Abstract
The growing attention to the customer experience is the result of the increasing complexity of channels, interactions, choices, and customer journeys. Businesses try to overcome these challenges by increasing their efforts comprehensively. Organizations depict and manage customer experiences through customer journeys (including multiple touchpoints representing direct and indirect customer interactions with the organization). Businesses need to plan and manage the elements that will arouse curiosity and interest and direct them to purchase behavior. This chapter explains almost all concepts related to customer experience management such as customer experience, classification of customer experience, digital customer experience, luxury customer experience, and customer experience control, and offers suggestions to businesses within these concepts.
TopBackground
Creating and managing customer experiences is very important in recent years, especially for service-intensive businesses, and customer experience has received great concern from practitioner and academic (Pullman & Gross, 2004; Palmer, 2008; Lywood et al., 2009; Verhoef et al., 2009; Palmer, 2010). Sherma & Chaubey (2014) state that “customer experience is one of the most important elements in achieving success for businesses in all industries”. Consumer studies show that “consumers gain experience when they search for products, buy products and services, and consume them” (Brakus et al., 2009). Experiences include all products and services during the customer's product research during the pre purchase, purchasing stage, usage, and post purchase stage. Schmitt (1999) explains that customer experiences are “behavioral and relational values that replace sensory, emotional, cognitive, functional values.” Customer experience can lead to competitive advantage and differentiation (Schmitt, 1999). Creating and presenting a unique customer experience is important for building relationships and loyalty with customers, thereby providing economic value to businesses (Mascarenhas et al., 2006; Frow & Payne, 2007; Lywood et al., 2009; Brakus et al., 2009).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Customer Experience Management: It is the process of strategic management by the business of all the experiences of the customers that may occur over time when interacting with the business, product, or service.
Customer: A consumer of a product or service.
Customer Experience Control: It is a concept that focuses on what is right and wrong on customers' experience with the business, taking into account not only rational and functional but also emotional elements.
Digital Customer Experience: It refers to all stages of the purchasing or consumption process and is the holistic experience of a customer in digitally powered interactions with one or more providers.
Experiential marketing: It is a holistic approach that focuses on customer experiences rather than the benefits of services and products to customers.