Implementation of customer experience management in a non-experience-centric service company

Abstrakt

An increasing number of companies started incorporating the term “Customer Experience” with their service offerings. Entertainment companies such as Walt Disney World are the pioneers in systematically managing customer experience to promote differentiation and increase customer loyalty. Interestingly, inspired by the success of businesses like entertainment companies, a growing number of traditional companies started focusing on Customer Experience, as a means to provide added values to their customers. In this situation, the acceptance of Customer Experience Management (CEM) as a new strategic approach is increasing among the service companies. Research suggests, however, that standardized approaches to managing customer experiences are still far from maturity. Motivated by the prevailing demand of structured approaches, this study sets out to develop a CEM framework to managing customer experiences across businesses. Drawing on the relevant extant literature, this thesis presents an Integrated CEM Framework to deliver total customer experience. This framework presents four important experience strategies namely – orgware, stageware, customerware and linkware, primarily drawn from the common practices implemented by the companies for those experiences are central to their service offerings. The conceptual CEM framework is investigated empirically by means of a single case study analysis, on a Danish construction company called, Enemærke & Petersen a/s. The main conclusion drawn from this study is that, in general CEM can be applicable to a range of companies. What is observable is that the four experience strategies vary in their degree of applicability. In other words, depending on the service context, companies need to adapt the experience strategies accordingly, to secure the differentiation in the marketplace. Increasing customer value and bottom line through CEM demands that the companies should focus on: the engagement of top management and employees, management of key touchpoints and continuous improvements based on customer insights.