Are CXM and PRM Synonyms?
A company must reach out to the end users on its own or via its channel partners or service partners. The end-goal is, therefore, the same. The acronyms CXM or Customer Experience Management and PRM or Partner Relationship Management, as their names suggest, deal with the same concept about the relationship a company has to build with the consumers or partners. Both CXM and PRM are fundamentally similar in nature, functionally and architecturally.
CXM talks about taking the customers’ perspectives in making certain business decisions of the company. It deals with a customer-centric strategy that provided an excellent experience to the customers for turning them into long-term clients. PRM, on the other hand, talks about maintaining a healthy relationship between the company and its channel partners, thereby ensuring a smooth transition of the goods and services based on a robust and transparent relationship.
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Two sides of the same coin
Since both CXM and PRM talk about enhancing and enriching customer experiences, both act in different ways to reach the common goals of the business. Let us see how:
1. Customer Experience Management talks about the experience that client has during direct engagement with the company via multiple touch points. Hence it focuses directly towards the end-user of a goods and service delivery. Partnership Relationship Management, on the other hand, deals with the relationship between the core company and each channel partner, so that the transition of services and goods can happen smoothly. PRM comes into play during the internal business and operational transactions.
2. PRM takes care of the start of the process and CXM takes care of the end of the process. They both need to work in tandem. This ensures smooth working operations in between the CXM and PRM flows.
3. Customer Experience Management is used in enhancing the relationship between the customer and the company. Partner Relationship Management enhances the relationship between the channels partners involved in the smooth functioning of the system.
4. Customer Experience Management evolves with the customers’ needs and their overall experience across multiple reference points. Partner Relationship Management evolves with the partner’s knowledge transfer and the communications between them.
5. Both are based on building trust, promoting transparency and use of technology to ensure smooth and seamless communication. Both are also based on enabling smooth data flow across interacting pieces of software that make up the various components of the entire ecosystem.
6. Customer Experience includes communication through traditional channels like social media, phone calls, emails, websites, and text messaging. This may or may not be true for PRM. In any case, many companies prefer to have a unified Partnership Relationship communication happens through a dashboard using single sign-on into the system. The stakeholders for PRM are generally lesser than those for CXM, although this is not a thumb-rule heuristic.
7. In case of Customer Experience Management, a company keeps the detailed records of the customers. The customer satisfaction and tending to customer queries in time is of utmost importance for the company. For partners in Partner Relationship Management, the trust and loyalty between partners are of prime focus. If there is a good understanding amongst the channel partners over a particular issue, then the solution that is desired is acceptable to all.
8. Partner Relationship Management provides a logical view of various internal activities like lead management, pipeline review, authorization of pricing, quotes, incentives, training, and so on for on-boarding new partners, monitoring existing relations and tracking every aspect of the workflow. Customer Experience Management provides a logical view of the queries of the customers, their issues, meeting the expectations, providing timely feedback, and so on.
9. One of the main areas of similarities between Customer Experience Management and Partner Relationship Management is the powerful data analytics. Both CXM and PRM should allow their users to run customized reports and analytics. Both are designed to automate the workflows of the organization. Running automated reports gives the overview of the system and identifies areas to optimize the processes as well as the utilization of the resources. Deep insights help to streamline inefficiencies as well, thereby enhancing the productivity.
10. The benefits of Customer Experience Management are not directly profit-centric but rather far-reaching tangible and intangible benefits such as long-term relationships with the existing customers, customer loyalty, customer advocacy and other paybacks which cannot be measured. Partner Relationship Management, on the other hand, is comparatively more profit-centric. The internal relationship between the channel partners helps them give business to one another which can be measured in the form of paybacks and other mutually agreed criteria.
To sum it all up!
Customer expectations are rising, and it is easy for customers to switch to different suppliers if their needs are not met satisfactorily. Mediocre and ordinary service is an invitation for the customers to purchase from one’s competitors. The same is true for channel partners as well. There have to be perfect relations between channel partners to work efficiently and smoothly. If channel partners are not up to the mark in providing efficient services to the customers, then the customer will definitely shift to different suppliers. While both CXM and PRM deal with the relationship they share with their customers and partners, both need strong focus and a combined overall business strategy to drive growth and the desired results. Needless to say, if both perform their duties well, there will be a smooth transition of the workflow from the start to end, making an organization successful.
To get more insight about the CXM and PRM , please read our case study on FACT SuiteCRM which will give you more details as to how we captured customer experience and partner relationships in the right spirit.
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