“The first two stages address how the company engages with its customers (with ease and efficiency). They are about how a company can interact more effectively with its customers.

Stage 1: Customer service

This stage is the ‘service is a smile’ stage and its pay-off is greater customer satisfaction, lower costs from less rework, and more satisfied staff and a more positive company culture.

Stage 2: Customer journey

The second stage of maturity involves considering the customer journey(s) end-to-end, from initial investigation of the services through to purchasing, using, and repurchasing. It is a more complex stage than the previous one to address as it involves mapping the customer journey(s) and gathering and analyzing data on pain-points and inconsistencies.

The second two stages are about increasing the value delivered to customers.

Stage 3: Customer-centric services

Companies at this stage have moved from selling generic products and services to selling solutions that solve real problems for individual customers. However, the trick is identifying what the customers’ needs and problems as well as unmet needs actually are. Customer-centric services are now the happy hunting ground of innovators and startups, so incumbents should be alert.

Stage 4: Customer experience

The final maturity stage is about the total customer experience. It’s about delivering emotional and intangible benefits as well as functional benefits. The key is to think of experience broadly as a meta-level of value over and above products and services, but which are relevant and connected to products and services.”

Source: “The Stages of Customer Experience Management” (the open marketer, 11 june 2014)

http://informaat.com/blog/from-customer-journeys-to-services-and-experience.php

AICEX Customer Experience Italian Association