Not all customer communications management (CCM) software is created equal. In fact, there’s a fairly broad spectrum of solutions, ranging from lightweight Microsoft Word and SalesForce.com (SFDC) plugins to complex and powerful (and costly) multifunctional enterprise-grade platforms. But how can you tell if a solution that lies somewhere along that continuum has the features you need to get enterprise-grade CCM outcomes for your business without unneeded complexity and expense? Here are four essential features a CCM solution would need to have to be considered enterprise-grade:

Here’s an interesting Forbes article on customer experience (CX) by Shep Hyken (@Hyken): Moving from Omni-Channel to a Channel-less Experience. I really like this forward-looking vision of channel-less CX. Right now, companies are scrambling around trying to support and link together customer communications happening in multiple channels, and they typically react to emerging new channels slowly and awkwardly, if at all. This results in a chopped-up customer experience in which frustrated customers have to explain the reason they’re contacting the company over and over again.

The level of quality, consistency, contextualization and personalization of your customer-facing communications can have a dramatic effect on customer experience – as evidenced by the brands that improved their Forrester Customer Experience Index scores the most.

In a previous post, Security Overview: Cloud-Based Customer Communications Management, we gave you a quick summary of each of the security layers: physical, network, operating system (OS), database and application. Let’s take a closer look at cloud-based CCM security at the application level, which includes handling of customer data.

We’ve been delving into enterprise content management (ECM) technologies as prelude for discussing how we treat “content” in INTOUCH®, our new customer communications management (CCM) software. Software vendors and enterprise leaders need to understand that ECM is evolving rapidly (we’ve written several posts on this topic), and that technology choices made now will impact how smoothly organizations will be able to adapt their content management and digital experience delivery systems to the new way of doing things.

Writing for Forbes, customer experience expert Shep Hyken (@hyken) gives us Three Ways to Create an Engaging Customer Experience That Drives Sales. Hyken advises, “No matter what type of business you’re in, if you want to take your customer service and experience to another level, take a few lessons from retail and hospitality.” Specifically, he’s talking about how many successful retailers, restaurateurs and hoteliers increase their sales by creating an engaging customer experience through the customer’s senses. He makes some great points we thought were worthy of highlighting.