The pandemic continues to be felt in substantial ways. Companies large and small are confronting significant market forces that have impacted how they interact with customers. External pressures include the rise of hybrid work environments, global supply chain constraints, inflation, and rising costs, just to name a few.
Quadient wanted to compare how attitudes toward digital transformation and business priorities may or may not have evolved due to the effects of the pandemic versus a 2018 commissioned study on Mail Technology and e-Delivery Adoption by Keypoint Intelligence and where SMBs are investing their resources. For this research, Quadient re-engaged Keypoint Intelligence to survey and interview a broader more diverse group of businesses and organizations predominantly in the SMB space in the US and Western Europe (UK, Germany, France).
The goals of the study were threefold:
- Understand current attitudes and business priorities around managing customer communications
- Examine how the current environment has impacted the way businesses communicate with customers
- See if there has been a shift in the balance between physical and digital mail
Riley McNulty, Group Director of Consulting at Keypoint Intelligence, presented the findings in a recent webinar The changing face of customer communications.
Key factors driving the trend toward digital communications
The use of digital document delivery channels has accelerated as a result of both long-term trends and the pandemic’s effect on the economy, customer demands, and business operations. Fifty-eight percent of survey respondents have changed how their company sends customer communications due to external factors. Factors driving the shift from physical to digital delivery channels are listed below:
Efficiency and cost savings
Driving efficiency and cost savings go hand in hand and collectively make up 38% of the initiative behind the move to digital communications. Physical mail requires staff to be on-site, paper stock and large equipment cost money to run and maintain and require manual labor to process. Some businesses that require a paper trail, have implemented an outsourcing solution to manage their physical mail to reallocate key staff to higher-value tasks and take advantage of discounted postage rates.
Customer preference and experience
Customer expectations have increased dramatically. As a result, organizations need to be mindful of what their customers and stakeholders really think and how they would like to engage with their business. “We have to understand how our customers want to interact with us. And we certainly need to make sure that we have the right workflows, right processes, and the right technology to make sure that we're delivering the best customer communication experience possible,” McNulty says.
Remote work
The next largest piece affecting the drive toward digital communications is organizational change, with the growth of employees working remotely being the biggest contributing factor. Keypoint asked participants how many employees are spending at least some of their time working remotely as well as what they anticipate a year from now. As the below chart illustrates, the percentage of employees working remotely is projected to decline marginally over the next 12 months.
Remote work adds fuel to the ongoing demand for cloud-based solutions when employees don’t always have access to office equipment and inventory. "You need to be looking at what are the types of platforms that would best optimize the workflow," he adds. For example:
- Do the software systems in place today support a hybrid work environment?
- Can you manage mail preferences because customer preference is a key driver for digital transformation?
- Does your staff have access to all the tools that they need to function efficiently?
Areas of planned investment
Many of the macro trends directly driven by COVID are merging with pre-existing trends. In a related study from July 2021, Keypoint found SMBs are investing capital resources to address challenges related to:
- Managing remote workforce and/or return to office
- Collaboration, communications and teamwork
- Moving more to cloud solutions
- Workflow and manual processes
Based on qualitative interviews, that Keypoint conducted as a part of the Quadient study, some SMB leaders are looking at every single customer touchpoint to find ways to digitize, modernize, and make sure that they have the systems, workflows, and processes to deliver the customer experience that they want to deliver. What many SMBs are realizing is what they expected to be a short-term fix is set to have long-term implications.
What about physical mail? Where does that fit in?
Physical mail persists, ensuring that many companies will need tools to manage online and offline communications. “It's not going to completely disappear, but mail use is declining,” McNulty says. Still, it's important because many companies have a broad demographic of customers or have regulatory requirements that drive the use of physical mail.
To learn more about how customer communication strategies are evolving and how you can keep up with the pace of change, watch the webinar reply. For a deeper dive into Keypoint Intelligence findings download the whitepaper – Drivers of Change in Customer Communications.
