Your Guide to Enterprise CCM Strategy
This is a condensed version of our full article exploring why tech-first modernization efforts often fail. For a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of enterprise CCM strategy — including 6 qualities to look for when choosing a CCM platform and 4 questions to ask, the differences between CCM and CRM, and more —click here .
Do we live in an age of instant gratification? Some would argue “yes.” As concentration falters and attention spans become shorter, consumers often appreciate the satisfaction of living in the moment. Social media consumption is a great example of this, as is fast food. But instant gratification–which often results from simple transaction-oriented selling–isn’t always the end goal for all customers. Many are looking for memorable and personalized customer experiences (CX) from the brands they interact with. They’re also willing to invest time and effort into developing ongoing relationships with these brands. These experiences and relationships are asynchronous with instant gratification.
More and more organizations are realizing that if they want to get the edge over their competitors, they must think of great customer experience (CX) as the primary goalpost. Furthermore, they understand that one of the most powerful ways of delivering CX and building meaningful relationships with their customers is through customer communications. Great customer communications can enable organizations to do more than address customers’ challenges quickly. It also empowers them to maintain their brand image, improve their conversions, develop meaningful customer relationships, and even convert customers into loyal, long-term supporters and advocates. For all these reasons, it’s critical for organizations to make customer communication the cornerstone of their CX strategy.
However, presenting a robust CX is just half the battle. Making this a working reality requires identifying current gaps, setting future goals, formalizing the communications processes, workflows, and best practices, and implementing automated tracking, analyses, encompass, and response. This is where customer communications management software can be a real game-changer.
But what are the benefits of a great customer communication management system? And how do organizations choose the right ccm solution for their needs?
More commonly than smaller organizations, it’s medium-sized firms and large enterprises–in both B2C and B2B spaces–that really benefit from customer communication management platforms. This is because they frequently have hundreds, if not thousands of customers, with whom communications must be managed and maintained at a certain level. These communications should be personalized, created on-demand, and quickly disseminated. They must also be tracked and analyzed to maintain engaging conversations and determine the best actions at each touchpoint for every customer.
What Is Customer Communications Management?
Customer Communications Management (CCM) goes beyond just marketing emails or call centers—it covers every touchpoint across the customer journey. Gartner defines CCM as a strategy to improve how businesses create, deliver, and store outbound communications through various channels like marketing, contracts, social media, and more.
With consumers mentioning brands 90 times per week on social media, a strong CCM platform centralizes communications, making them personalized, interactive, and effective in driving customer engagement.
A robust CCM platform can support organizations with every element of their customer communications strategy, including:
As the enterprise grows, so does the complexity of customer communications. That’s why CCM software is so crucial for smart enterprises that focus on what really matters–the customer.
7 Powerful Benefits of Customer Communication Management Software for Enterprise
Customer communication management solutions often include design tools, composition engines, workflow engines, and built-in omnichannel management–in short, everything an enterprise might need to revitalize their customer communication and consistently deliver enhanced customer experiences.
Here are some ways customer communication management software helps organizations streamline their customer communications:
1. Data-Driven Personalization
Modern organizations have access to vast amounts and sources of customer data. If properly handled and filtered, this data can yield very useful insights about their customers’ demographics, preferences, behaviors, purchase history, preferred communications channels, and more. A CCM platform provides the means to streamline and leverage these insights to create micro-segments, design personalized communications for each customer at every stage of their journey and deliver these via their preferred delivery channels.
2. Customizable for the Organization’s Unique Needs
The best CCM platforms offer both out-of-the-box integration flexibility and advanced customization. They can also seamlessly integrate with data and content from any application, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365. This provides the pliancy and agility required to utilize enterprise tools and create memorable customer communications.
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3. Self-Service Capabilities
A feature-rich customer communication management platform should provide self-service capabilities that organizations can offer to their customers. Customers can use these data fields to update their contact details, request duplicate documents, open service tickets, etc. This gives them a quick and easy way to get information, resolve challenges, or take relevant decisions without having to wait for a support person to get back to them. Self-service features in CCM also enable organizations to increase their operational efficiencies, lower their costs, and boost their profits. A further advantage is that they can focus on more strategic tasks that add even greater value to their customer communications.
4. Compliant Communications
Many organizations–even large enterprises – can struggle to keep pace with regulatory requirements with respect to customer communications. Enterprises now face a greater burden to create customer communications that are compliant with the privacy and confidentiality requirements enshrined in laws like California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). With pre-built compliance functionalities, customer communications management software provides a holistic view of their entire communications package and enables them to avoid the risks of non-compliance such as financial fines, loss of customer trust, and reputational damage.
5. Streamlined Operations
Modern CCM software delivers time and cost savings, enhancing a business’s overall operational efficiency. For example, integrated and automated workflows reduce approval, response, and turnaround times. The result is better quality communication, fewer errors, and a lower administrative and management burden on your internal teams.
6. Improved Customer Experience
When your customers feel that the communication between them and your organization is reciprocal, transparent, relevant, constructive, and timely, they’re more likely to remain loyal, contributing to higher customer lifetime value.
7. Enhanced Employee Experience
CCM doesn’t only boost your customers’ experience; it can go a long way to making your employees happier and more productive. For example, CCM software automates many tasks that would previously take administrators and data capturers hours to perform, which boosts their level of job satisfaction. Additionally, good CCM will mean fewer customer complaints for your customer service team to field, which will further elevate their levels of happiness and reduce their on-the-job stress.
Multi-Channel vs. Omni-Channel: Which to Choose?
Modern customers are looking for ongoing, two-way brand conversations that move seamlessly between multiple touchpoints. Moreover, they’re not impressed with generic, one-directional, and “cookie-cutter” communications that go out to thousands of people simultaneously. They want to engage with brands and be heard, and neither lectured nor spoken down to.
Successful and customer-centric organizations understand this and make every effort to meet these demands. They also understand that product, price, or brand aren’t necessarily the right differentiators to focus on – CX is. But to deliver great CX consistently, it’s essential for the organization to be present and available on their customers’ preferred communications channels, whether social or web, mobile or email, voice, or print. To do this effectively, their long-term customer communications strategy should be designed around omnichannel communications.
Why Not Multi-Channel Communications?
With a multi-channel approach, disparate communications elements such as voice, email, social, etc. fail to leverage customer information or history since they work in independent ‘silos.’ There’s little or no interaction between them, which leads to duplication, poor communications, and worse, frustrated customers.
An omnichannel CCM platform eliminates these issues. It removes inefficient silos, integrates all communications touchpoints, and leverages the power of intelligent automation. In doing so, it offers a unified view of customers across their entire journey and transforms communications into highly personalized, engaging CX. It also gives customers the freedom to seamlessly switch between different channels without providing their information multiple times. With fast solutions, convenience, and transparency, omnichannel CCM provides all these advantages to customers, which ultimately delivers valuable business outcomes for organizations.
OpenText Exstream: A Powerful CCM Platform for Medium and Large Enterprises
OpenText Exstream is an innovative omnichannel CCM solution for medium and large enterprises in any industry. Powerful yet user-friendly, OpenText Exstream enables organizations to create connected customer journeys and seamlessly manage their customer communications through customers’ preferred channels, including email, web, mobile, and chat.
Some of its key features and capabilities include:
If you’d like to know more about CCM but don’t know where to start, we can help. As leading CCM consulting experts and a service partner for many North American enterprises, WayPath offers tailored technology solutions for enterprise help unlock the full potential of omnichannel CCM to increase enterprise wallet share and boost customer loyalty and retention. To discuss your CCM project, contact us here . We can help you with needs assessment, solution mobilization, implementation, migration, and support.