Customer Reviews

Customer Experience Management: A Revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

For those individuals who have not been previously exposed to the concept of Customer Experience Management as an alternative to Customer Relations Management, this book might be an amazing eye opener. But that would be strictly because of the exposure to a new idea, as it's certainly not the convulted style of writing which can result in even the most intelligent people scratching their heads.

I purchased this book in order to get very down to earth methods to begin applying the concept to the company I work for. What I found, instead, was a list a mile long of jargon that all began to run together and sound the same. "Experiential platform", "brand experience", "experiental value promise", experiential positioning"... soon enough my mind was preoccupied with trying to remember which was which, rather than being able to absorb the essence of what the author was trying to say. And the crazy thing is that each of those phrases I just mentioned are supposedly the very concrete, measureable phases behind his take on the CEM approach! Getting tangled in the minutia of catch phrases did nothing to help me move forward into CEM.

I've come away from the book disappointed I didn't learn anything of real value, but even more disappointed that I spent the money on the book. Don't bother!

The revolutionary approach that Bernd H. Schmitt is advocating here wouldn't sound so radical to anyone who has ever been in therapy: be aware, see things from other people's point of view, address their concerns. If you've been in $150 an hour territory, this isn't radical, but in the suites of marketing, the author contends, it is brand new. The book is an interesting follow up to the author's earlier seminal work on the broader theory of customer experience. Entitled Experiential Marketing, that work made the case for a customer-experience focus. This book is more of a practical how-to, professorially organized into a neat near-outline format. Here, Schmitt makes the case for dissecting, designing and then improving, the customer's experience with your product. We recommend this book of marketing therapy to anyone selling a product or service - and it is lots less expensive than putting your consumers on the couch.

I had a hard time putting the book down. I kept reading hoping the book would reveal some item beyond the obvious. Schmitt spends 200 pages explaining that customer experience should be at the forefront when launching a new product or designing a marketing campaign. I dare say Schmitt would be hard pressed to find a CEO that doesn't taut the value of good customer experience or the importance of retaining customers.

Where Schmitt falls drastically short is tying customer experience activities to financial decisions companies make every day. This is perhaps the largest challenge those of us in customer retention or customer marketing face every day. It is great to ascertain that companies should improve customer support to provide a better customer experience to retain more customers. However, how does a manager position a $200,000 call center upgrade vs. a $200,000 product enhancement? According to Schmitt both are valuable in the Customer Experience framework. With limited lip service to "regression modeling" and "customer surveys" there is no valuable guidance to help a customer experience focused manager position their projects against other expenditures within a company.

Schmitt could take a few pages out of Jim Collins' work to better tie customer experience initiatives to corporate financial success.

Customer Experience Management is a must-read for busy marketing executives. Although it was a quick read, it should not be taken lightly. The framework Prof. Schmitt outlines carries on where his eye-opening Experiential Marketing left off. It provided me with a good outline and a valuable set of tools with which to jumpstart my marketing department. The case studies were insightful and helped illustrate his methodology and the success many companies around the world are having by making their customer's needs and lifestyle top of mind.

I bought this book along with several others in order for a project at work around redesigning the customer experience. This book is already a bit "old" (5 years) in that it doesn't address the huge world of the internet and pervasive connectivity.

I found it basic and skimmed over much of it. I would have appreciated more "worksheets" and templates like some other titles (like "managing the customer experience" by Smith & Wheeler). The author's examples and work history give color and insight into the themes but it seemed like it just took up space that could otherwise have gone to more thoughtful content.

If this is your first book on the topic, go for it. If you are building on your knowlege of this topic, skip it. Nothing new or earth shattering here and it's not the strongest "primer" on the topic out there.

I think it`s an eye-opener for many people like me that are starting in the marketing area. But I think in some parts there were too many concepts that I lost so many of the ideas of the book.
I recommend it but I'm looking for another approach of CEM so I can apply it more proffesionally.

My experience with this book was generally stimulating and inspiring and sparked many insights. Customer Experience Management is so powerful because it is based on a largely intuitive idea.

Since the beginning of commerce, and buyer and seller interactions, there surely has been some element of customer experience management by the seller, and some subconscious understanding by the customer that he/she is not buying a product or service but participating in an experience.

In his previous book, Experiential Marketing, Schmitt demonstrates that firms who have capitalized on this recent movement and expanded and refined their experiential approach have reaped huge benefits and stayed ahead of the pack. Now, in this sequel to that book, Schmitt elaborates on his previous work and provides a framework for how to efficiently and effectively implement the customer experience management approach.

I found this book to be enormously helpful and an important addition to this fascinating and important field.

I was hoping for a useful framework. What I got was more about the author's consulting experiences and an academic approach to the framework vs. something practical.

Essential input on why CRM, customer advocacy, satisfaction, retention, and relationship marketing programs need to migrate to Customer Experience Management as the holistic method of achieving customer-centricity. The one thing I'd like to see more of in this book is B2B examples. Quick read and great overview of what CEM really is, and lots of examples provided. For a quick read on driving progress of customer programs I also recommend this book with step-by-step tips: Metrics You Can Manage For Success and Customer Experience Improvement Momentum.

Bernd Schmitt invented the Experiential Marketing and inspite of being a point of reference in the new marketing world, he shuns academicism and his books are always effective, clever and pleasant to read thank to his humor and easy style. A must read book for anyone who realizes that customer experience management is a strategic fact and doesn't mean customer satisfaction...