The document summarizes an online chat between Mr. Subir Ghosh, President of Aegis Global Academy, and students. Mr. Ghosh answers questions about customer experience management (CEM) and experiential marketing. He discusses the benefits of experiential marketing over traditional marketing, the differences between CRM and CEM, and how CEM should be an integrated approach across the entire organization rather than just a marketing function.

1. Institute of Customer Experience Management
Post Graduate Programme in
Business Management
FAQs

2. A chat with
Mr. Subir Ghosh
DATE: 12TH JANUARY 2011

3. Subir Ghosh, President of Aegis Global Academy, answers questions on ‘The
Role of Customer Experience Management (CEM) in building Customer
Loyalty’ and other generic questions that students have to ask him as he sets
out to chat online with them.
We bring you the snapshot of the same chat on www.Timesjobs.com

4. Q&A
• Q: What are the benefits of ‘Experiential Marketing’ over ‘Traditional
Marketing’ ?
• A: Traditional marketing is all about the 4P's i.e. product, price,
placement and promotion. It entails profit from sales volume /
cost efficiency that forms the crux of the product lifecycle.
Experience marketing is about the 3C's namely customer
centricity, customer experience and customer lifetime value. It
works on the customer lifecycle paradigm which is a function
of customer affinity and need for the product/service over a
certain period of his life. It works on finding products for
customers vis-a-vis finding customers for products in the
traditional approach to marketing because products come and
go but customers endure.

5. Q&A
• Q: How is CRM (Customer Relationship Management) different from
CEM (Customer Experience Management)? Which one is better to
employ?
• A: CRM is a data capture, data analysis and data interpretation tool,
while CEM encompasses the people, products, and the operating
policies of the organization including CRM. CRM is thus an enabling
tool in the whole CEM process.
• Q: Is Customer Experience Management (CEM) a core marketing function
or an integrated approach? Please explain.
• A: CEM is a management philosophy that embraces the core reality of
business which is that the only guy who pays all the bills in a business
is a customer and hence he must be the focal point of every activity in
the company.

6. Q&A
• Q: Are there dedicated CEM courses for working professionals? How can I train
my human capital on this new-age marketing form?
• A: The institute of customer experience management
www.aegisglobalacademy.com facilitates all persons who are engaged or
wishing to be engaged in the discipline. Please log in for more details.
• Q: Is Experiential Marketing still novel for Indian businesses? If no, then do
we really have an experientially aware economy?
• A: It is still novel as the age of consumerism arrived only 5 to 7 years back in
this country contrasted to the US where it is about 4 decades old and
customers thus have massive choice in every product/service and
information through media proliferation thus compelling firms to look at
their business from a customer's viewpoint if it wants to survive and flourish.
I see the same phenomenon play out in India within the next 3 years, latest.

7. Q&A
• Q: What practices should I embrace to create real business value? Please
elaborate.
• A: Become customer centric, as the definition of value creation in
business is the difference between the cost of your product / service
and what the customer is willing to pay for it. Value is created in the
marketplace and not in the factories or companies.
• Q: What are the different methods of CEM?
• A: CEM is a management / organization philosophy and not a method.
It is about orienting every aspect of your business to meet / exceed
customer expectations.

8. Q&A
• Q: Customer Experience Management is an inevitable function of
service industry. Does that mean it adds no or little value to other
industries?
• A: No, and I say this because people don't buy products; they buy
solutions to their lives' problems/issues. Moreover product features
tend to be points of parity or at best certain obligations which a firm
is bound to fulfill, while focusing on the entire pre and post
consumption experience. This is where differentiation can occur on a
sustained basis as it involves the human aspect to a very large
degree, and perhaps only real differentiator between organizations
will always be people.

9. Q&A
• Q: Can CEM be implemented on employees within an organization to
achieve overall and holistic growth? Please explain
• A: CEM is as much about practicing internal customer centricity
without which external customer centricity is not possible.
Thus there would ideally be only two ways that job roles
in such organizations ought to be viewed; the roles that
directly enable the customer and the ones that enable those
that enable the customer. Such firms work purely on the
basis of each level of the organization enabling the
next level.

10. Q&A
• Q: What core considerations need to be addressed while designing experiential
marketing strategies for B2B markets?
• A: The core consideration don't change i.e. keeping the customer interest at the
core of every initiative/procedure the firm undertakes. The idea is how to meet
and exceed expectations with a view to building a long term mutually rewarding
relationship. The approach should always be to accurately know what are the
customers expectations, how have these expectations been created and design
the firms products, process, people behavior and the physical environment to
meet and exceed expectations.
• Q: Can I take help from external CEM consultancies to design experiential marketing
strategies for my organization? If yes, then how affordable would that be?
• A: You could get in touch with the institute of customer experience
www.aegisglobalacademy.com for this. The charges are very assignment scope
specific.

11. Q&A
• Q: What is 'Service Recovery Experience'? How is it related to Customer
Experience Management?
Service recovery is a process in the whole experience
• A: journey. It operates on the principle that every problem is a
potential opportunity to bond with a not so happy/irate
customer.
• Q: How important is an organization's operational design in creating
positive customer experiences?
• A: As I said earlier a firm has to orient not just its people's mindset but
its entire set of policies, procedures , reward and recognition
programmes and its physical/digital architecture to achieve this.

12. Q&A
• Q: Does Customer Experience have measurable effects? How?
• A: Financial outcomes of customer experience is entirely measurable
through a theory called the service profit link.
• Q: Is CEM going to change the total scenario of the service industry?
• A: I say this with a lot of conviction after spending more than a decade
in telecom, retail and banking at very senior levels including that of
a CEO. This is simply because there is no other way for service firms
to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

13. Q&A
• Q: What can be done to differentiate one's CEM strategies from that of
competition?
• A: Have yours and your organizations' ear continuously tuned into the
customer and marketplace.

14. Lets Begin…
Visit us at www.aegisglobalacademy.com or call at 1800 209 8777 for more information