Consumers have become so accustomed to the rich and intuitive digital experiences offered by Amazon, Walmart, and other online retailers that they now expect to be able to interact with companies in other industries in a similar manner. This expectation is driving organizations to adopt digital experience management (DXM) practices and platforms to better orchestrate and optimize the content creation, publishing, and distribution processes required to support the customer journey across all their digital touchpoints.

As we explore in this Advisor, organizations should consider DXM an important part of their overall customer experience (CX) management initiative because, implemented successfully, it can facilitate better engagement with existing customers, assist in acquiring new customers, and help differentiate their brand from the competition.

Digital Experience Management

DXM encompasses the various processes, technologies, and practices required for an organization to manage all the interactions that take place between a customer and the company via all its digital touchpoints. This can range from Web, email, mobile, and social networks to interactive voice response (IVR) and speech-enabled systems and smart (connected) devices. In short, the primary goal of DXM is to provide seamless, consistent, and personalized interactions (across all digital technologies) that (1) meet the needs and expectations of customers and (2) firmly align with the corporate brand, image, and values.

Why DXM Is Difficult

Organizations face a number of issues when attempting to implement DXM, including:

• A growing number of digital touchpoints. In addition to traditional digital technologies like Web, mobile, e-commerce, and social media platforms, companies are increasingly required to account for connected devices like smart TVs, appliances, and other products. Enterprise use of voice-enabled and speech-recognition systems can further complicate DXM initiatives.

• Disparate data. Due to all the various digital touchpoints and their supporting systems, organizations can struggle to integrate (and cleanse) customer data from such disparate sources and apply it to their DXM efforts. This can lead to disjointed and inconsistent experiences for customers — a problem frequently encountered when attempting to deliver consistent and unified experiences across different customer channels. Organizations with established data warehousing and data-integrity practices tend to have a leg up on those that do not when it comes to data integration for DXM efforts.

• A customer-centric focus is required. Companies should consider DXM a complementary part of their overall CX effort. To succeed with DXM, organizations should have a customer-centric business model and mindset (i.e., one in which the company is set up to support the ability to continually adjust products and services around the views of the customer).

• Integration challenges. Integrating the various technologies and applications with the respective processes required to support DXM can prove complicated. Organizations tend to struggle due to a lack of staff skilled in such business process efforts as they relate to DXM. Consequently, they may need to seek outside experts familiar with DXM process and systems integration.

• Data protection and privacy. Organizations should perform a thorough analysis of data collected for DXM purposes to identify and inventory sensitive customer data and secure the systems it resides in. This includes sensitive data residing in on-premise applications and in cloud environments. Organizations must also enact policies and procedures to ensure adherence to all applicable national and state privacy regulations (e.g., General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR], California Consumer Privacy Act [CCPA]).

The Digital Experience Platform

To help get around such issues, organizations are increasingly turning to commercial digital experience platforms (DXPs). DXP solutions provide a centralized platform designed to give organizations the tools and functionality needed to create, manage, and deliver personalized digital experiences across all their digital properties. This includes the components, application program interfaces (APIs), and other facilities required to integrate and orchestrate the various systems and processes required to make this possible. Different vendors put their own spin on features and functionality but, in general, DXP solutions include, or bring together, the following components and capabilities:

• Content management. This includes tools for creating, managing, and publishing digital content (e.g., text, images, videos) across websites, mobile apps, social media, IVR systems, connected devices, and other digital channels.

• Personalization. Personalization delivers experiences tailored to specific customers based on data and insights pertaining to their behavior, preferences, location, and historical and real-time interactions. A particularly important development underway involves the use of generative AI and other machine learning techniques to support advanced personalization capabilities, such as dynamic customer profile generation (i.e., the ability to adjust profiles in real time with each customer interaction) and to automatically generate and publish tailored content based on predicted customer interests and needs.

• Customer engagement. These tools (working hand-in-hand with personalization engines) are for tailoring and enriching customer engagements via highly personalized content. In addition to traditional customer communications like email marketing campaigns and other online advertising techniques, in the near future we should expect to see the use of tailored videos and augmented reality for enabling highly immersive customer interactions.

• Integration. This includes APIs and other interfaces for integrating the DXP with the different systems and technologies used to support DXM, including: enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, IVR, and Salesforce automation applications; customer data integration and cleansing tools; and workflow automation platforms.

• User experience. These tools help design and test user interfaces, process flows, and other customer-facing interactions to ensure that the digital products and services delivered are intuitive, easy to use, and both visually appealing and contextually adhere to company and brand ideals.

• Analytics. Prebuilt analytics help analyze and understand customer behavior and preferences and measure ROI for specific DXM undertakings. They play a crucial role in CX measurement, omnichannel engagement enhancement, and for assessing customer convenience (a top priority for customers).

Conclusion

The modern consumer’s expectation for a seamless digital experience similar to those provided by leading online retailers is a driving force behind the broader adoption of DXM practices. As a result, DXM is increasingly becoming more essential for organizations to effectively manage customer interactions across all digital touchpoints.

Companies should view DXM as an integral part of their CX initiatives. DXM represents not just a technology-oriented initiative but a strategic one that requires organizations to take a holistic, customer-centric view of the customer journey and make a commitment to continuous improvement in line with customer feedback and expectations.

DXPs can play a key role in an organization’s DXM strategy. By integrating the various components required to support DXM via a single platform, organizations can better orchestrate the content creation, publishing, and distribution processes required to deliver consistent, personalized experiences that align with a company’s brand and values, thereby helping to optimize customer engagement and brand differentiation.

Finally, I’d like to get your opinion on DXM and DXPs. As always, your comments will be held in strict confidence. You can email me at experts@cutter.com or call +1 510 356 7299 with your comments.