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The opening chapter takes the reader through three aspects of customer experience management (CEM) – the what of customer experience (CX), the why of CX and the how of CEM. The authors have collected, synthesised and presented information from research as well as practice in this chapter. It helps the readers build a perspective on CX, sieving through various notions, philosophies and terms that have come to mean CX. The chapter also establishes the need for understanding CEM and executing it using the framework presented in the ‘how’ section of the chapter. The chapter concludes with a short overview of each of the following chapters.

Marketers' sustainability is highly dependent on providing their customers with a memorable experience. This experience manifests the care taken by marketers while interacting at every stage of customer's journey from need recognition to post-purchase behaviour. Customer experience's (CX) significance demands that it be measured succinctly to monitor it at various levels, beginning at the customer level and extending to the financial outcome of this interaction(s). This study has attempted to conduct the same, by measuring Net Promoter Score of the customers and the financial ramifications of good/bad CX. Evidence of financial implications of good/bad CX has been presented through secondary research. Customer level study was empirically conducted at two well-known retailers of India, one in the footwear category and the other in general merchandise. Finally, some successful examples from the Indian retail sector have been added to highlight the significance and impact of Indian retailers' measures to enhance their customers' experience.

Though customer experience (CX) is identified as a key research priority, empirically led insight with tourism consumers' resulting emotional attachment (EA) and customer loyalty (CL) remains scarce, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis. Adopting service-dominant logic, this study develops a model that investigates the impact of customer engagement (CE) and customer co-creation (CC) on CX, which consequently effects EA and CL during the COVID-19 crisis in the tourism industry. First, our results suggest that CE and CC positively affect tourism CX. Second, results revealed the CX's significant positive effect on EA and CL. Third, findings confirmed the CE's and CC's indirect impact on EA and CL, as mediated via CX in pandemic situations. Our study offers key implications for destinations to develop tactics in surviving during a pandemic to rebuild tourism.

This chapter brings all the key points from each of the earlier chapters together towards a framework for crafting and executing an effective customer experience (CX) strategy. We go back to the ‘how of customer experience management (CEM)’ discussed in the first chapter and connect the dots for the readers through the process and include the common roadblocks and challenges that come in the way to achieve CX results. In this chapter we also link up customer experience to the big ideas of customer centricity and customer engagement. Finally, we discuss the future of customer experience and how CXM/CEM continued to evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This research sought to examine the differential effect of chatbot banking artificial intelligence (AI) on consumer experience in the banking industry. A positivist paradigm was adopted to sample 389 consumers who were previously exposed to chatbot banking in Zimbabwe. A causal research design was employed whilst a quantitative approach was followed. In analysing data, the research study applied the structural equation modelling (SEM) technique. The authors found that chatbot banking significantly improves customer experience (CX) in the banking industry. Reliability and responsiveness of the chatbot need to be enhanced for effective improvements in CX. A need was also identified to enhance CX through the development of an ease-to-use chatbot which is embedded in everyday messaging applications of consumers. A significant association was also found between perceived benefits of chatbot banking and CX. This study informs the development of competitive advantage by banks and other related companies through AI-based CX management strategies. In times of pandemics and beyond, chatbot banking can be very instrumental in improving CX.

Customer experience is a relevant concept in marketing and tourism research since its correct understanding allows companies to achieve competitive advantage and service providers can reach several outcomes such as customer engagement, loyalty, and customer satisfaction. This chapter aims to analyze one of the main outcomes of the customer experience, the customer satisfaction through online reviews, and using spatial analysis as a tool to incorporate the contextual nature of the customer experience. Thus, our study considers online rating as a measure of customer satisfaction and tries to analyze the impact of actions under the control of the service provider (price and objective quality) and actions under the control of the customer (subjective quality) on customer satisfaction.

With the Spanish hotel industry as a study framework, an empirical study is developed to analyze, through geographically weighted regression techniques, the relationship between price, objective quality and subjective quality, and online ratings given by consumers with a sample of 1870 of geolocated hotels in Spain. The findings show how a premium price, depending on the geolocation, is an indicator for better customer experiences, and they also show that objective quality is the antecedent of customer experience whose positive effect on customer satisfaction is geographically more widespread. Results show contradictory effects of subjective quality, while in some areas subjective quality does not match the product fit of customers, in others it allows hotels to provide more satisfactory experiences.

Customers engage with the organisations that deliver them superior experiences. Every successful organisation is striving to engage with by providing them superior product and service offerings bundled with memorable experiences. Many companies have realised that the road to better customer retention and gradual increase in profits is through offering efficient customer experience. Well-crafted customer experience also acts as a competitive edge for the company to stay ahead of competitors. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to understand whether CX happens by accident or it happens through a proper process. This chapter will introduce various existing CX models and also proposes design thinking approach for successful implementation of CX. While most of the existing CX models are relevant for developed economies, the design thinking approach to CX is proposed for managing CX in emerging markets.

The customer experience (CX) in the field of tourism and hospitality has captured new heights. The study aims to understand how CX has been studied in the tourism and hospitality field history using bibliometric analysis. A total of 188 research articles in the Web of Science (WoS) database were selected for bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer from 2008 to 2021. The citation analysis highlighted the most influential journals published in CX within the tourism and hospitality field. Bibliographic coupling along with content analysis helps to categorize intellectual structure in six clusters: (1) Customer experience in the physical environment, (2) Technology-oriented customer experience, (3) Customer experience as driver of well-being, (4) Emotional value in the consumption experience, (5) Behavioral intentions-oriented customer experience, and (6) Total customer experience. Even though bibliometric analysis has gained attraction in business research and growing trends of the experience economy, CX within the tourism and hospitality field was not yet explored comprehensively. The current study was an effort to fill this gap by examining how customer experience in the tourism and hospitality context has been evolved historically. Theoretical, social, and practical implications are presented to establish future research directions.

Buying online has become a widespread and common activity for consumers, and, for many organizations, e-commerce has become a very profitable alternative to sell their products and services, also allowing them to leverage their strategy in new geographical markets immediately. Although the literature on the subject is comprehensive, there is a gap in identifying the holistic constructs that are the determinants of consumers' choice of an online store. This research resorts to an exploratory study, based on a nonsystematic literature review, seeking to identify these constructs. The results obtained allowed us to identify the following constructs: consumer behavior, customer experience, web content, catalog, terms and conditions, customer support, perceived value, trust, security and privacy, satisfaction, and loyalty. Customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty constructs stand out from a strategic perspective.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is shifting the way of how customers interact with organisations by blending both physical and digital environments, thereby creating a new paradigm of customer-organisation relationship. The new relationship boundary driven by AI principally challenges as well as creates opportunities for relationship marketing theories and practices. The main objective of this chapter is to present a framework named ‘physical-digital space’ to demonstrate how AI can merge the physical and digital world. To broaden the understanding, this chapter uses the lens of customer experience in relationship marketing. The framework extends the existing understanding and provides managerial implications on how an organisation can develop strategies so that a customer consciously or subconsciously develops a positive relationship with the organisation.