Studies and experiences of organizations have proven that retaining an old and existing customer is more profitable than making a new one and companies are trying out various methods to create and sustain a competitive edge by maintaining good relationship with the existing customers. A new and upcoming concept in this area is Customer Experience Management (CEM) which has become a growing trend as businesses look to improve their current practices to achieve their goals by closely monitoring the experience of the customers. This article examines what the new concept is all about and how it can be used to secure customer loyalty.

The changing business paradigms suggest that it costs far more to win a new customer than it does to retain an old one. This is true in the case of all organizations regardless of which industry they are in. A business will benefit best by retaining its customers in terms of lower marketing costs, greater brand value, and greater brand loyalty through reduced customer sensitivity to price and hence, improved profitability to the firm. In today's global marketplace, thanks to the fierce competition among the firms to offer more product benefits at lower costs, we find a declining loyalty among customers. Also, the customers are better informed than ever before and hence in a better position to negotiate. In this purview, the main strategy for any organization is to focus on lifelong customer loyalty to gain a competitive advantage; and CRM and CEM are two tools that can be used as an effective means to achieving this end.

CRM has been in the picture for sometime, but CEM is an upcoming concept that is widely confused with CRM. This article defines CEM and attempts to find out the various possibilities of using it as a marketing tool to achieve lasting loyalty among customers. For this, one mainly needs to understand what CEM is all about.

The term `Customer Experience Management' was first introduced by Bernd Schmitt who, in 2003, defined CEM as "The process of strategically managing a customer's entire experience with a product or company." More specifically, the term represents the discipline, methodology and/or process used to comprehensively manage a customer's cross-channel exposure, interaction and transaction with a company, product, brand or service.

Advertising Express Magazine, Building Customer Loyalty, Customer Experience Management, Brand Loyalty, Global Marketplace, Business Paradigms, CEM Strategy, Customer Relationship Management, CRM, Business Strategy, Sociological Analysis, Cultural Analysis, Customer Lifetime Value, CLV.