What Is Product Experience Management?
by Lumavate | Last Updated: Dec 14, 2023
A critical tenet that all companies live by is that the product or solution they offer must be high-quality and positively impact the lives of the end user. Often, brands recognize that they are creating a product they are incredibly proud of but find it difficult to differentiate themselves in the market to become well-known.
Customers and clients may not always remember the product but will remember the experience behind it and how it made them feel throughout the buyer's journey.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the meaning of product experience, product experience management, the overall function of the product experience team, and how they can increase your product's allure. This makes it easier for your company to focus on what they do best and create outstanding products with outstanding stories.
What Is Meant by Product Experience?
Product experience is both an art and a science. The product experience meaning is always defined by the context and circumstances of the product, solution, and experience itself. At its essence, it encapsulates the customer's engagement with the product throughout their customer journey. Of course, this begins by making a great first impression on the customer. This can be done with the product and its digital experience.
The entire journey spans from the initial awareness of the product by the customer and ends with the long-term usage of the product. The customer must be fully supported throughout the process, which does not end when they utilize my purchase for the first time.
Continuing to provide excellent service and an elevated experience will provide feedback, which can further improve existing products, give you new ideas, and increase the share of wallet for your current customers. Consistently positively implementing input will increase the "word-of-mouth" referrals from your existing customer base, significantly lowering your client acquisition cost.
Product Experience Examples
To further illustrate what potential product experiences can have on your brand and its messaging, here are some great examples of how you can practically apply this:
Interactive Product Demos
Imagine a virtual tour or interactive demonstration of a new tech gadget on the company's website. Users can explore its features and functionalities before making a purchase decision. This can be further improved with digital product catalogs and syncing to your organization's web pages.
User-generated Content Hubs
Brands can curate user-generated content through brand portals in a single, centralized place, such as reviews, images, and videos. This provides potential customers with authentic insights into the product's real-world usage and gets the buyer to envision owning the product and how it can change their day-to-day lives.
Educational Product Guides
Manufacturers can create interactive guides that educate the sell-side and customer-facing team and consumers about product features, benefits, and best practices. This can be especially valuable for complex products like high-end machinery or complicated electronics.
In-store Digital Displays
Use digital displays in-store to showcase product details, customer reviews, and additional options for your retail branches. This enhances the in-store experience and provides customers with more information during the crucial time of purchase.
Gamified Product Usage
Gamification moves away from thinking about product purchases and towards completing challenges. Your company can implement an app, website, or product milestones to reward loyalty, referrals, feedback, and continued usage.
Interactive Packaging
Adding QR codes on product packaging leads customers to additional content, promotions, or how-to guides, which enriches the overall product experience - and adds an interactive element to physical products through the digital experience.
What Is Product Experience Management?
Now that we've covered the buyer's customer experience, the management of expectations and deliverables falls to the product experience strategy you implement. At the heart of customer engagement is delivering accurate, compelling, and interactive product experiences tailored and customized to specific use cases. The more detailed and niche, the better - so the customer can relate easily.
Product experience management software makes this process much more straightforward. For example, a common way to display products and highlight their features and benefits is a product catalog. Catalogs are time and market-tested, but they are only beneficial if the user is interested in your offer. This means the catalog must be innovative enough to hook new readers and consistently sufficient to cater to existing clients.
PXM software (Product Experience Management) helps you create beautiful catalogs and pair them with a digital experience. When manufacturing a product, PXM is an extension of the customer experience, aiming to provide a truly personalized product and expertise throughout the journey. Timely delivering a yearly physical catalog with all of your best offers can be matched with a QR code of a digital catalog that further amplifies the product.
The customer can use this digital environment as a "testing ground" for the product and see how this solution can help make a difference in their lives.
What Does a Product Experience Manager Do?
Like many other functions within a company, PXM doesn't just happen passively overnight. It involves trial and error, feedback implementation, and the autonomy necessary for a team to work with support and resources along the way. In doing so, a need for delegation and responsibility comes up. The Product Experience Manager role takes full accountability for the product experience.
This role requires excellent communication and collaboration skills, as they must liaise with their team and reach out to involved parties - whether internal or external. This may mean coordinating campaigns with marketing, asking subject-matter experts (SMEs) for clarification, staying on board with compliance with regulations, and fostering an open channel for communication with vendors, channel partners, stakeholders, and, at times, large accounts.
Although a product experience manager is not a professional designation, it involves heavy project management and technical expertise, combined with the necessary soft skills to inspire the team to champion the product experience.
What Is the Difference Between PXM and PIM?
A PXM platform is a great way to combine the management of the methodology of your internal operations with dedicated software that provides necessary solutions and integrations. When combined with a reliable way to deliver product information throughout the organization (and to buyers!), your brand can offer an interactive and educational experience unrivaled by your competition.
Here are some critical differences between PXM vs PIM:
Core Purpose:
PIM (Product Information Management): Centralizes and manages product data.
PXM (Product Experience Management) Platform: Goes beyond the functionalities of a PIM, offering multifaceted purposes and integrations.
Functional Reach:
PIM: Focuses on product data centralization and accurate data.
PXM Platform: Expands upon this functionality, integrating Digital Asset Management (DAM) and, at times, a Digital Experience Platform (DXP).
Scope of the Solution:
PIM: Essential but narrower in scope.
PXM Platform: Provides a broader solution, securing a holistic approach to product experience management.
Manufacturer's Perspective:
PIM: Crucial for managing product data efficiently.
PXM Platform: Imperative investment for manufacturers, offering extended capabilities beyond a PIM, significantly impacting the end user and the sales process.
Lumavate: Crafting Tomorrow's Product Experiences Today
Product experience is not a product but a comprehensive solution that must be worked on and improved upon consistently to remain competitive in a strong and fierce landscape. You can simplify this process using product experience management tools and delegate responsibility to your designated product experience manager.
Lumavate's DXP solution is a cost-effective and comprehensive way to combine PXM, PIM, and DAM functionalities to create a truly unique and personalized experience that your users can relate to. Schedule a demo today to learn how to develop and bring the product experience of the future into the present!