Why Customer Experience Is Becoming the Ultimate Competitive Edge

Products can be replaced, prices can be compared, but experiences last. In the chapter “Customer Experience of Today and Tomorrow,” Frank Müller highlights one crucial shift: customer loyalty is no longer built on product features or touchpoints. What truly matters is the overall experience, which starts well before the purchase and continues beyond the support phase.

What I took away from the chapter:

• For 80% of customers today, customer experience (CX) is as important as the product itself, and for 51%, it is the reason for switching to a competitor.

• Customer experience is not a singular moment, but an overall impression across all channels and phases, from the first click to the service interaction.

• Customer experience management (CXM) is a top-management responsibility and a cross-functional discipline. A consistent experience is only achievable when marketing, sales, service, and product teams collaborate closely.

• This chapter provides specific metrics for management, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), goal completion rate, churn rate, and customer effort score.

• The future? Hybrid experiences, intelligent services, voice-driven interfaces, and micro-moments: all powered by data, built on trust, and shaped through personalization.

  My conclusion: Frank Müller summarizes it perfectly: Customers don't care about processes - they want solutions. We can only create those solutions by listening, connecting, and maintaining a personal touch. This chapter beautifully closes our journey through digital Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bridging what matters now with what’s to come.

🔗 To the book on Springer

This blog post is based on the chapter „Customer Experience of Today and Tomorrow“ by Frank Müller from the book "CRM Goes Digital – Design and Use of Digital Customer Interface in Marketing, Sales and Service," published in 2024 by Springer Gabler Publishing House.