guest article by Arne De Keyser, Finalist of the SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award 2016 (granted by Maastricht U)
Technological advancement has changed the marketing landscape almost beyond recognition. Today, customers interact with firms in complex, nonlinear ways through a variety of channels across multiple touchpoints. Also, they expect personalized experiences from their interactions with any firm, at any (touch)point in time. Managers increasingly view Customer Experience Management (CXM) as the most promising avenue to success in this dynamic marketing landscape. A recent survey by Gartner (2014) showed that 89% of companies expect to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience this year, and the industry is projected to be worth $8.39 billion by 2019 (MarketsandMarkets 2014).
Despite the current enthusiasm for CXM, a recent report by Forrester Research (2014) shows that the majority of customer experience initiatives fail, and very few companies have reached a stage of CXM maturity. Despite the best of intentions, the field is still in its infancy. In my ongoing research, with Kay Lemon, Timothy Keiningham and Phil Klaus, we find two major reasons for the widespread failures.
A major shortcoming in the field is the lack of a general understanding of what CXM actually means. Currently there is no shared and exhaustive understanding of the concept. Marketers still rely on simplified interpretations of what customer experience actually entails and how its links to other key concepts such as value and engagement. Despite several exploratory papers, none has succeeded in taking the field to the next level by (1) delineating the true meaning of the concept and (2) conceptualizing the key building blocks of customer experience that need to be understood, integrated and managed. This deficiency is detrimental for both practice and academia. In recognition of this problem, the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) listed ‘Understanding Customers and the Customer Experience’ as its number 1 2014-2016 research priority.
Another limitation is that understanding and managing the customer experience is complex, and as a general rule managers don’t like complexity. As a result, the majority of managers have not moved beyond traditional tools and instead rely heavily on simple product/service quality, NPS and satisfaction metrics to evaluate their practices. Managing customer experience, however, is more sophisticated and requires deep knowledge of the customer and his/her behavior across the entire customer journey.
Exciting Opportunities for Future Research
Given the current state of CXM practice and research, there are many avenues for future research. Three areas appear to offer significant opportunities: service ecosystems, technology and neuroscience.
Opportunity 1: The merits of adopting a networked-view on the CX
The importance of networks of different organizations and/or stakeholders—aka “service ecosystems”, “service systems” and “service delivery systems”—to better meet complex service goals is increasingly emphasized, yet remains under researched. In this area, more attention should be devoted to investigating the capabilities that are needed to build network collaborations and service systems that enhance the customer experience and allow flexible change to respond and adapt to dynamic environments. For example, research could focus on investigating network constellations from a customer perspective and see how the performance level of one network member impacts the perceived performance level of other members. Marketing scholars interested in pursuing these questions could benefit from cross-disciplinary insights and might want to draw on theories from sociology, operations management, design sciences, engineering and public administration literature.
Opportunity 2: Technology as leverage to CX-management
Rapidly evolving technologies (e.g., smart technologies and real-time analytics) offer new promising avenues that allow tracking the customer experience across consecutive touchpoints spanning multiple channels, and create opportunities for more detailed, longitudinal research designs. More research is needed to investigate how these technologies can be used to the benefit of the firm and the customer in optimizing the customer experience. For instance, research could assess the value and applicability of (automated) context-aware technologies that enable service delivery tailored to an individual customer. Other studies could concentrate on the usage of smart services and how these benefit, and potentially harm (e.g., privacy issues), the end-user. This could be a fruitful area in the domain of elderly care, as many of these technologies are being integrated to help seniors stay at home for a longer time. Another topic of interest is the area of mobile, cloud-based and social network systems that allow users to be connected to each other and to firms virtually anywhere at anytime. While this may induce many advantages for the customer, there are questions regarding the safety and obtrusive character of such service applications. As a result, future research could investigate the conditions under which firms can use these technologies to the benefit of the customer, without harming their feelings of privacy and freedom of choice. Again marketing scholars in this area could benefit from cross-disciplinary insights and find valuable information in other scientific domains such as IT and engineering.
Opportunity 3: Improving CX measurement through neuroscience
More recently, consumer neuroscience research is increasingly gaining attention (for example, there was a JMR special issue on the topic). Service researchers could benefit from applying neuroscientific methods such as biometrics (e.g., eye tracking, galvanic skin response, and facial coding) and direct neural measures (e.g., EEG, fMRI) to gain better insights into customer experience, engagement and value judgments. More specifically, neuroscience could facilitate our understanding of the neural correlates that modulate contextual dependencies (e.g., memory and social comparisons) and drive choice behaviors. These methods might also help us comprehend individual differences at multiple biological levels. Despite their high potential value, researchers and practitioners will first have to look for ways to make these techniques more accessible for a larger audience. Only then can neuroscience truly become part of daily customer experience practice and marketing research in general. Hence, in the short-term, research is needed to develop better neuroscientific practices, and to offer guidance in selecting the correct methodology.
As these opportunities make clear, the promise of CXM needs to be guided by the insight of new service research streams. Clearly, the promise of better customer experiences is one of the core tenets of service marketing and management. So now that we have managers’ attention on the importance of CXM, service researchers need to offer guidance as to what CX really is, what impacts customers’ perceptions of it, and what metrics managers must track and act upon to improve it.
Arne De Keyser
Assistant Professor of Marketing
EDHEC Business School (France).
Sources:
Gartner (2014),”Importance of Customer Experience Is on the Rise; Marketing Is on the Hook,” [available at https://www.gartner.com/doc/2853519?ref=ddisp].
Forrester Research (2014), “Customer Experience Maturity Defined,” [available at https://www.forrester.com/report/Customer+Experience+Maturity+Defined/-/E-RES59376].
MarketsandMarkets (2014), “Customer Experience Management Market – Advanced Technologies, Touch Points, Adoption Trends, Market Size & Forecasts (2014-2019),” [available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/customer-experience-management-market-voc-analytics-feedback-management-web-analytics-text-analytics-speech-analytics-advanced-technologies-touch-points-adoption-trends-market-size-foreca-market-report.html].
