What is Customer Experience Management? Complete 2025 guide

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Jan 2023 and was updated in Jan 2025 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) is the process of managing and improving the way a company interacts with its customers. It encompasses a wide range of activities, including customer service, marketing, sales, and product development.

The goal of CEM is to create positive, seamless, and personalized experiences for customers throughout their interactions with a company, in order to build brand loyalty and increase customer satisfaction. This can be achieved through various strategies and tactics, such as gathering and analyzing customer feedback, designing customer journeys, and implementing new technologies to improve the customer experience.

Customer experience management is the practice of managing all aspects of your customer’s interaction with a product or service. This includes everything from their initial discovery to long-term satisfaction. It’s important to focus on providing an enjoyable, consistent experience across all touchpoints such as online ordering, payments, fulfilment and delivery, customer support, and more. By monitoring customer sentiment regularly and proactively resolving issues, you can ensure that your customers remain happy and devoted long-term advocates for your brand.

Customer experience management (CEM) is an organizational strategy used to ensure that customer service and satisfaction remain a priority within a business. This strategy involves tracking customer interactions, evaluating customer perceptions and behaviors, and leveraging customer feedback to shape customer experiences. CEM requires businesses to cultivate trust, loyalty, and satisfaction while striving to exceed customer expectations.

In this comprehensive guide, we explain what is customer experience management, its benefits, challenges, strategies, and the top 5 customer experience management platforms that help you to improve your overall customer experience.
 

Benefits of Customer Experience Management

There are several benefits to managing customer experience, including:
 

1. Improved Customer Satisfaction

By continuously monitoring and improving the customer experience, businesses can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

 

2. Increased Revenue

Customers who have a positive experience with a company are more likely to make repeat purchases and recommend the company to others, which can lead to increased revenue.

3. Reduced Churn

Managing customer experience can help reduce churn or the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company. This can save business money that would have been spent on acquiring new customers to replace those who have left.

4. Enhanced Reputation

Providing a positive customer experience can improve a company’s reputation and make it stand out from its competitors.

5. Better Decision-Making

By collecting and analyzing customer feedback, businesses can make more informed decisions about product development, marketing, and other areas that impact the customer experience.

 

Overall, customer management experience is an important aspect of running a successful business, as it can lead to improved customer satisfaction, increased revenue, reduced churn, and a better reputation.

Customer Experience Management Challenges

There are several challenges that businesses may face when it comes to managing customer experience, including:
 

1. Gathering Customer Feedback

It can be difficult for businesses to gather meaningful customer feedback, especially if they don’t have a structured system in place for collecting it.

2. Analyzing and Acting on Customer Feedback

Even if a business is able to gather customer feedback, it can be challenging to analyse that feedback and determine what actions to take as a result.

3. Improving the Customer Experience

Once a business has identified areas for improvement, actually implementing those improvements can be challenging. It may require changes to processes, training for employees, or investment in new technology.

4. Measuring the Impact of Improvements

It can be difficult to measure the impact of improvements on customer experience, especially if the changes are not implemented consistently across all customer interactions.

5. Ensuring the Customer Experience is Consistent

Providing a consistent customer experience can be challenging, especially for businesses with multiple locations or a large number of employees.

 

Overall, managing customer experience requires a structured approach and the ability to continuously gather and analyze customer feedback, make improvements, and measure the impact of those improvements.

Effective Customer Experience Management Strategies

There are a number of strategies that businesses can use to manage customer experience effectively. Here are a few:

 

1. Define the Customer Journey

Map out the different steps that customers go through when interacting with your business, from initial awareness of your brand to post-purchase follow-up. This will help you identify opportunities to improve the customer experience at each stage.

2. Collect Customer Feedback

Make it easy for customers to provide feedback, and use that feedback to identify areas where you can improve the customer experience.

3. Train Employees to Deliver Excellent Customer Service

Make sure that your employees are trained to deliver excellent customer service, and hold them accountable for doing so.

4. Personalize the Customer Experience

Use customer data to personalize the experience for each individual customer.

5. Enhance Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Businesses that focus on reducing churn and delighting existing customers are likely to increase their customers’ lifetime value. Your brand provides greater value during the lifetime of your customers if you are able to keep them for a longer period of time.

6. Enhance the Customer Experience by Investing in the Right Tools and Systems

The best way to improve customer experience is to deploy the right systems and tools. Enhance customer communication and experience by investing in the right customer experience management platform. This platform helps respond timely, monitor customer behavior, and take proactive actions. Additionally, they provide effective solutions to customer complaints.
 

Top 5 Customer Experience Management Platforms

Here are the top five customer experience management platforms, based on their popularity and capabilities:

 

#1 Sekel Tech – CEM Platform 

Sekel Tech is a customer experience management platform that provides businesses with the tools they need to deliver a great customer experience. It helps them to create, manage, and measure customer experiences. Sekel Tech Customer Experience Management Platform can help your business provide a better customer experience across all channels. It will also help you evaluate how successful your efforts are in meeting the needs of your customers. The platform is used by companies of all sizes and industries, including brands like Greenply, Bridgestone, Blackberry, Schneider Electric, VLCC, Gulf Oil, etc.

Key Features

Tracking and measurement, automation, Customization, Multilingual support, Customizable ticket routing, categorization, and tagging, Unified customer view, etc.

#2 Zendesk – CEM Software 

Zendesk is a customer management experience software that offers support through multiple channels, including phone, email, chat, and social media. Zendesk provides a complete solution for providing customer service to your organization that is easy to use and scales as your business grows. It also provides a knowledge base and community forums to help customers find answers to their questions. It is not just about the customer when it comes to customer experience. It is also about your business and your team. Zendesk is not only user-friendly for your customers but also helps your teams achieve success, and keeps your business in sync. A powerful package with everything you need.

Key Features

Multilingual support, Community forums, Shared inbox, Customization, Knowledge base management, Omnichannel support, and CSAT surveys.

#3 Freshworks – CEM Platform 
 

Freshworks is a customer management experience platform that includes a range of tools for customer support, sales, marketing, and collaboration. It offers a unified view of the customer journey and integrates with other business tools. With Freshdesk, you can deploy scalable solutions, build powerful workflows, collaborate with global teams, and support customers across multiple communication channels with customer experience management functionality.

Key Features

Online review collection, Website chat, Payment processing, Website reporting, Customizable branding, Task automation, and Round-robin lead routing.

#4 Solvvy – CEM Software 

Solvvy is customer management experience software that uses artificial intelligence to make customer service agents’ jobs easier and more efficient. Solvvy’s software improves over time by using historical ticket data in order to recognize your customers’ intent and direct their inquiries accordingly. There is a solution that addresses simple requests, such as FAQs, and directs more complex inquiries to agents when necessary.

Key Features

Intelligent self-service Q&A, CSAT surveys, Workflow builders, Persona-based routing, Multi-support channel, Reporting dashboards, and Custom integrations

#5 SAS – CEM Platform 

SAS is a customer experience management platform that offers a range of tools for customer data management, marketing, and analytics. It allows businesses to create personalised customer experiences across channels. SAS offers a suite of solutions known as SAS Adaptive Customer Experience. With the system, marketers can gather important customer data and create customized customer profiles to provide more effective, personalized marketing communications. SAS customer experience platforms allow you to integrate customer data from both online and offline sources, including your call centre, point-of-sale devices, website, and mobile applications.

Key Features

Customizable branding, Data connectors, Email management, Event-triggered actions, Multi-channel attribution, and NLP.
 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are some frequently asked questions about customer experience management:

 

1. What is customer experience management?

Customer experience management (CEM) is the practice of designing and improving the interactions between a company and its customers throughout the customer journey, in order to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

2. Why is customer experience management important?

Providing a positive customer experience can lead to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy, which can in turn drive business success. In today’s competitive business environment, it is more important than ever to provide a great customer experience in order to stand out and differentiate from competitors.

3. What is Customer Experience Management in Banking?

Customer experience management in banking refers to the practices and strategies that financial institutions use to improve and enhance the overall customer experience. This includes everything from the customer’s initial contact with the bank to their interactions with bank representatives and the use of bank products and services.

4. What Are the 3 Main Components of Customer Experience?

Emotional: how customers feel about their interactions with a company.

Functional: the ease and effectiveness of a customer’s interactions with a company.

Physical: the tangible elements of a customer’s interactions with a company, such as the design of a website or the layout of a store.

5. What is the Difference Between CRM and CEM?

CRM (customer relationship management) and CEM (customer experience management) are related but distinct concepts. CRM focuses on managing and analysing customer interactions and data to improve sales and customer relationships. CEM, on the other hand, focuses on improving the overall customer experience through various touchpoints and interactions with a company. CRM is a tool for CEM.
 

Conclusion

In conclusion, this comprehensive guide on “What is Customer Experience Management?” has provided a detailed overview of CEM, its importance in the modern business landscape, and the strategies and best practices involved in its implementation. By understanding the various components of CEM, including customer feedback analysis, touchpoint optimization, and customer journey mapping, businesses can create a seamless and consistent customer experience that drives loyalty and satisfaction. With this guide, you can now take your first step towards implementing an effective CEM strategy that can help your business succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
 

Take Advantage of the Sekel Tech Customer Experience Management

Sekel Tech is a customer experience management platform that helps businesses provide exceptional customer service. The platform’s advanced tools and features enable retailers and D2C brands to streamline their customer experience, monitor customer feedback, track performance metrics, and gain valuable insights into their customers’ preferences and behaviors. Built on a highly secure and scalable cloud-based system, Sekel Tech’s central dashboard allows businesses to manage all aspects of their operations from one location, making it highly customizable and tailored to meet the specific needs of each business.

With personalized customer communication, real-time support, and automated feedback collection, Sekel Tech’s customer experience management platform creates a seamless and engaging experience for customers that fosters loyalty and drives repeat business. By using Sekel Tech’s comprehensive solution, businesses can improve their customer satisfaction, empower their brand, and enhance their overall growth.