What Is a PXM?

Consumers expect excellent customer service and a quality customer experience. They don’t just want to shop, they want to be able to communicate with businesses whenever they like, and however they like, from using the more traditional phone, SMS, and email to contacting companies on any one of many social media platforms.

Not only that, but they want answers and information immediately. They want the right information, delivered in the right format, at the right time, during every part of the customer experience. For customers of manufacturers, medical device companies, and makers of consumer-packaged goods (CPG), part of that customer experience is having an excellent product experience. To provide that, businesses are turning to product experience management (PXM) software.

What Is a PXM?

An excellent product experience occurs when the customer is provided with compelling and fully accurate product information of the right type at each stage of the sales funnel and throughout the life of the product. Product experience management is the act of ensuring that a great product experience occurs every time, and product experience management (PXM) software is the tool that enables businesses to do that.

A PXM platform allows companies to collate and manage all product information, marketing information, images, videos, and more, and then to use those items to quickly create quality product experiences that are always relevant to the applicable use case.

For example, a potential customer who’s just found your company is more likely to want to browse a product catalog containing everything you offer rather than detailed installation or operating instructions for a particular product. On the other hand, a customer who’s browsing to choose one out of several of your products is going to want to compare the details of each of those products, including the price and any extra features. These are very different product experiences, delivered at a completely different point in the sales funnel. One of the main advantages of quality PXM software is that any of those experiences and many more can be quickly created to provide exactly what each customer wants at each stage of the buying process.

When creating a product experience, you need to think about who wants the information, what specific information they need and in what format, what they want to achieve, where they are in the sales process, how they will access this product experience, and how you can wow them with what you provide.

What Is a Product Experience Strategy?

Just as your marketing department will create an overall strategy for every aspect of your marketing, you’ll also need a product experience strategy to lay out everything about how, when, and why you’ll manage your product experiences for your internal and external customers.

The idea is to map out the whole product experience at every stage a customer could encounter your product from first hearing of it right through buying it, and then to receiving set-up help and aftercare, if needed. You would work out what happens in each product experience, based on who the customer is, what they want, and where in the buying process they are.

This plan would also involve setting deadlines for the creation of each product experience so that you aren’t scrambling to create too many product experiences on the fly.

We’ve given you some product experience examples above, but here are a few more:

• A new customer may not be sure what they want to buy from a choice of products, so one possible product experience you could give them is a quiz to help them narrow down what they need.

• You might create a premium quality digital product brochure with everything a customer could want to know about each of your products so that customers can quickly look through and make a final buying decision.

• Once someone buys your product, you could create a welcome pack with how to set it up, how to use it, and how to look after it.

What Does a Product Experience Manager Do?

Your product experience manager will have overall responsibility for the product experience for one or even all of your products, depending on how many you have. They are the ones with the final say on what goes into them and are in charge of formulating the overall product experience strategy for the company.

While other employees and agencies may contribute to or even create from scratch some of your product experiences, your product experience manager will be the one to have ultimate control over your product experiences.

This may be a full-time role on its own or part of another role, perhaps for a product manager or a marketing assistant. Ideally, the person taking this on will need to be an expert on their products and be familiar with creating a quality product experience and all that that entails. They will also need to understand that this job is part of adding to the whole customer experience.

The product experience manager will use a PXM platform to produce and control product experiences.

What Is the Difference Between PXM and PIM?

PIM stands for product information management, and this can be a piece of software that only has that function or is part of a full product experience management software, such as Lumavate’s PXM software.

A PIM allows you to collect, collate, and manage every piece of product data for all of your products, including data sheets, instructions, product descriptions, SKUs, pricing, and more. This gives you control over your product data. It ensures everyone in the company, and any partners or agency, can quickly find what they need and supply the correct product information to the customer.

You can also ensure each piece of product information is always up-to-date and control who has access to individual pieces of product data for security purposes. You can then still provide the marketing department and sales with everything they need to market and sell to your customers while ensuring that sensitive or proprietary information is kept only to people who should have it.

While a PIM is a vital platform for any manufacturer, you can do far more if you invest in PXM software that offers PIM, DAM, CMS, and DXP functionalities. Lumavate offers an all-in-one PXM solution providing you with everything you need to fully control your product information, including images, videos, documents, and more, while producing quality product experiences for your customers from the information you already have.

When it comes to PXM vs PIM, ideally, you want to have the full functionality of quality PXM software to enable you to do far more than just collect and control your product information. With a PXM platform, you can produce unlimited excellent product experiences for your customers, including minisites, full websites, product brochures, product catalogs, data sheets, operating instructions, quizzes, product comparisons, and more. These product experiences are all designed to help your current and potential customers make a buying decision that’s right for them.