Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management
Design an end-to-end technology strategy to drive sales revenue, enhance marketing effectiveness, and create compelling experiences for your customers.
Member Challenge
- Technology is a fundamental enabler of an organization’s customer experience management (CXM) strategy. However, many IT departments fail to take a systematic approach when building a portfolio of applications for supporting marketing, sales, and customer service functions.
- The result is a costly, ineffective, and piecemeal approach to CXM application deployment (including high-profile applications like CRM).
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- IT must work in lockstep with their counterparts in marketing, sales, and customer service to define a unified vision and strategic requirements for enabling a strong CXM program.
- To deploy applications that specifically align with the needs of the organization’s customers, IT leaders must work with the business to define and understand customer personas and common interaction scenarios. CXM applications are mission critical and failing to link them to customer needs can have a detrimental effect on customer satisfaction and ultimately, revenue.
- IT must act as a valued partner to the business in creating a portfolio of CXM applications that are cost effective.
- Organizations should create a repeatable framework for CXM application deployment that addresses critical issues, including the integration ecosystem, customer data quality, dashboards and analytics, and end-user adoption.
Impact and Result
- Establish strong application alignment to strategic requirements for CXM that is based on concrete customer personas.
- Improve underlying business metrics across marketing, sales, and service, including customer acquisition, retention, and satisfaction metrics.
- Better align IT with customer experience needs.
Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build a strong technology foundation for CXM, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
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Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management – Executive Brief
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Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management – Sample
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Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management – Phases 1-3
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1. Drive value with CXM
Understand the benefits of a robust CXM strategy.
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Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management – Phase 1: Drive Value with CXM
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CXM Strategy Stakeholder Presentation Template
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CXM Strategy Project Charter Template
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2. Create the framework
Identify drivers and objectives for CXM using a persona-driven approach and deploy the right applications to meet those objectives.
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Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management – Phase 2: Create the Framework
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CXM Business Process Shortlisting Tool
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CXM Portfolio Designer
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3. Finalize the framework
Complete the initiatives roadmap for CXM.
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Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management – Phase 3: Finalize the Framework
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Onsite Workshop: Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Do-It-Yourself Implementation
The slides in this Best Practice Blueprint will walk you step-by-step through every phase of your project with supporting tools and templates ready for you to use.
Project Accelerator Workshop
You can also use this Best Practice Blueprint to facilitate your own project accelerator workshop within your organization using the workshop slides and facilitation instructions provided in the Appendix.
Module 1: Build Value with a Structured Approach to Customer Experience Management
The Purpose
- Establish a consistent vision across IT, marketing, sales, and customer service for CXM technology enablement.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A clear understanding of key business and technology drivers for CXM.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 1.1 Review the Business Case for CXM |
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| 1.2 Identify Opportunities and Challenges for Customer Interaction |
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| 1.3 Identify Business Drivers for Customer Experience Strategy |
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| 1.4 Create the Technology Vision Statement for Customer Experience Strategy |
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| 1.5 Parse Metrics for Marketing, Sales and Customer Service |
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| 1.6 Define Project Metrics for IT Enablement |
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Module 2: Define Customer-Centric Requirements for Customer Experience Management
The Purpose
- Create a set of strategic requirements for CXM based on a thorough external market scan and internal capabilities assessment.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Well-defined technology requirements based on rigorous, multi-faceted analysis.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 2.1 Conduct an Environmental Scan |
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| 2.2 Conduct Competitive Analysis |
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| 2.3 Build Sample Customer Personas |
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| 2.4 Define Key Journeys |
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| 2.5 Build the Customer Engagement Channel Matrix |
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| 2.6 Enumerate and Prioritize Technology Capabilities for Sales, Marketing and Service |
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| 2.7 Build the Target Application Portfolio for Customer Engagement |
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Module 3: Apply Best Practices Across The Customer Interaction Portfolio
The Purpose
- Augment strategic requirements through customer persona and scenario development.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Functional requirements aligned to supporting steps in customer interaction scenarios.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 3.1 Develop the CXM Integration Map and Operating Model |
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| 3.2 Profile Points of Integration by Significance and Value |
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| 3.3 Create the Customer Data Model |
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| 3.4 Review Data Quality Considerations |
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| 3.5 Develop a Customer Data Warehouse Framework (if applicable) |
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| 3.6 Review Security Considerations for Managing Customer Interactions |
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| 3.7 Create a Role-Based Plan for Sustained End-User Adoption of CXM Applications |
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Module 4: Finalize the CXM Framework and Create the Initiative Rollout Plan
The Purpose
- Using the requirements identified in the preceding modules, build a future-state application inventory for CXM.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A cohesive, rationalized portfolio of customer interaction applications that aligns with identified requirements and allows investment (or rationalization) decisions to be made.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 4.1 Create the Stakeholder Power Map |
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| 4.2 Build the CXM Communication Plan |
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| 4.3 Establish Ongoing Governance for Customer Experience Strategy |
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| 4.4 Build a Customer Experience Center of Excellence (if applicable) |
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| 4.5 Build the CXM Roadmap |
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Testimonials
Yaz was able to accomodate the schedule. Very good support from Yaz throughout the sessions.
I think it was good, we probably could have connected via email prior so I could have prepped some discussion points.
Great conversation with Ben on CX - will definitely schedule more time as we evolve our CX programs.
Call was misdirected, but we made the most of the time. Analyst was able to adapt and provide a perspective and redirect to the right analysts.
Ben is very knowledgable and thorough
Very nice facilitation and enjoyable session but I am not sure the required level of depth or insight in the resulting strategy will be sufficient.