Your customers are always evolving. It’s a challenge keeping up with these moving targets. You reap what you sow whether it’s an internal or external customer.

Your CRM is a data-gathering machine. But even the greatest dashboards won’t let you know how you made your customers feel. You close the gap with a CXM tool as your nonstop feedback monitor.

Now, you have insights to align with the customer data. Even in 2016, huge amounts of capital is sunk into mindless CRM features and slick business intelligence tools, when the greatest need was a CXM Tool, along with training programs for frontline employees. You will need both tools, although it seems like one can be hacked to replace the other one: CRM vs CXM

CXM is growing in importance because it ties customer stories to their data. You empower your frontline employees to close the feedback loop with customers. The problem with CRM is that you can get buried in the data and forget customers’ true-to-life pain points. CXM brings this data back to life and makes it actionable for your engagement teams.

CXM is dependent on the right questions being asked. Unfortunately, generic questions which generate raw data are not actionable. You will have to parse through tons of generic feedback from tools like NPS surveys just to build a compelling story for a product feature idea. I believe the secret sauce to the madness of CRM and CXM comes from a deep vertical approach. Experts can be experts.

The future belongs to those enterprises with an integrated strategy that is customized for various verticals. For example, if you want to target banking, the mission must be specific when addressing the industry trends. Case in point: CX and Banking

Everyone knows that the biggest winners these days are customers who know what they want. The biggest loser is the software vendor, retail or enterprise business that is not fully aligned with the customer experience.

In the startup world, some truly get this and are thriving. They learn from the Goliaths like Salesforce or Workday. Of course, Salesforce learned the game from predecessors like Oracle and SAP.  They go beyond a generic product offering and focus on enterprise deals with vertical solutions. They hire tons of experienced industry professionals to deliver solutions.

Frankly speaking, most SaaS startups offer just one or two products and don’t have a vertical strategy. They might land a tiny account at a large enterprise, but don’t have the the chops to scale. If your startup is in this category, you will need to go big with a vertical strategy. Of course, make sure you have a good CRM and CXM, too. 🙂

Separate from the crowd through a vertical strategy