Here are three inconvenient truths.

First, mastering customer experience management (CEM) is an imperative, because the quality of the experiences you offer and support will increasingly determine the fate of your company.

Second, the CEM Imperative is not a prediction. Consumers’ expectations for rich experiences are effective today, and they are growing ever less tolerant of deficient engagement – and of disengaged brands.

Third, you can’t go it alone. CEM is hard, complicated, and new. Very few organizations have all of the resources necessary to devise and execute CEM strategies. Most companies should, and will, turn to external service providers (digital agencies, systems integrators, consultants, etc.), at least in the initial phases.

It is crucial to realize that no software vendor offers a packaged solution or a complete platform for customer experience management. Companies draw upon a broad, growing, and rapidly shifting ecosystem of software solutions to support CEM. Because most interactions depend, or at least draw, upon content in a digital format, web content management (WCM) tools and practices will continue to play a central role in the CEM ecosystem for the foreseeable future.

This release marks the first extensive guide to North American service providers for WCM/CEM. This 270+ page report provides detailed profiles of more than 40 service providers, ranging in size from 15 to 60,000 employees. The Guide highlights the WCM partnerships and expertise of the North American service providers within the context of their evolving support for CEM. Informed by 1000s of hours of research, detailed surveys, and interviews with service providers and their clients,  it aims to assist companies with the evaluation and selection of service provider partners.