Customer Experience Management

Customer Experience Management refers to the procedure how a company manage its interaction with buyers. In this reflective essay, I want to share one positive and one negative customer experiences and find out the “touch points” in both the experiences.

Running head: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Customer experience Management refers to the procedure how a company manage its
interaction with buyers. According to Gartner, Customer experience Management is actually
the methods of designing, reverting, reacting to customer interactions in order to fulfil or go
beyond the expectation of the customer and enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty
(Arkadan, Macdonald & Wilson, 2017). In this reflective essay, I want to share one positive
and one negative customer experiences and find out the “touch points” in both the
experiences. Further, I want to reflect on my thoughts and actions regarding both the
experiences. In the final section of this study, I attempt to compare and contrast both the
experiences with reference to the concepts of Customer Experience management.
Generally, I do not prefer to shop online as I find visiting malls and shopping with
friends more enjoyable. Moreover, buying garments offline gives us the opportunity to try
and reject hundreds of clothes accessories before buying the one that suits me best, but due to
the lack of time, I have to shop online sometimes.
I have gained one negative experience from purchasing shoes online. I wanted to buy
stylish shoes to attend a party, but I was not able to go to shopping because of my hectic
schedule. I ordered a pair of stilettoes from the official website of a famous e-commerce
company. The stipulated time for delivery was within 3 days of the placement of the order.
Unfortunately, I received my favourite stilettoes 4 days after the stipulated time. There was a
substantial difference in the colour as compared to the picture shown on the website. The
quality of the shoes seemed excellent from the picture, but the reality was different. The
stilettoes I received was broken and the packaging was very poor.
The several touch points in this case are, the delivery of the damaged product, the
delay in the delivery, the poor packaging of the product and the ignorance on the part of the
e-commerce company, to the problems faced by the customers.

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PROTO-PERSONA DIAGRAM (NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE)
I have one remarkably positive customer experience, which I gathered while
travelling to India in Singapore airlines. Prior to that experience, I often heard that Singapore
airlines provide quality flying at a reasonable price. One of my friend suggested me to avail
the luxurious suite facility by the Singapore airlines. I found the cost of booking a luxurious
suite pocket friendly and followed my friend’s suggestion. I travelled Hong Kong to India,
but, did not even feel the stress of the journey as the luxurious suite of Singapore Airlines
provide me the comfort of my home. In that luxurious suite, I found space for a large
armchair the cover of which is handcrafted with then master of the Italian craftsman, Poltrona
Frau. I was amazed by the hospitality of the cabin crew. Moreover, each of the seats has an
in-built touchscreen monitor and USB cable and I was given thousands of options for
entertainment, which included- movies, tv shows, music, games. The flight made me reach
my destination, India on time too. The splendour of the arrangement captivated my mind.
Name: Maria Francis
Age: 22
Profession: Student
Behaviour and Action:
Loves Stilettoes, buy things
online rarely.
1. Overall goal-Depend on
online shopping for Buying
party wears
2. Experience/Feelings:
unsatisfactory and irritating
1. Influences: The website and
image of the procduct
2. Pain points: Delay in the
delivery, defective packaging,
damaged product, ignorance of
the company to such serious
issues.

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The touch point in this positive experience was the reasonable price of the air tickets,
the comfortable journey and on-time landing, the hospitality services.
PROTO-PERSONA DIAGRAM (POSITIVE EXPERIENCE)
My actions in the negative experience included the demand for refund. I also asked
the customer relation officer of the e-commerce company to exchange the damaged product
for a fresh one. I thought that they would admit their fault, if I would provide them sufficient
evidences. My friends know that I do not find online shopping trustworthy. This is the reason
why, just after the delivery of the stilettoes she told me to start a video recording while
opening the pack of the product. I video recorded each step like tearing the tapes, opening the
two layered cover. I was shocked when I looked at the product for the first time and focused
my video camera immediately to the damaged product. I attached the copy of the video with
Name: Maria Francis
Age: 22
Profession: Student
Behaviour and Action:
Prefers travelling,
prefer to book the
luxurious suite in order to
avoid the stress of the
journey.
1. Overall goal-Travel to India
via Singapore Airlines
2. Experience/Feelings:
Satisfactory and amazing
1. Influences: Punctuality,
luxurious journey and
hospitality
2. Pain points:
Not applicable

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the complaint mail. The video showed the time, which would assist the customer relation
officer to understand that the video is recorded just after the delivery. In spite of all these,
they neither gave me any refund, nor did they provide me a fresh product in return of the
damaged product. I rated the product with one star. One of the worst thing is that they did not
even pay a hid to my issue even after receiving such a poor feedback from me. I really
regretted wasting my money by ordering the shoes online. Now I do online shopping only
after investigating about the e-commerce company, collecting feedbacks from all of my
friends and from the customer reviews of the respective website.
My positive thoughts and actions are shaped by the grand experience of travelling to
India in Singapore airlines. I thanked my friend many times, who suggested me to travel in
the luxurious suites of the Singapore airlines and spread and recommended other friends of
mine, to have the mesmerizing experience once. After my first experience to travel to India
via Singapore airlines, I always prefer the same airlines whenever I need to visit India for my
research work on developing countries.
According to the Customer Experience Management theories, customer experience
implies engaging the customers with the services provided by the company with the help of
effective communication. CEM must follow the process of cross-channel interaction, so that
the message of the brand, product or and services can be forwarded to the customers and
quality customer services can be ensured (Gacanin & Wagner, 2019). In this contest, several
theories of CEM can be mentioned. These include, theories on customer retention, theories on
customer loyalty and advocacy (Grønholdt, et al., 2015). These theories in turn depends on
the concepts of:
 Reach- attempting to grab the attention of the customers, the company want to reach.
 Acquisition- attracting and dragging the reached customers into the impact sphere of
the organization.

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 Conversion- when the customer who has a more familiar relationship with an
organisation, decide to purchase something from that organisation.
 Retention: the act of retaining the customers by catering to their needs; adopting the
approaches of cross-selling, up-selling; and maintaining a healthy relationship with
them
 Loyalty: The transformation of the customer into ‘loyal partner’, or a ‘brand
advocate’, or influencers (Homburg, Jozić & Kuehnl, 2017).
Pain points of CEM for an organisation is satisfying the customers more than other existing
competitors in the market, retaining the customers and capture the market (Kandasamy,
Beattie & Stewart, 2015).
Needs and goals of CEM for a company, derived from the above concepts are-provide
the customers delightful experiences, building up a positive image about the brand in the
minds of the customer, gaining competitive advantage over other brands who are less
customer-focused, attracting the maximum number of customers and increase sales (Lemon
& Verhoef, 2016).
After comparing and contrasting the positive and negative customer experiences
mentioned in this essay, I can conclude that in the negative experience the theories and
concepts of CEM are violated. The e-commerce compan, was able to Reach and grab my
attention, but it did not meet my expectation. This casted upon a negative impact on me. The
organisation did not admit their faults and did not rectify their mistake by providing me a
better service. Hence, the concept of ‘Acquisition’ and ‘Conversion’ are also not followed
(Yoon & Lee, 2017). In short, the e-commerce company failed to serve my needs and could
not maintain a healthy relationship with me. Thus, the concept of customer retention is also
not followed and customer loyalty was not achieved. On the other hand, in the positive
experience, Singapore airlines reached me and grabbed my attention by setting a reasonable

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price for their tickets. It identified my needs, which were reaching the destination safely on
time, stress free and comfortable journey, entertainment during the journey. Singapore
airlines made several efforts and met all my needs. This casted a upon a positive impact on
me. I wanted to have the experience again. Hence the concepts of reach, acquisition and
conversion is followed. Again, though their sincere services and amazing hospitality
Singapore airlines was able to keep a healthy relationship with me created a positive image of
the brand and paved the way for increasing sales in future. All these signify that customer
retention and loyalty are archived (McColl-Kennedy, et al., 2015). I have recommended
many of my friends to travel via Singapore Airlines. Hence, customer advocacy is also
gained, in case of the positive experience.
In the conclusion, it can be said that every company should think beyond the narrow
interest of the profit maximization because in the long run the success of the company
depends on the creation of the customer experience.

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Reference
Arkadan, F., Macdonald, E. K., & Wilson, H. N. (2017). Customer Experience Management
Practices: A Systematic Literature Review. In Creating Marketing Magic and
Innovative Future Marketing Trends (pp. 1361-1361). Springer, Cham.
Gacanin, H., & Wagner, M. (2019). Artificial Intelligence Paradigm for Customer Experience
Management in Next-Generation Networks: Challenges and Perspectives. IEEE
Network.
Grønholdt, L., Martensen, A., Jørgensen, S., & Jensen, P. (2015). Customer experience
management and business performance. International journal of quality and service
sciences, 7(1), 90-106.
Homburg, C., Jozić, D., & Kuehnl, C. (2017). Customer experience management: toward
implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 45(3), 377-401.
Kandasamy, V., Beattie, J. G., & Stewart, D. (2015). U.S. Patent Application No. 14/076,623.
Lemon, K. N., & Verhoef, P. C. (2016). Understanding customer experience throughout the
customer journey. Journal of marketing, 80(6), 69-96.
McColl-Kennedy, J. R., Gustafsson, A., Jaakkola, E., Klaus, P., Radnor, Z. J., Perks, H., &
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Marketing, 29(6/7), 430-435.
Yoon, S. J., & Lee, H. J. (2017). Does customer experience management pay off? Evidence
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