Contact center solutions focus around improving the caller experience. Traditionally, customer relationship management solutions were designed to help with this by improving agent efficiency in order to provide top quality service more quickly, shorten call times and help consumers get the answers they need during the first call – reducing callbacks. However, according to MyCustomer.com, many companies now view CRM as an IT service, related to data acquisition and management more than customer service.
This has led to the development of customer experience management. CEM is the qualitative side of the call center solution, according to the news source, though some experts warn against the view that it is a rebranding of CRM.
"Without a strong holistic customer focus within an organization, CRM and other operational initiatives are simply rebranded as CEM," said one expert, Colin Shaw, about danger of confusing the two terms. "This misunderstood effort, which proves uneven and ineffective, thus renders CEM obsolete."
Ultimately, in order to get the most out of any communications solution, a contact center has to implement the tools it needs in the proper way, and maintain informed and appropriate usage at all times.