CXM: Why it Complements a CRM

If your company has a customer relationship management (CRM) system, do you need a customer experience management (CXM) platform, too? This is one of the top questions we hear from enterprises as they attempt to solve customer experience challenges. The answer is a resounding yes. 

In a rush to adopt technology and services that make their customers happy, enterprises have sprinted to establish a network of third-party providers. Bank and fintech collaborations are just one of the many partnerships emerging.

Ecosystems Enable Innovation, But They Also Create a Mess

By establishing networks of external providers to fulfill parts of the customer journey they can’t, companies can launch competitive, best-in-class functionality faster and for less money than re-tooling or replacing their own technologies. Analysts and industry experts tout this as “the” way traditional businesses, particularly banks, can keep up with changes in customer expectations. But there’s an unintended effect from the ecosystem approach to innovation. 

It has created a mess behind the scenes.

As enterprises, from global banks to healthcare networks to retail corporations, build offerings to entice customers to their brand, they create more and more tangled workflows, circular (and sometimes dead-end) communication loops and silos of valuable first-party data locked in multiple internal platforms and external partners. These technologies don’t always play nicely together, and enterprise teams or partner support groups rarely have the visibility needed to truly care for the customer.

To quote the often-used Facebook relationship status, “It’s complicated”.

CRM Can’t Fix Bad Customer Experiences

As clients ping-pong back and forth between you and ecosystem third parties, you give up control of your customer’s relationship but are often stuck with the customer frustration and brand decay that comes from these poor experiences.

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“... technology is consistently meeting market needs, but achieving real, lasting customer satisfaction is as much about service levels as it is about technology.”
_{- J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Merchant Services Satisfaction Study,SM}

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As business symptoms appear - high churn, low customer retention and satisfaction, abandoned onboarding or activations and distressed employees -  companies look for quick fixes. They often start by trying to muscle the CRM into problem-solving mode. CRMs are excellent reporters - they deliver in-depth and valuable facts on who, what, when, and where. But they were not designed to translate data points into recommendations or to take action.

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A 5% increase in customer retention can result in a 25% increase in profit.

CXM Identifies Solutions and Empowers Action 

CXM, on the other hand, fills this gap. It’s purpose-built to solve customer journey problems using information from the CRM and other data sources to build out a full picture of client pain points and then execute solutions.

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68% of people abandoned the digital onboarding process for a banking product in 2022.
_{- Signicat} 

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CXM gives enterprises visibility into what their customer is doing no matter where they are in the ecosystem. With this 360-degree view of their activity, including hand-offs to partners, every touchpoint, roadblock, stalled conversation and missed delivery becomes instantly trackable. 

CXM platforms pull all of this into a single pane of glass and provide a central hub for team collaboration, multi-touch client communication and journey creation tools that re-engineer how customers move from point A to point B as smoothly as possible.

CXM Is Even More Powerful With CRM 

CXM is a stand-alone technology, and it can even double as a CRM for companies that need it.  In an ideal use case, it pairs with and complements an existing CRM, pulling in that wealth of customer data to carve out precise, data-driven actions that significantly boost business outcomes.  

OvationCXM CXMEngine^Ⓡ leads to happier customers in the moments that matter. It's the first CXM SaaS platform that gives you control of your customers' journeys and interactions in the moment, so you can manage and deliver great experiences in real time. Our platform is trusted by many global companies, from tier 1 banks to massive retailers, and it is generating incredible business outcomes:

26% ⬇ operating costs

10% ⬆ in revenue

25% ⬇ call volumes

75% ⬆ service visibility

To learn how your organization’s customer journeys can be optimized using our CXMEngine, schedule a complimentary journey mapping consultation. We’ll evaluate the strengths and opportunities in your current customer journey and provide recommendations to streamline the experience.