crm vs cem- are they both same? Is there any different?

Customers are known to be an essential ingredient for any business. As we all know and also understand very well, that their experiences and perceptions can make or break any product, service, or brand, so it makes sense to focus on the relationship we have with them, and the experience we’re delivering. However, customer relationship management (CRM) and customer experience management (CEM) are commonly mostly confusing terms — although both are crucial to customer satisfaction and retention, their functionalities and objectives are not the same. The main objective of this piece of article is to cumulate the major different about customer experience management and customer relationship management.

CRM vs CEM: What’s the Difference?

In general sense, it’s all in the name. Building upon ‘relationships’ and building upon ‘experience’ are two separate concepts, which require two separate approaches. One can understand it by taking an example that one can think of customer relationship management as a ‘lead machine’ or ‘lead database’. Customer relationship management helps one to manage customers, whether they’ve only just been introduced to your brand or if they’ve been lifelong customers. CRM software profiles customers so you can understand how they became a customer, how frequently they buy from you, what their average order size is, and how they interact with your brand. The goal of a good customer relationship management system is to nurture customers from prospects to raving fans.

On the other hand, customer experience management is a strategy that tracks, analyzes, controls, and (ideally) improves interactions with your customers at every touch point. CEM analyzes the overall customer experience by collecting nitty gritty behavioral and experiential data as well as direct feedback. The data represents the perceptions that customers have across all interactions with an organization.

While CRM and CEM work together to increase repeat business and referrals, there are some key differences:

CRM VS CEM – some brief points

• A CRM tracks the company’s view of a customer, while a CEM tracks a customer’s view of the company.
• A CRM focuses on the sales funnel while CEM focuses on touchpoints. Customer touchpoints are your brand’s points of customer contact, from start to finish. Examples include your point of sale, bill payments, and customer support agents.
• Whilst CRM data is centered more on customer transactions, CEM data is centered more on more granular behaviour and overall customer satisfaction.