In the previous post, i discussed some of the key trends shaping up in the retail industry, their implications and the challenges facing retailers seeking to regain control of the buyer-seller relationship.

Is Customer Experience Management the panacea for the ailing retailers who are now awakening to the power of the consumer?

Quite honestly, customer acquisition, retention and satisfaction have been top of mind for retailers for quite some time now. The missing piece of this puzzle is bringing all those countless hours of strategy and planning to fruition. This is more of an execution gap than anything else.

Although technology has made consumers more informed, more mobile and more social, customer experience is still largely defined by delivering on the following:

• Consistent experiences, whether shopping online or offline
• Personalize-able interaction ("mass market" sounds good as an internal strategy but not when you are a buyer!)
  
• Timely order fulfillment, if not pro-active notification of delays
  

Below is a concept architecture for streamlining front-end, mid-office and back-end interfaces through shared process to achieve consistency and efficiency in managing the customer experience from order capture to order provisioning.