What does “CXM” mean?

Our CXM consultants unpack experience-led growth, customer-centric organisations and personalisation at scale 

Change is one of life’s inevitabilities. That’s a good thing, although the current pace of change in customer experience management (CXM) can be dizzying if you try to focus on all the details at once.

Let’s step back and survey the bigger picture for a minute. 

We’ve seen a shift in how brands approach and appreciate CXM, accelerated by evolutions in customer expectations, martech and organisational strategy.

As it happens, TAP CXM recently underwent a similar evolution. We challenged our own mission and communication and found that we, too, had changed. 

So let us (re)introduce how we enable organisations to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

CXM challenges

Getting CXM “right” has benefits for customer engagement, journey management and brand loyalty. But we’re constantly encountering the same challenges. Personalisation, performance measurement, talent management and technology integration – and managing all four at once – continue to hinder the success of CXM initiatives.

Measuring and reporting on marketing effectiveness

In Braze’s 2023 Global Customer Engagement Review, more than 1 in 3 marketers (36%) ranked wrangling, analysing and activating organisational data as their biggest challenge. 

Data contains insight, and insight leads to effective marketing strategies. It’s the lifeblood of successful marketing, especially in a cookieless and hyper-personalised landscape.

Customer experience in the cautious consumer age

Consumers are spending less and expecting more, which makes retention a priority. McKinsey’s research on the power of personalisation found that 78% of consumers would likely make repeat purchases from companies that personalised the experience. 

Users expect consistent experiences and seamless journeys. And they’re ready to reward brands that get it right.

Our work with giffgaff is a great example of the ‘ripple effect’ personalised marketing can have on long-term value. By reimagining the telco’s welcome program, we helped to retain an additional 17,000 members annually, generating significant lifetime value.

Technology integration for integrated teams

Fragmented systems and data silos hinder competitiveness. Streamlining CXM means architecting a seamless system that enables agile and responsive work practices. 

But tech can only take you so far. Integration also means implementing an organisational structure that spurs collaboration. 

Braze’s report notes that collaboration remains low in all industries, and customer experience is not a cross-functional pursuit. 

Recruiting, training and retaining CX talent

Building a competent and customer-centric workforce is vital for sustained CXM success. 

Amid the “Great Resignation” and “quiet quitting”, fostering a positive and collaborative culture has never been more important. Top-performing brands understand that training, well-being and organisational support are critical for long-term CXM success.

TAP Academy provides tailored CXM training for ambitious teams.

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Three solutions, six pillars, millions of great moments

Core to the CXM challenge(s) is the relationship between data management, organisational strategy and technology adoption. A comprehensive CXM strategy balances all 3 to create a system of continuous improvement.

How? By putting the customer at the centre of the universe.

Your customers should have the gravitational pull of the sun. Data, brand strategy and martech are like planets in orbit around the customer. CXM tactics – marketing automation, sales and marketing alignment and customer analytics – are moons floating around those planets.

As soon as the customer falls out of the picture, the CXM strategy becomes a black hole and life on those ‘planets’ blinks out of existence.

Now let’s get our feet back on the ground and talk about practical CXM solutions.

TAP’s 6-pillar solution to the CXM challenge

Managing the experience

As expected, our approach to crafting a CXM strategy starts with the customer. Our first two focus areas are experience delivery and marketing automation.

Although we might not action these strategies first, analysing the customer experience – and how it’s delivered – helps us establish goals. This dynamic approach is the basis of our successful 7-year partnership with Petplan, part of Allianz Insurance. 

	EXPERIENCE DELIVERY How we deliver a consistent and personalised experience for more people across more channels.
	MARKETING AUTOMATION Using technology to manage campaigns, implement real-time offer decisioning and send personalised communications.

Organisational strategy

Customer centricity is an organisation-wide mindset, not a one-off project. In our experience, Marketing most often owns early customer engagement before handing off to Sales to close the deal. 

Ideally, CXM would be everyone’s domain. More people working together to improve customer engagement leads to better insights, smoother collaboration and better outcomes.

	RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Making the best use of an organisation’s resources to collaborate better and optimise end-to-end campaign processes.
	PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT How do we know whether what we’ve done is successful? How should it be measured? How can we improve?

Understanding your customers

With personalised marketing as our goal, cross-functional collaboration clearing the road of barriers, and martech powering experience delivery, we can assess what we know about the customer. 

There’s often a data management project here. When organisations grow fast, it’s natural that things can get a little messy in the back end. That was the case with Cancer Research UK before partnering with TAP CXM; we helped the charity de-silo information so donors and subscribers experience a cohesive journey.

Where it comes together: Experience-led growth 

Everyone from Adobe to Accenture to McKinsey is talking about experience-led growth as a new way to create and scale value. As the name suggests, experience-led growth prioritises the customer experience above all else.

McKinsey points to 2 key figures that highlight the business case for experience-led growth:

• Losing 1 loyal customer requires acquiring up to 3 new ones
• The world’s most successful companies generate 80% of revenue from core (existing) customers

Experience-led growth considers how redesigning and optimising the customer journey can transform an organisation, rather than letting financial targets determine how customers interact with the brand. 

Retention is the focus. Organisational strategy, customer experience and customer understanding then orientate towards retention, driving growth towards a business’s long-term goals.

See how Energia Group put customers first in a competitive market to revolutionise retention.

On the surface, experience-led growth is just a new way to explain customer centricity. 

But the potential goes deeper.

Embracing experience-led growth is, we believe, the winning strategy for value creation in a new era of marketing. As customers reject impersonal experiences, C-Suites demand more from marketers, and technology makes CXM simultaneously more accessible and more powerful, the customer’s place at the centre of the universe only becomes more massive.

TAP CXM: Helping you change for the better

TAP CXM transforms customer experiences using insight-driven strategy, world-class technology and tailored consulting services. Our highly experienced team lends expertise to our partners in a number of specialised fields, including:

• Omnichannel marketing
• CRM
• Data analytics
• Marketing automation
• AI
• Organisational strategy
• Customer insight 

On the martech front, we collaborate with leading CX vendors including Adobe, Tableau, Braze, Salesforce and Apteco, to deliver unbiased expertise and fit-for-purpose solutions. 

We’re passionate about helping companies deliver exceptional customer experiences through tailored CX transformations. Get in touch if you’re ready to take your CXM to the next level.