Joakim Thorn, CEO of Effectly AB, and I co-wrote this article to highlight not only the importance of experience management but also why we produced Experia Summit, the first virtual summit dedicated to this topic. This was originally published on MyCustomer.com.

Google the term “experience management,” and you’ll find as many definitions as colors of the rainbow, and then some. Here’s just a smattering of some of those definitions.

• The practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. -Gartner

• The management of customer interactions through each physical and digital touchpoint in order to deliver personalized experiences that drive brand loyalty and increase revenue. -PwC

• The process of monitoring every interaction people experience with a company in order to spot opportunities for improvement. -Qualtrics

• An effort by organizations to measure and improve the experiences they provide to customers as well as stakeholders like vendors, suppliers, employees, and shareholders. -Wikipedia

• A concept that describes how a company takes control of how it interacts with its customers. [It’s] about viewing and then improving the interactions between your business and your customer entirely from the customers’ perspective — and across the entire journey they have with your business. -Medallia

So experience management is about designing, reacting, managing, monitoring, viewing, and improving. It’s about doing all of those things with regards to the interactions that people (customers, employees, vendors, suppliers, stakeholders, etc.) have with the organization. In other words, it’s all about the people. People first. People-centric businesses. Putting the people at the heart of the business. People before products, metrics, and profits –  and on a deeper level, understanding how people’s feelings and emotions will lead them, your customers and your employees, toward your company or away from it. 

That all sounds simple enough, right? People are important to the business, so let’s take the time to ensure that their feelings, emotions, and perceptions about their interactions with the business are positive. Hence, experience management. But is it really that simple? Hold that thought.

We know today that more than 70 % of transformation projects fail.

One of the biggest challenges that experience management practitioners face today is to go from “fluff to stuff” and to connect all activities, behavior change, and output metrics to a strong story, one that describes the business case and the economic impact every spend dollar has, in order to secure the right funding for a successful transformation to a more people-centric organization.  

Another challenge they face is to align the whole organization with that compelling and engaging story, the story about a better future that experience management initiatives with people-centric outcomes can create for the company that also resonates with all stakeholders. It’s important to align the organization so that every executive, every manager, and every individual contributor strongly feels that “this is absolutely the right thing, and I will do everything to contribute and to make things happen with the appropriate actions in my day-to-day work.” People need to feel this and to understand the WHY behind it to be fully committed to making things happen, to making decisions and taking small steps toward that better future every single day.

Experience management is an ecosystem that spans several disciplines, including customer experience, employee experience, brand experience, product experience, culture, and leadership. They are all closely linked and must all work together to achieve those positive feelings, emotions, and perceptions for all constituents. In doing so, the business achieves its outcomes, as well. Forrester found that experience-led companies have 1.6x higher brand awareness, 1.5x higher employee satisfaction, 1.9x higher average order value, 1.7x higher customer retention, 1.9x return on spend, and 1.6x higher customer satisfaction rates.

With that in mind, we developed Experia Summit, the world’s first virtual summit exclusively dedicated to experience management. Our mission is to bring together the world’s top thought leaders and practitioners in this field to inspire and to lead people to create passionate and authentic experiences – in every interaction and transaction, for all constituents. We see experiences as the new currency for businesses – and we know there is a lot of room for improvement and endless potential to disrupt every industry. Experia Summit drives toward that mission through invaluable education, unbiased interviews, and inspiring content for individuals at every level of the organization and with varying degrees of experience. Our speakers will teach the audience how to build a people-centric organization that not only puts people first but also experiences phenomenal growth as a result.

Let’s turn back to the question of “But is it really that simple?” Given the fact that experience management spans multiple disciplines; involves people, processes, products, data, technology, and more; must be led from the top down and adopted and evolved from the bottom up; and provides such weighty benefits to the organization makes nothing simple but the answer to that question: “No.” If it had been easy, then everyone would have done it already. 

This is why we’ve gathered the brightest minds in this field to share their tools, tips, and techniques with the audience. We all agree experience management is a lot of work. And we all agree that it can’t be done alone – so we’ve brought together for you 35 “friends and family” to help set you on the right course. We’re excited about the content from each speaker. It is solid, and it is actionable. We guarantee that all content flows nicely together, with each speaker complementing and supplementing the next. We guarantee that you will be feverishly taking notes throughout.

As the godfather of customer experience, Bruce Temkin, has said, “This is the go-to online summit when it comes to actionable Experience Management!”

Experia Summit is a virtual event, i.e., all online, taking place December 9-13. The event is FREE! You can also purchase an All-Access Pass that gives you access to session recordings after the event ends, plus thousands of dollars worth of bonus materials. Register here.

Annette Franz is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader, coach, speaker, and author. Her first book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business), is available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter for updates, insights, and other great content that you can use to up your CX game.