The pandemic has prompted several transformations in the customer communications management market (CCM), and CCM is rising in importance. For organizations to improve their digital customer experience (CX) capabilities, company leaders must understand the prevailing CCM digital customer experience trends, and adjust their business strategies to complement what they consider to be the most relevant ones, that will support and grow their business market share.
Photographer: Priscilla Du Preez
Customer Communications Management and Digital Customer Experience Trends
Business leaders who are responsible for CX within their organization should thoughtfully deliberate whether to fund and manage the following initiatives:
- Review their current portfolio of CCM implementations to ensure they are supporting the demand for touchless communications.
- Generate and communicate a plan that will successfully combine the Marketing and Operational CCM arms, for effortless integration and positive consumer outcomes.
- Include key strategies for introducing digital experience (DX) within this plan.
- Evaluate the potential, and consider options, for embracing a digital experience platform.
COVID-19 Driven Changes in CCM Requirements
The pandemic has caused a significant shift in consumer behavior, pushing consumers toward touchless forms of interactions. As a result, traditional paper-based communication is now less desirable and is progressively being replaced by digital interaction.
Concurrently, postal services globally have experienced significant disruption due to lockdowns and social distancing measures. Consumer demand for key customer communication is being sought after from CCM tool capabilities. Enterprises must now rapidly evolve their CCM business strategies to cater to this evolved consumer demand, and implement digital experience strategies.
The Dash for Digital Experience
CCM commenced during a world of paper-based communications. Printing invoices, proposals, and statements and then assigning them via the postal service to their consumers was once the primary purpose of CCM.
Now digital channels have appeared, allowing consumer communication via an app, email, SMS, MMS, web, virtual advisor or digital assistant, and more recently, Internet of Things (IoT) devices. All of these digital channels now allow the customer to decide between multiple online delivery modes, which in turn has increased the quality of all communication.
The digital communication trend has enabled companies to recognize and identify new digital experiences via personalized and targeted announcements, advertisements, and product recommendations.
As application leaders create plans for CCM, marketing and digital experiences, they must recognize that all three of these areas overlap, sometimes significantly. Determine the primary role for each, but identify secondary roles where overlap exists.
Rationalize this overlap where possible, but be prepared for some duplicative, overlapping features to remain. As long as all stakeholders recognize the overlapping features and their roles in the process, the organization will be in a tenable situation.
So What are the Marketing Implications for Successful Digital Experience?
CCM continues to span two key yet diverse organizational business silos, focusing on marketing and operational perspectives. A notable amount of product advertisements are delivered via CCM channels rather than the traditional marketing ones.
Few (nimble) organizations have managed to successfully unite these two silos, but there are plenty that have not done so yet. This departmental business gap could lead to a disconnected customer engagement strategy and a lower overall quality customer experience.
To prevent this from occurring, an organization must perform the following:
- Formulate and develop an action plan to collaboratively unite the operations and marketing CCM factions,
- Include key consumer engagement strategies to introduce digital experience into the plan, while assessing and appraising a suitable digital experience platform.
Summary
CCM vendors continue their drive towards the cloud, while companies are unearthing major challenges when planning modernization or consolidation projects regarding their CCM platforms.
The biggest challenge they face will be the costs, quantifying the ROI in the business case, and eventually implementing such a transformation and migration venture between CCM platforms. But the potential positive CX outcomes will far outway the investment required - providing organization's act promptly and perform the transformation process as seamlessly as possible.
For more information on CCM trends, the latest CCM technology or software, or anything else related to CCM, keep browsing our comprehensive content library.
