"We provide the customer with the best Experience" is a phrase that today seems to be an obligation to recite in all companies. However, very few can be exhibited as differentials in this aspect and they believe that dealing with the "Shopping Experience" is continuing to deal with those aspects that have remained unchanged since time immemorial and that are still being declared in non-innovative days of " Customer Service Quality "
Wrong approaches in the conception of " Shopping Experience ".
Many companies that today talk about the importance of the customer, trust in one of these three paradigms that do not really involve developing a true Shopping Experience.
The first of these is "customer orientation". In the 1990s, many companies recognized the critical importance of being "customer-oriented," rather than product, technology, or sales-oriented.
This is the concept of Philip Kotler, who affirmed the idea of determining the needs and wants of customers. When company managers analyze in detail what are the components of the traditional marketing concept, they realize that it does not allow them to provide the customer with a “Shopping Experience”. Most traditional marketing tools focus on the functional aspects of the product. The client is seen as a rational decision maker who makes his purchases based on functions and benefits that his mind has on the product / service offered, when in reality, emotions and intuitions also intervene. Many times we act pushed by visceral impulses that lead us to sacrifice a little of our future for immediate pleasure. Marketing orientation does not serve as a tool to build a strategy or plan a differential Shopping Experience.
Second, many mistakenly associate the concept of "Shopping Experience" as an equivalent of "customer satisfaction." The goal of this approach is to ensure that customers are satisfied after purchasing their product or after interacting with the company. When we measure customer satisfaction, what we are actually measuring is the difference between what they expect and what they perceive they get. But measures of customer satisfaction focus on knowing and managing customer expectations of what the company is already doing, rather than finding out what they really want. It must go beyond merely measuring perceptions, the products / services offered must be massively personalized in a massive way.. The nature of what the client sacrifices must be understood, that is, the gap between what he wants exactly and what he is satisfied with. When we understand what the client's sacrifice consists of, we discern the difference between what he accepts and what he really needs, even if he himself does not know it or does not know how to express it.
What is absent in this approach is the fact of considering all the Experiential dimensions that surround the consumption of a product or service and that really interest customers.
The third and last approach so commonly used to associate Customer Experience is CRM, which despite its name, focuses on transactions and not on building relationships with the customer. The information collected in the databases is usually linked to the customer's purchases and operations: what he bought, where, when, etc.
The main problem with CRM is that it focuses on information that is important to the company and that occasionally helps it define consumer behavior; There is also no achievement of company-customer feedback, it tracks customer actions after the fact, it does not allow managing emotional relationships and bonds with customers, in fact, it only focuses on the analysis of business transactions.
The need for a new approach
Marketing orientation, consumer satisfaction and CRM promise, at least theoretically, to achieve a better understanding of people. However, each approach is very limited in achieving that goal.
What companies and their managers really need is an approach that takes its customers seriously. It should provide a look at the completeness of the Customer Experience. Not only detailing the functional aspects of the product and commercial transactions, but also in everything that generates value before, during and after the purchase decision, the purchase itself and its use. In this way, products and services could be created that delight customers and provide them with a true Experience. This new approach is Customer Experience Management.
This paradigm is the new model for business management and its main objective is to increase the value provided to the customer through the management of the Shopping Experience. It is an approach that represents a radical break with the traditional approach to Marketing and Management.
Purchase Experience Management goes one step further than CRM, going from the simple recording of transactions to the creation of deep relationships with customers.
