Déjà vu. For me, this term immediately conjures images of Bill Murray waking up in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog Day – repeatedly. In French, déjà vu means “already seen” and while I usually fall solidly into the realm of skeptic in matters like these, I have to admit feeling a strong sense of déjà vu these days. Here’s why.
After spending the last six plus years focusing primarily on data integration consulting, I have recently changed my focus back to customer intelligence. Discussions with our clients who are practicing customer experience management (CEM) today presents an interesting coincidence, one which causes me to feel like Murray on Groundhog Day. Except instead of re-living yesterday, I am transported back to mid-2000.
Take CEM. At its simplest, CEM is the ability to influence, monitor, and improve every interaction the customer has with the organization. This definition evokes conversations with past clients about how and why to migrate from “managing the mailbox” to “controlling the communications.” Back then we were beating the drums, warning clients that their customers would grow to expect this, attempting to shake marketers (and other business lines) out of their silo-ed complacency.
A case in point is an article I wrote for DMReview magazine in April of 2008, titled, “How Do I Love You – Let Me Count the Ways.” In it, I posed the question “How do you avoid giving your customers too much love?” and I advocated coordinating and prioritizing customer communications across touch points. I urged readers to avoid over-communicating with their customers. And in a humorous bit of prescience, I highlighted that “this is not science fiction” but rather an exceptionally effective way to facilitate a seamless dialog with customers that enables a positive experience.
Déjà vu? Yes and no. Marketing managers have always wanted to manage the customer experience. But the developments since that 2008 article have been dramatic. Advanced analytics tools such as customer experience analytics, propensity models and lifetime value models have come into their own. Capability-rich marketing technologies such as real-time decision managers, customer experience personalization, offer optimization, and digital marketing solutions have entered the picture. And marketing has become the glue that binds silo-ed organizations together—this is the subject of my next blog post—and advances CEM out of the concept stage and into reality. If this is truly déjà vu, I, for one, am thrilled to be re-living this particular moment again.
If you’d like to delve a little deeper about CEM, check out this recent report by HBR published based on research in this area called “Lessons from the Leading Edge of Customer Experience Management.” Let me know what you think.
