Summary: CEM, the pros and cons; it’s key to know the difference between CEM and CRM and the benefits of using together.  This article walks you through CEM in reference to CRM programs and concludes with an outstanding recommendation.

CEM has been called CRM on the move. Whereas CRM is of help once there is a record of a customer interaction, CEM is active at the point of interaction. It is this “outside in” approach, independent of data-generated bias, to customers which enables the use of CEM as a tool for tackling emerging marketing situations. CEM operates free from existing biases in perceptions that result from historical data; these biases are actually the drivers of CRM.

As a customer initiative CEM lays more stress on a customer’s experience rather than the operational and technical approach that CRM processes tend to take. Pronouncing an existing methodology dead and ripe for takeover by a new one has always been kind of fashionable and so is the case with CRM. It already suffers from a poor image given the high failure rates of CRM deployments and promised ROI taking a long time to materialize.

It’s important to not fall into the buzzword trap with respect to CEM and analyze it for its actual worth. The usefulness of CEM will vary with an individual business’ requirements and it’s to get an accurate idea of how CRM and CEM together can benefit your business that you should understand CEM as an umbrella term.

What distinguishes CEM from CRM?

Whereas CRM focuses on providing a service, CEM looks to provide an experience. In trying to achieve this endeavor, CEM broadens the scope of the various propositions that define CRM.

CRM is concerned with the value that can be derived from a customer at the point of sale. CEM aims to develop a one-time customer interaction into a customer cycle and measure the value over the lifecycle.

Collaboration in a CRM effort is mainly departmental and is driven by data gathered and stored in expensive databases. An a CEM environment, the entire organization comprising resellers, wholesalers, and other channel partners collaborate to offer customer an experience that will turn him into a client.

CEM encompasses several more customer touch points and stresses real-time information gathering from these nodes.

What is common to both CRM and CEM is the aspect of management, which many subject experts find an irksome term, in the sense that it comes across as exploitative and implies that the customer cannot really think for himself. Customer loyalty should not ideally be managed or manipulated.

Conclusion

A typical CEM strategy relies on extensive customer and environment research aiming to use the information for designing strategies for offering customer experiences  that can be tuned according to customer requirements and business needs. CEM strategies allow managers to control customer experiences using standard CRM tools.

Although there is a fair amount of buzz surrounding CEM as the replacement of CRM, a little study shows that the skeleton on which CEM efforts are built is the same as that of CRM. CEM and CRM can be used as complements to one another.