This document discusses enterprise customer experience. It defines customer experience as the sensations, emotions and perceptions customers have before, during and after using a product or service. It states that enterprise customer experience represents listening to, guiding and engaging customers in the digital world to create personalized experiences. The document discusses how data from digital interactions can provide insights to enhance the customer experience if analyzed and used to inform actions. It also discusses the importance of respecting customers' time, providing accessible information, and ensuring a positive user experience. Finally, it states that social CRM can help integrate insights to improve customer experiences across touchpoints.

1. Enterprise Customer
Experience
Mitch Lieberman
January 2013

2. Enterprise Costumer Experience Mitch Lieberman 2/17
Executive Summary
Customer Experience is the superset of sensations, emotions and perceptions felt by your
customers before, during and after product or service use. Experiences are created through
interactions with things, people and the surroundings. Sharing of experiences happens
across both physical and digital worlds, from a smile or a laugh, to a smiley face emoticon. The
boundaries between physical and digital are blurring, even merging. Instant feedback, instant
photos, instant communications, shared easily, quickly and without hesitation, or forethought.
People like to share their experiences with their family, friends, co-workers and in general with
the world around them. It is not only possible to capture, understand and learn from all of these
digital interactions, but, the future of business just might depend on it and doing so requires
planning and execution.
Enterprise Customer Experience represents the people, processes and technology required to
listen, guide and engage your customers in the digital world; all towards creating personalized
therefore enhanced experiences. Just like the real world, in the digital space, experience
cannot be given, but can be designed, enabled and carefully considered. The simple idea is to
learn from what is shared, turn it into information, provide insights to people that need it and
then actions to be executed, all to further enhance the customer experience. There are a lot of
moving parts, including technology as one, along with people and process. The imperative is to
start with listening and progress to insights, actions and knowledge.
Each digital interaction creates data, which leads to
information that when properly leveraged creates insights.
When something is good, can you repeat it, when something is
bad, how quickly can it be changed, altered? Each customer
interaction is an opportunity to learn and grow. From first Ad
impression and Website visit, to product purchase, product
use, service interaction, receiving a bill or talking to support, CUSTOMER
each element has a unique input to, and impact on, customer
EX
experience. The technology, how it is used by people and the PERIENCES
process required; that is what we are seeking to describe in
this short paper.

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Data, Time and Respect
Data flows rapidly and takes many forms; its value is
unparalleled within your organization.
Raw data is both a blessing and a curse. The volume and velocity make data management a
required and important discipline. The real value is the information gleaned from data, but
there is a lot of noise as well. Information is properly filtered, analyzed and interpreted
data. Then, to make further progress, information needs to be accurate, timely, contextual
and useful. In the networked world, information disperses like fallen leaves on a windy day.
It was once it was about broadcast, then it progressed to push and pull and now it is about
notifications, aggregation and conversations. What is said is important, but how it is said; tone,
channel and timing is important, as it adds the context. Information flow is complex, almost
chaotic. One person’s information might just be another person’s data or vice versa.
Time is a precious commodity, it needs to be considered and valued. Showing respect for time
is equivalent to showing respect for a person. In the abstract, time is without limits, in reality,
time is finite. A day has twenty-four hours, a week seven days. Attention is the time you have to
make your point, often measured in seconds, on the screen, through a text or in a conversation.
Attention needs to be fought for and it is easily lost. Time spent is an investment, a decision
to part with something that cannot be returned or recaptured. You are considering, right now,
whether to keep reading, I need to be aware of this and respect it.
Do you show respect for people’s time?
Access to information is the lowest common denominator. It is about simplicity in presentation;
consistency across interaction points and it needs to be easy to understand. A positive and
fulfilling user experience, during information access, is the objective and your differentiator.
As you consider how your information is delivered and interpreted, you may not anticipate an

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emotional response, but there is one there. The digital age has raised expectations. People
want and expect answers, quickly, in context and through the channel of their choosing. The
emotions felt during information access and delivery are as critical as the information itself.
Information is remembered, emotions make an impact.
66% of customers say that valuing their time is
the most important thing that a company can do to
provide good services.
Consider the emotional elements, such as the experience or frustration felt by a consumer
digging around your website as they try to find a phone number that you have carefully hidden
to reduce call volume. This is only one example of wasted time, I am sure you can think of
many more. The solution is complex and everyone has an opinion, from the web designer and
business analyst to the CEO. We need to admit that sometimes the executive team can be
overly influenced by recent press and self-proclaimed experts. A little bit of caution is advised.
CUSTOMER COMPANY
TOUCH POINTS
Improving
Experience
Talks about you
Social Media, Media, Corporate Data
LISTENING

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That which executives think “should” be adequate technological capabilities really need to be
collaborative discussions. Organizations need to listen, measure and analyze data in order to
meet expectations, driving a perceived customer experience.
Are you listening or just waiting to talk?
Both customer service and marketing, fall under the Customer Experience umbrella, but too
often take differing approaches to experience. One group is charged with keeping customers
coming back, while the other is charged with creating new customers. Customer perceptions
and experiences felt during all interactions are critically important components of brand image,
both for new and existing customers. How many times do you personally enjoy punching in your
account code and then repeating it to an agent? There is broad agreement that organizations
do look to customer service as a way to drive loyalty, something marketing cares deeply about.
Within customer service it is necessary to expand the focus from inefficiencies in process,
infrastructure and operations to delivering an excellent service experience across all channels.
This is hard work and is more than just technology.
Customer experience is not a process, thus is very hard to manage. An experience is visceral
response, it cannot be given and it is personal. I can prepare the meal, I cannot tell you how
it tastes. However, platforms and applications can and should be used to provide a point
of reference for an individual; I might know your tastes and can alter the meal preparation
accordingly. Using information and insights will help you to lead and guide customers on a
journey. Experiences are human, a response to stimulus, or in some cases lack of stimuli
(think waiting in a line). Experiences are individual, but influenced by groups and community.
An experience might determine future behavior. If the roller coaster made me sick, I am not
going on it again. If a buying experience is bad, a customer service experience frustrating
or a marketing message insulting, the customer will leave and not come back. As marketers,
technologists and leaders, we do our best to design what we hope will be positive experiences.
Key point: technology, platforms and applications can help. However, tools should not be
expected to manage people, nor experiences, tools are guides and enablers.

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“Customer Experience is a team sport”
Kerry Bodine, Forrester
In addition to the tools and technology, marketing, sales, support and even operations will
need to better collaborate and make sure that customer expectations can and will be met.
Expectations are a funny thing; they change. People expect emails to be answered, consumers
expect a high-speed network from our hotel and no one expects food on our next flight (though
we do hope). Can you manage the changing expectations of your customers? How hard is it to
roll out something new?
Your team loves the new stuff, but hates to change
Many organizations will consider design thinking and rapid iterations of ideation and
prototyping. Do you have a platform that can meet this need? Do you have a technology
framework, along with a trained team and a process defined to meet your needs, present and
future? Do you know what your customers are saying? The challenge is to make sure efforts
are coordinated, technology is accessible and data is available across the organization.
Companies need to focus and work very hard to deliver a unified customer experience.
However, unification across today’s multichannel systems, across what are at best loosely
coupled systems and siloed organizational structures is a massive challenge. At best, websites
and contact center conversations fail to reflect key brand attributes. At worst, companies
force customers to wade through disjointed information and repetitive tasks as they move
from channel to channel and interaction to interaction. The root cause is a set of disparate
systems and functional silos that don’t play well together; this will not work in 2013! To unify
experiences across all channels, you need an approach, a strategy, goals and objectives; all
required to enhance their customer’s experience, at each touch-point, with their organization.
Organizations need to think more holistically about social; media, networks and business. Most
companies’ social initiatives have so far focused on marketing and, to a lesser extent, customer
service. Unfortunately, social behaviors that are limited to being fans of brands on Facebook
and asking for help on Twitter are shortsighted tactics with questionable success metrics.

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As competition for time and attention intensifies, companies must fight to gain the advantage.
Only by guiding the consumer through a personalized, intuitive and cohesive experience can a
business hope to provide the information and incentives to produce the conversions necessary
to assure success. Instead, firms most often are saddled with a legacy of loosely coupled
systems and siloed organizational structures that make this challenge nearly impossible to
accomplish. At best, websites and call center conversations fail to reflect key brand attributes.
At worst, companies force customers to wade through disjointed information and repetitive
tasks as they move from channel to channel and interaction to interaction.
The need for an improved experience has become clear in the current digital landscape. It is
no longer just about presenting static content, it is about dynamic personalized experience.
Web Experience Management (WEM), is a discipline specifically focusing on this new approach
to content. The consumer must be guided step by step through the digital experience, across
all platforms and through the community or social media experience. When combined with
information, such as preferences, and context, the content is not only dynamic, it is relevant.

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Social CRM is the Starting Point for Enterprise
Customer Experience
Are we talking about Customer Experience, Customer Service Experience or Social CRM?
Do the differences really matter to anyone other than academics and analysts? Customer
Experience is quite big and cannot be managed (as discussed) any more than relationships can
be managed. Customer Service Experience is also a subset of Customer Experience; Social
CRM exists in the same way, it is part of the solution, integrated within a good Enterprise
Customer Experience framework. Social CRM is the end-game of Social Media and the starting
point for Enterprise Customer Experience.
“Quality in a service or product is not what you put
into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it”
Peter Drucker
Putting Mr. Drucker’s comments into proper context for this discussion; a Customer
Experience is not what you design it to be, it is what a customer perceives it to be. I would also
add that managing experiences or perceptions is very difficult (Hollywood and Walt Disney can
manage perceptions, most businesses cannot).
The maturation of social media initiatives and programs to Social CRM can and will help by
providing “integrated insights to improve customer experiences”, (IBM IBV). The far-
reaching impact of attempting to manage customer experiences include all of the customer
communication touch points, individual engagement, as well as many many other touch points.

9. Enterprise Costumer Experience Mitch Lieberman 9/17
“Customers interact with a company’s employees
and partners either directly or via some
intermediating technology” Kerry Bodine, Forrester
CRM (Social or not) does not include a display ad, the flavor of the coffee, the water
temperature in the shower nor the firmness of the mattress. However, these elements are all
critical to the customer experience, but removed from the CRM system. Where CRM becomes
important is when it is time to store information that can impact the next interaction, or
understand a current issue in context. If a company is interacting directly with a person, and
the channel of communication is public; aka social media, then the term Social CRM makes
sense. The benefit of social communication, when used correctly, is about proper engagement,
thus needs to be part of the broader communication goals and objectives. A mature Customer
Experience vision is bigger than CRM and Social CRM but does need to include both if the
strategy is to be considered complete.
The constant debate of trying to separate out people and process from technology is tough,
but important. Service excellence is achieved by an almost harmonious dance between the
people, processes and technological components. This can be stated for both Social CRM
and Customer Experience, but each is distinct and has a place.
Cause and Effect
Applications that house customer information should be used to support customer
experiences, such as delivering the right information, at the right time, in context. However,
customer experience cannot drive an internal application, but it should drive requirements,
such as data that could be used to positively impact the experience. Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) applications are often mistaken for Customer Experience applications, but
they are not the same, and caution is advised not to confuse the two.
Lessons learned and listening to voice of the customer can impact what data is stored and
how to act, of course. CRM is an enabling strategy and technology, used by people inside the
organization. Where CRM gets a bad reputation is when people believe that CRM and SFA
(Sales Force Automation) are the same thing.

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They are not the same thing, SFA is an inward focused, manage the pipeline, manage sales
process, manage money and very often does not do much to provide external value. Customer
Experience is an SFA afterthought, it just is!
When your CRM system becomes ‘digitally aware’ or ‘gets Social’ that is the time when the
enterprise is prepared to embrace a modern customer experience. A focused Social CRM
program will embrace those customers who now want to have a say in the boundaries of the
customer / company conversation. Social CRM takes into consideration how, when and where
a company engages in a conversation and the impact to the customer. The word Social is
overused and more often than not the reference is actually to digital communications, shared
publicly.
There is a difference between hearing and listening. It is possible that it is one of those
topics that you do not think too much about, but now that I am bringing it up, it makes sense.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of hearing is “the faculty of perceiving
sounds” whereas listening is to “take notice of and act on what someone says.” So, hearing is
the physical part, but listening is a cognitive or conscious response to what has been heard.

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Customer gets a better, more
personalized experience
CUSTOMER
TOUCH POINTS
Improved
Experience
Social Media
Talks with you Media
Corporate Data
BI Reporting Collaboration
SOCIAL FILTERED
DATA
Knowledge
Metrics
Management
LISTENING AND
COLLABORATING CRM/BPM
Predictive Document
REAL TIME Analytics Management
ANALYTICS
CMS
Marketing
Automation

12. Enterprise Costumer Experience Mitch Lieberman 12/17
How do these pieces fit together?
Listening is important, but if actions do not result, then it is not really listening at all. If you do
not plan to take any actions based on what you hear, are you really listening? There are many
ways to prove that you are listening. One way is transparency, allowing people to see inside
the organization where they can witness what you are doing. A second, more interesting way
to prove that you are listening is to be open. Open suggests that a consumer cannot only see
through the window, but can walk through the front door and participate in the process. It is
important to make sure that you are doing more than just hearing, in order to do that, you might
need to be more than just be transparent. Monitoring and hearing are pointless if you do not
plan on doing anything about what you find.
The crucial part is that the process must be more than listening or proving that you are
listening. Actions are great, but in order to improve customer experience, you, your team
and the whole organization needs to convert the listening to information that can be used
to collaborate, co-create and engage at a personal level with your customers. This will take
analyzing the data, providing relevant, consistent content, where and when your customers
want it, need it and are expecting it.

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Conclusion
It is time to move beyond what needs to be done
and why it needs to be done.
Some parts of your organization are more advanced than others, some are ready and some
are not. The starting point should be clear. What is less clear is exactly HOW to progress in a
uniform fashion from understanding what needs to be done, to actually doing it. It is time to
progress from departmental Social Media initiatives to organizational digital communication
programs. These programs should have defined and coordinated objectives. As the team and
understanding of the technology mature, Social CRM is next logical step, with both business
and technical integration and a digitally aware customer data model. Internally, CRM will have
certain objectives, but it is time to add customer centricity, directed individual engagement
and customer collaboration to those objectives.
Use Social CRM to set the course for creating better Customer Experiences, through:
Evolve your Organization and execute CRM, across the Enterprise:

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Complete the Enterprise Customer Experience vision, including:
Now you are ready for Enterprise Customer Experience as a defined discipline within your
organization!

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About
Mitch Lieberman
Managing Partner at DRI
Mitch is recognized by his peers as one of the world’s
thought leaders in Social CRM. He is always on the
forefront of ideas, strategies, and technologies.
Mitch’s passion is solving business problems by creating the optimal alignment of
people, processes, and technology. Leveraging his 20 years of experience in product
management, systems architecture (including both transactional and analytical business
applications), implementation services, and strategy development, Mitch guides clients in
many areas.
He has continuously shown his leadership in developing and delivering strategies for creative
solutions that integrate cloud computing, open source software, customer relationship
management (CRM) platforms, and an innovative combination of social media with traditional
CRM offerings. He has now set his sights on aligning these technologies to put the focus back
where it belongs, customers and their experience.

16. DRI is a global consultancy company.
With offices in five countries and successfully
delivered projects worldwide, DRI helps
organizations to foster engagement and enhance
customer experience through digital channels.
DRI has 4 main areas of application focus: Web,
Platforms, Mobile and Emerging Media; all
connected to our CRM, Social CRM and Business
Intelligence solutions.
DRI builds innovative solutions using agile methods
that lead to a perfect match between technology
and functional/business needs.