Net Promoter System.

Experiential marketing shapes customers' perceptions, expectations, and memories of your brand. It's instrumental in attracting and retaining customers.

Purple and green metrics are progress of Experiential Marketing. Gold, blue, and silver metrics are CXM metrics. The CXM metrics amplify the Experiential Marketing metrics. WIthout the gold driving the blue, which drive the silver, your Experiential Marketing is handicapped due to dysfunction across your business: mindsets and actions out-of-sync with customers' aims.

Customer Experience Management

Customer Experience Management came on the scene initially as Customer Satisfaction, Customer Retention, Customer Loyalty, and Customer Equity -- in 1987 as part of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Total Quality Management, and ISO 9000.

Eye-opening for me about CXM were The PIMS Principles 1987 book by Buzzell & Gale, The Customer-Driven Company 1991 book by Richard Whitely (striking similarity to CCXP competencies), Fred Reichheld's 1991 HBR article Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Service, and The Service Profit Chain 1997 book by James Heskett et al.

Check out these evergreen CXM primers as well: What Customers Want 2005 book by Tony Ulwick , Loyalty Myths 2005 book by Timothy Keiningham, Ph.D. et al, Designing the Customer-Centric Organization 2005 book by Jay Galbraith, Chief Customer Officer 2006 book by Jeanne Bliss , Firms of Endearment 2007 book by Raj Sisodia et al, Customer Value Investment 2008 book by Gautam Mahajan , Employees First, Customers Second 2010 book by Vineet Nayar, Happy RAVING Customers 2014 book by Carol Buehrens , Customer Experience Strategy book by Lior Arussy , and Experience Rules! The Experience Operating System by Hinshaw & Diane Magers .

Customer Experience Management relies on voice of customer to align internally to customers for their end-to-end journey via customer-focused employee engagement in fact-based decision-making and continual improvement.

Customer experience management shapes value creation and value delivery to meet or exceed customers' expectations. It's pivotal in earning and keeping customers' preference.

REALITY CHECK: Does this ring true when you replace the word "Customer" with "Employee"?

These are CXM metrics. They apply to the 4 Gold CX Metrics. These CXM metrics multiply Experiential Marketing metrics' progress.

Symbiotic Strength

Experiential Marketing and Customer Experience Management are interdependent, but not interchangeable!

You need both.

What's missing post-pandemic? True Customer Experience Management.

Costs and uncertainty since 2020 have ruled managerial decisions. It's put tremendous pressure on revenue generation. It's reduced integrity of organizations and individuals. Integrity is the heart of Experience Management: say what they'll get and give what you said! Experiential Marketing cannot fix this. Customer Experience Management CAN fix it.

• Customer Experience (CX) is what customers experience.
• Customer Experience Management (CXM) is your proactive and reactive management of CX.
• Experiential Marketing is a subset of CXM. Effective and efficient experiential marketing relies on voice of customer to guide fact-based decisions and improvements. Experiential Marketing is the frosting and CXM is the cake.
• Customer Success and Customer Support are primarily reactive management of CX, as their importance increases more and more as CXM is absent.
• Customer Strategy is the domain of Marketing and Sales: how to segment the market, which customers to target, and how to expand revenue with each customer and market. It's a subset of CXM since its effectiveness and efficiency relies on voice of the customer to guide fact-based decisions and improvements.
• Customer Experience Strategy is executives' shared vision of how customer-centered business will maximize value.
• CXM is the responsibility of every manager across your enterprise, similar to their fiscal responsibility, employee performance reviews and management, ethical behavior, and confidentiality and integrity of company data.
• CXM is facilitated by your CX Leader (VP-CX, CCO, etc.) who makes every General Manager a shining star of value generation by getting in-sync with customers' aims.

REALITY CHECK: Does this list above ring true when you replace the word "Customer" with "Employee"?

Customer Experience Maturity has nothing to do with number of listening posts, sophisticated analyses, technologies, or recommendations. CX Maturity is how you USE customer insights to run your business. Start with Embed and all other levels make strides simultaneously!

Want to learn more? Arrange any of these pivotal, concise, affordable, adept, actionable approaches for your team via ClearAction.com/growth:

A) Fireside Chat

B) C-Suite Guide to CX Value

C) CX+EX+PX Experts Masterclass

D) Value Dashboards

E) Coaching (20 minutes or more)

F) Any-Topic Mastermind

G) Walk The Talk Forum

ALL of these formats super-charge your ability to influence managers of all kinds to get in-sync with customers, prevent CX issues, and generate faster and higher value for customers and growth. Want a walk-through? ClearAction.com/oneonone/get-acquainted

Question for you: what's your company's % reliance on Experiential Marketing vs. Experience Management?