CCM: When Customers are the Ringmaster, How Should the Company Act Ignoring customer care is not an option any more

Markets nowadays are highly competitive, and almost every business owner is aware that it is as cut-throat as a circus out there. Keeping in tow with that analogy, the ringleader is the customer. No matter how much hard work the artists put in, circuses cannot survive unless they shell out a near-flawless experience for their customer, aka the audience. Much the same way, businesses are not too different when it comes to their dependence on customer experience.

What Led to the Evolution of Customer Communication Management or CCM?

Businesses, today, are aware of the fact that any hiccup in providing a good customer experience translates to losing customers to a rival company, and ends up reducing their own share of wallet. However, in an attempt to create tailored communications, organizations often end up making use of multiple platforms which are costly and pose difficulties in presenting real-time communication to customers.

Traditionally, organizations followed the old-school approach when it comes to customer interaction. For years together, they stuck to sending out monotonous-looking paper documents, be it for customer's bills, statements, or any other documents related to customer communication.

After the advent of digital technology customer expectation and behaviour evolved, and so did technology. Customers began to demand smart, personalized, consistent and real-time information. Any misstep in a dialogue of the assortment losing a loyal customer, increase in churn and eventually curbing of revenue. Acquiring a new customer incurs five times more cost than retain an existing one. This is where an efficient CCM platform makes its much-needed entry and reins in the ringmaster, by consolidating all customer communications within a single solution.

Customer Communication is a Tricky Domain to Tread. How Does one Simplify it?

With customers becoming the force that decides the fate of a business, ignoring them is not an option. Customer communication, however, remains tricky and what adds to this domain is the fact that the term takes into consideration more than one kind of communication.

With different kinds of communication come a varied set of challenges. Ensuring documents are sent across through all channels, maintaining consistency in the templates, ensuring documents remain secure, and complying to brand guidelines, are a few notable ones. In a market as unforgiving as the one at present, businesses might have to pay a hefty price for not being able to deal with any of these challenges.

While all of this provides context, the question remains: how does a business keep up with these expectations, and survive? The answer lies in the implementation of a solid CCM platform. Which brings with it another question: what makes a CCM platform the ideal companion for a business looking to retain and acquire customers, and happy ones at that? Allow these pointers to lead you through that answer.

Leave no Channel Un-Engaged - A CCM system must allow you to engage with your customers through multiple channels – print, fax, e-mail, and social media. Customers use more than one channel for communication, and it barely makes sense to not be available at all.

Personal Touch Matters - The new-age CCM platform must create ultra-personalized communications based on a customers' profile. Maybe even generate outbound communications in local languages, which comply with local regulations.

Every Customer Deserves Equal Attention - CCM helps you achieve a 360-degree view of customers present across product-lines or departments, and maintains information and data at an enterprise level. This, in turn, helps keep track of customer relationships across the globe.

Security is of Utmost Importance -This remains a key requirement for outbound communications especially in the Financial Services sector. A CCM solution must provide out of the box security features on the documents such as password protection, barcodes, digital signatures, and must follow security standards.

Integrating Legacy With Modernity - Most organizations store data in different legacy systems. Hence, an effective CCM system would be the one that can easily integrate with core legacy systems, fetch data from them and help create consolidated statements and documents.

In conclusion, CCM plays a pivotal role in achieving the personalized and interactive experience that customers demand today. Leverage the capabilities of this unsung hero and improve your customer's share of wallet.