Experience Management Industry Update Q4 2022

XM² Represents A New World Order In Your Revenue Growth Strategy

CMOs and CROs Will Need To Work Together To Implement A Comprehensive XM² Strategy

• Customer Experience (CX) has moved to a top-of-mind priority for the C-suite. Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) now rank investing in improving their digital customer experience as their top priority according to a recent CMO survey. More specifically, CMOs rank AI, chatbots, and machine learning as their top three investment priorities for the next twelve months as well. On one side, CMOs want to understand the voice of the customer, which historically has been accomplished by physically mailing a carefully constructed set of people multi-page surveys. Leading CX firms have since evolved from sending hard copies of surveys to the digital friendly email or even text invites to complete a multi-question survey.
• CMOs, though, have grown wise to the fact that surveys, whether long or short or physical or digital, are at their core, unnatural forms of communicating with customers. One live interaction with a real customer adds depth and clarity into a customer's key pain points and value drivers. One on one customer feedback post-transaction conversations, in person, between two real people though, is not feasible for any firm that wishes to compete in the global economy in the 21st century. What if there was a way to provide the responsiveness, color, and natural flow of a conversation, with the breadth of distribution of survey?
• Forward thinking CMOs are now focused on leveraging chatbot tools, driven by AI, to handle the initial onboarding of both existing customers and prospects, and then layering in real- time human interaction as needed. Layering in AI, chatbots, to create a unified omnichannel messaging experience empowers CMOs to take the temperature of a customer base by engaging in a non-stop conversational relationship, twenty-four hours a day continuously. This will be a vast improvement over sending quarterly or annual surveys. Implementing an always on, constant inbound prospecting and customer care program requires a significant commitment from the CMO and their partners across the C-suite.
• CMOs who recognize that their previously disparate focus areas customer experience, digital experience (search, brand, product), and social experience are all converging into each other to form a unifying experience management (XM), will be ahead of the curve and more prepared to navigate a potential inflationary environment with a nontrivial risk of a global recession in 2023. A new experience category, Messaging Experience, creeping up on the XM space and CMOs and their Chief Revenue Officer Partners (CROs) with ambitious annual growth goals. With exponential progress in machine learning and chat driving increasingly real conversations, messaging directly to customers will disrupt a range of previously mission critical XM activities including surveys, reviews, phone centers as well as sales activities including website search and navigation, responses and information related to queries, explaining product and service details, and ultimately advising on the optimal purchase for their needs.
• The key winners in the next few years are CMOs who partner with CROs and implement a comprehensive Experience Management (XM) strategy that is underpinned by Messaging Experience (MX). XM x MX = XM².

We hope you find this information valuable, and as always, feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss in further detail. To read the full report, download the PDF below. Footnotes and sources are noted in the deck.