Start With Data: Delivering Improved Customer Communications
Data sits at the heart of business processes and a wide range of critical operations rely on it. These operations will only be smooth and efficient if data is well-managed. What’s more, an organisation’s data strategy has a big impact on customer and stakeholder satisfaction.
Consider local government. It handles an enormous amount of data and if its activities don’t make best use of it, the result can be staff and stakeholder frustration and wasted time and funds through duplicative activities.
A recent report by the Auditor General for Wales looked at the opportunities that local government has for creating a “data-driven environment”. It considers the impact that standardising data, improving data-driven decision-making, investing in data analytics and integrating systems can have.
Breaking down information silos
Getting to grips with data can be a daunting task for any organisation, regardless of which sector it operates in. There are a range of data protection and privacy laws and regulations to understand and comply with. Data management practices must adhere to all relevant external (and internal) requirements, but within the parameters set by these, consolidating and centralising data can help break down information ‘silos’ for more efficient data usage and a better customer experience.
This is particularly the case with external communications. Often, these are managed in a piecemeal fashion with different processes and systems for different communications channels (physical/digital mail; social media etc.) and across different departments.
This can result in customers and clients having to provide their details multiple times, duplication of effort, inconsistent or duplicate messages going out, unnecessary cost from multiple communications sent separately and – when separate databases have to be maintained – data getting out-of-step across departments.
Connect internal activities for multi-channel communications
This list of issues is by no means exhaustive. After all, data underpins customer, client and stakeholder communications, but an advanced customer communications management platform can help. It makes connections across an organisation – its departments, media, sites and teams – for effective multichannel communications management.
It can challenge inconsistency head-on through a set of communications templates that present the organisation in the right way. It can streamline internal approvals, enable personalising of communications and deliver messages through each recipient’s preferred channel for maximum impact and customer response.
Centralisation of communications brings a number of benefits that include efficiency in how processes are managed across teams, a simpler approach to achieving compliance through a ‘change once, apply everywhere’ approach, and the opportunity to draw on consolidated data sets thus reducing maintenance and achieving a single, unified view of each client, supplier and other contact.
Improving customer communications may start with data but it incorporates a range of cross-team business processes. Find out how Quadient's advanced customer communications management software can help your organisation optimise every communication for efficient internal operations and improved customer satisfaction.
