Why Customer Experience Management is Wrong

First post in my new home… let’s see how it goes.

I was reading through my morning barrage of blogs, tweets, and articles trying to get my handle on the world today when I came across a tweet from @DeanvanLeeuwen asking about favorite experiences that leave wanting to come back when it dawned on me that we are using the term CEM in the wrong context.  Here is why.

As I wrote before in my previous blog, Experiences are something that you design to attract people.  You want them to be immersed with all their sense into exploring their “experiences” to the point that it becomes their reality.  Disney is an excellent example of an experience designer, so if Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton and many other high-end brands.  Their experiences essentially become their product and their brand.  Everything you do, including customer service and all other interactions, are part of that experience.  Those people can use the term Experience Management and mean it.

Alas, the of the organizations shouldn’t use that term.  Someone like Walmart does not design an experience for their shoppers, they provide a valuable service – but not an experience.  If you ever found yourself in a Walmart on a Saturday after payday you know what I mean – that could not be designed to attract or keep customers.  Most definitely.  However, Walmart can design better interactions for their customer service interactions, adding value to their relationships with their customers.  This is not part of the experience – it is part of a good strategy to keep their customers satisfied.  Their bottom line is that Walmart customers don’t shop for experiences, shop for value.  They will welcome a good interaction for customer service – but they don’t expect it as part of the experience.

Should Walmart and other lower “experience designers” change their strategies to accommodate better interactions? Forget about building experiences? What do you think?