What Is Unified Customer Experience Management (CXM)?

Your customers interact with your brand across many channels — from phone calls and emails to live chat, social media, and SMS. Are you keeping up?

Customers expect seamless, personalized, and omnichannel experiences across every touchpoint. In fact, 87% of customers demand consistency, yet half of companies prioritize delivering it. This disconnect stems from the increasing number of channels, which makes providing timely and consistent support challenging.

Enter unified customer experience management (unified CXM or UCXM): an all-in-one approach to customer interactions that breaks down silos and delivers exceptional experiences.

What Is Unified CXM?

Unified CXM stands for unified customer experience management, a strategic customer experience approach that consolidates customer interactions across channels — from marketing and sales to support — into a single, cohesive system. It eliminates fragmented experiences by providing a complete 360-degree view of each customer, regardless of their preferred communication method (phone, email, social media).

Unified CXM integrates data and workflows, enabling companies to deliver timely, impactful, and personalized interactions to increase customer satisfaction, build loyalty, and meet and exceed customer expectations wherever they are.

Why Do You Need Unified CXM?

The need for unified CXM comes from the inherent inefficiencies of traditional, siloed customer experience models. These fragmented systems bring with them several critical challenges:

• Incomplete customer visibility: Isolated data prevents a comprehensive understanding of customer behavior and personalized service and leads to inconsistent customer interactions.
• Brand discordance: Disparate messaging across channels creates a confusing and unprofessional brand experience when customers interact with different touchpoints, eroding customer trust.
• Obstructed customer journey mapping: The inability to orchestrate the entire customer journey makes it hard to pinpoint friction points and optimize for seamless experiences.
• Elevated customer dissatisfaction: Requiring customers to reiterate information and endure inconsistent interactions breeds frustration and creates dissatisfied customers, which reduces loyalty and customer retention.

Understanding customer preferences helps improve various aspects of business operations, from marketing strategies and interactions to the overall customer experience. Optimizing every customer interaction across all channels strengthens relationships and is also important for meeting increased customer expectations and improving loyalty and operational efficiency.

Unified CXM effectively addresses these challenges, providing a central hub for customer interactions, and enabling a consistent, personalized, and seamless customer experience.

How Unified CXM Differs from Traditional CXM

Traditional customer experience management treats each channel separately, resulting in siloed data and inconsistent customer experiences. In contrast, Unified customer experience management takes a comprehensive view of the customer journey, delivering cohesive and personalized interactions at scale.

Unified CXM also leverages a centralized data source to provide consistent interactions throughout the customer journey, whereas traditional CXM may rely on fragmented data sources. The evolution from fragmented customer experience management approaches to a comprehensive strategy has improved the ability to track and enhance the customer journey.

Unified CXM also provides real-time analytics and insights into customer behavior and preferences, allowing businesses to respond quickly and effectively to customer needs. Traditional CXM relies on historical data and manual analysis, which can be time-consuming and less effective.

Furthermore, unified CXM supports omnichannel customer engagement, allowing customers to interact with businesses across multiple channels, including online, in-store, phone, and more. Traditional CXM focuses on a single channel or a limited set of channels, which can limit the customer’s ability to interact with the business seamlessly and conveniently.

Benefits of Unified CXM

Knowing your customers are everywhere is one thing. But how does unified CXM actually help you create amazing experiences and a growing business? Here’s how:

1. Better collaboration

Unified customer experience tools let you know everything important about a customer the moment they contact you — past purchases, support tickets, social media interactions, the whole nine yards. Proper training for customer service representatives is important when using these tools. Optimizing each customer interaction across communication channels prevents digging through separate systems or asking customers to repeat information.

2. Improved customer experiences

Customers jump between your website, social media, email, and maybe even a good old-fashioned phone call. A unified CXM approach ensures unified customer experiences by maintaining consistent brand messaging, voice, and interactions no matter where they reach out. This builds trust, makes your brand instantly recognizable, builds a sense of reliability, and strengthens your brand identity.

3. Enhanced personalization

With a complete view of your customer, you can deliver experiences tailored to their unique needs and preferences. Think personalized product recommendations, targeted offers, and proactive support based on past customer interactions.

Hyperpersonalization makes customers feel valued and understood and delighted in their journey. UCXM goes beyond basic customer segmentation to offer individualized experiences.

4. Improved efficiency and reduced costs

Unified CXM platforms eliminate redundancies and automate tasks. You achieve faster response times, fewer handoffs between departments, and reduced workload for your team.

Optimizing your processes saves valuable time and money while improving customer engagement. Your team can also focus on higher-value activities, like building customer relationships and innovating better.

5. Increased customer loyalty and advocacy

Happy customers are engaged customers. Consistently great customer experiences build strong customer relationships and brand loyalty.

Loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases, recommend your brand to others, and become advocates for your business. Unified customer experience turns satisfied customers into passionate brand champions.

6. Better data insights

UCXM platforms enable businesses to move beyond gut feelings and make decisions based on concrete customer insights. Unified customer experience software centralizes your customer data and helps you analyze customer behavior, identify trends, and predict and anticipate customer needs. Key customer data drives informed decisions about your products, services, and customer experience strategy, keeping you a step ahead.

Essential Components of a Unified CXM Strategy

Building a successful unified customer experience management strategy requires the right parts to work together to achieve top speed. Here’s how unified CXM works:

Centralized customer data platform (CDP)

A unified view of your customer is essential for personalized experiences. CDPs gather customer data from all your systems — CRM systems, marketing automation, and social media — and create a unified and comprehensive customer profile. You can see the complete picture, understand customer needs, and tailor interactions accordingly.

For example, if a customer has recently browsed your website for running shoes, your marketing team can use this data to send them targeted emails about upcoming sales on running gear.

Omnichannel integration

Omnichannel integration connects all your customer touchpoints — website, mobile app, social media, email — to create a unified customer experience. This means a customer can start a conversation on your website and continue it on social media without repeating themselves.

For example, a customer can inquire about a product on your website’s live chat, and then receive a follow-up email with more information and a personalized offer.

Automation and AI

AI-powered chatbots can instantly answer common questions, freeing up human agents for more complex issues. AI algorithms leverage predictive analytics and analyze customer data to predict future needs and proactively offer support. For example, if a customer has a history of contacting support about a specific product feature, AI can trigger a proactive chat offering assistance before they even reach out.

Furthermore, AI-driven sentiment analysis can review social media posts, and customer reviews to provide a quick overview of customer feelings about a brand. This allows for quick reactions to negative reviews and quick amplification of positive ones.

Customer journey mapping and analytics

Customer journey mapping helps visualize the entire customer lifecycle, from initial awareness to purchase and beyond, and creates seamless customer journeys. Analytics provide actionable insights into customer behavior, showing you where they drop off, what channels they prefer, and what drives their decisions.

For example, if analytics reveal that many customers abandon their shopping carts at the checkout page, you can investigate friction points and optimize the checkout process.

Employee empowerment

Engaged employees create happy customers. Unified CXM platforms give your customer-facing teams access to complete customer information and the ability to easily switch between channels, so they can resolve issues faster and offer more personalized service. Happier employees feel confident in their ability to offer positive customer experiences.

Continuous feedback loops

Unified CXM platforms collect customer feedback from multiple channels (surveys, reviews, social media) and analyze it to identify trends and areas for improvement. This creates a closed-loop system where you’re constantly listening, learning, and optimizing the customer experience.

If you notice a trend of negative reviews mentioning long wait times for customer support, you can take steps to improve response times and address the issue quickly.

Key Features of Unified CXM Platforms

Unified CXM platforms typically include a range of features that enable businesses to deliver personalized customer experiences. Some key features of UCXM software include:

• Data integration: Integrate customer data from various touchpoints to provide a unified customer view.
• Omnichannel support: Support customers across multiple channels, including online, in-store, phone, and more.
• Real-time analytics: Provide real-time insights into customer behavior and preferences.
• Personalization: Tailor interactions to individual customer needs and preferences.
• Customer journey mapping: Map the customer journey to identify pain points and areas for improvement.

Unified CXM platforms may also include features such as customer feedback and survey tools, customer loyalty programs, and customer engagement analytics. These features enable businesses to gather feedback from customers, reward loyal customers, and measure the effectiveness of their customer engagement efforts.

How To Create a Unified Customer Experience

Rolling out a unified customer experience management strategy isn’t a “set it and forget it” task. It requires careful planning, execution, and ongoing optimization. Here’s a roadmap to guide your unified customer experience strategy:

1. Define clear objectives

Start with the “why.” Before diving into implementation, clearly define what you aim to achieve with UCXM. Are you looking to boost customer satisfaction scores (CSAT)? Reduce customer churn? Increase customer lifetime value (CLTV)?

Having specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals will help you track progress, measure success, and keep your efforts focused.

2. Choose the right CXM platform

Not all customer experience platforms are created equal. The market is flooded with solutions, so choose wisely. Consider your needs, budget, existing tech stack, and company size. Look for a platform that easily integrates with your CRM, marketing automation tools, and other essential systems. Also, ask for demos, compare features, and read reviews before making a decision.

3. Break down silos

Unified customer experience is all about collaboration. Encourage communication and knowledge sharing between departments. Create cross-functional teams that work together to implement and optimize your unified customer experience strategy.

Breaking down silos ensures everyone is on the same page, working toward a common goal, and has access to the same customer information.

4. Prioritize data security and privacy

Customer data is valuable. Treat it with respect and protect it. Implement robust security measures to safeguard sensitive information and comply with relevant data privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Transparency is key. Be open with customers about how you collect, store, and use their data.

5. Start small, iterate, and scale

Start with a pilot project, focusing on one customer segment or channel. Gather data, analyze results, and learn from your experiences. This iterative approach refines your strategy and gradually scales your UCXM efforts as you gain confidence and experience.

6. Measure, analyze, and optimize

What gets measured gets improved. Track key customer experience metrics like CSAT, net promoter score (NPS), churn rate, and CLTV. Regularly analyze these KPIs to identify areas for improvement and optimize your unified customer experience strategy for maximum impact. Use data-driven insights to make informed decisions and ensure your CXM strategy is always evolving.

The Right Unified CXM Starts With the Right Platform

Want more revenue, a better reputation, and a wildly loyal customer base? It all starts with the right UCXM platform.

Nextiva’s unified CXM solution and AI-driven contact center help thousands of companies deliver exceptional customer experiences across every touchpoint and optimize every aspect of their business.

With Nextiva, customer experience management means:

• Multi-channel support: Engage with customers on their preferred channels, including email, live chat, messengers, SMS, and social media. Turn conversations into conversions by quickly transitioning between support and sales.
• Social media management: Schedule posts, monitor responses, and analyze social media trends to amplify your brand presence and manage your reputation.
• Unified messaging app integration: Connect with customers on popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, automate responses, and deliver personalized support.
• AI-powered live chat: Build an efficient contact center with AI-powered chatbots and intelligent routing. Free up your team for complex issues while providing instant support.
• Integrated email ticketing: Centralize and manage all support requests in one platform. Real-time alerts and reminders ensure that no customer inquiry is missed.
• Review monitoring: Track and respond to customer reviews across various platforms. Analyze customer feedback, turn it into actionable improvements, and proactively manage your online reputation.

Unified CXM Is How You’ll Win

Now you know: Embracing unified CXM will give you the ultimate advantage. It gives customers the ease and comfort they need from customer experience and gives your business the growth and stability to thrive.

Which unified CXM solution do you need? A solution that is reliable, highly rated and recommended, and packed with features and plugins that make you efficient.

See how Canyon Coolers powers its customer conversations with Nextiva.

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