This post is based on content from my recent keynote presentation at Quadient Inspire Days 2023 titled “Connecting the dots: megatrends in global customer experience”. It focuses on connecting the dots and highlighting some of the trends we have observed in the market by talking to our customers, partners, and industry analysts. If you prefer, you can access the video recording of the webinar here instead.
The impact of personalized communications
I’d like to start by telling the story of my daughter. She is a freshman at college, and a year ago, she went through the grueling process of applying to different universities. During that process, she shared information with each university regarding her accomplishments, interests, and ambition.
As the schools got to know her and as she got to know the schools – by attending tours and interviews - she started to receive communications, and she would respond very emotionally to these communications.
Towards the end of the process, the most anxious moment for any teenager is receiving the acceptance letter - either electronically through email, an online portal, or mail. Of the nine universities that she applied to, only three universities personalized their communications, and you can imagine which ones she responded to the most favorably. She, of course, ultimately selected one of these three schools.
Connecting the six dots across six key areas
How these universities interacted with my daughter is a great example of how companies need to build, regardless of size or industry, more meaningful customer connections by “connecting the dots”.
Let’s look at what dots we are referring to. The first set of dots we must consider are our various stakeholders – customers, prospects, and investors. These are the stakeholders that you need to be able to engage with, and each has different elements they care about.
The reason customers value communications is that they build trust. At Quadient, many of our customers come from industries that deal with sensitive information - financial services, insurance, or healthcare. These companies need to build brand trust, and this starts with personalization. As customers, we don't want to see a “dear customer or, dear sir, dear ma'am” We'd rather see a very personalized communication that means something to us.
Companies must also consider various demographics. My father, who loves and has transitioned to mobile and does his banking online, still likes to receive his quarterly statements via paper because he feels paper is more tangible, authentic, and trustworthy. The demographics that our customers need to be able to support are wide-ranging – from a generation that only cares about mobile devices and digital engagements to one that expects paper-based communications. Every prospect's journey is different. It's unique.
My journey is going to be different from someone else's journey. And where we start and where we end off can be different. And the journey for me this week might be different for someone else next week. Your company needs to understand the different steps of the journey and generate interactions that work in the context of each journey.
The need for bi-directional communications
Communications need to be bidirectional. And customers need to be able to start on one channel and complete their interaction on another. For example, suppose I'm applying for a mortgage. In that case, I want to be able to start that process on my iPad, continue on my computer, and finalize the paperwork when I go into the bank to sign for the actual mortgage. This journey takes time and requires the capture of supporting documentation, including the validation of credit, salary information, and financial validation.
You need to be able to support these various types of omnichannel communications and documents that are required across the journey. Because accurately and securely delivering personalized communications is critical to delivering your brand promise. This is important because there are a lot of tools and websites available that give prospects visibility into a company's brand in terms of how they service existing customers and how they live up to the brand promises they have made.
And finally, we have investors. In the last three to five years, there's been a big emphasis on CSR or corporate social responsibility. Make sure that companies are doing the right thing in terms of carbon footprint, moving to digital, giving back to the community, and taking care of their employees. Today’s investors look to understand the KPIs for CSR and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), ensuring companies have a plan and are transparent in terms of reporting against those goals.
And then obviously understanding the risks of the organization. What markets are they playing in? What risks are they willing to take? What is the growth strategy? What are profits and operating costs? These questions help investors better understand the company’s equity story.
Let’s look at the dots that are internal to organizations. The first one is communications, the second is processes, and the last is internal stakeholders.
Looking at communications, it is important to ensure that the communications that you're sending out with your company's brand are built using accurate data. For example, you don't want to send an investment statement with incorrect information, or that doesn't belong to the recipient. You must ensure that the information you're gathering and putting into that communication is accurate. In addition, communications must be compliant - not just from a legal perspective - but also from a corporate branding and policy perspective.
Making sure that the Ts and Cs, the terms and conditions of the products and services that you're offering, are compliant with what you're offering to the market. And then obviously, from a communication perspective, making sure they are timely.
You then have different processes, always looking to be able to make processes more efficient.
How do you reduce the cost of creating and sending communications? How do you take a 10-step process and reduce it to three steps or fewer? Building efficient processes requires intelligence and integration with other systems – including your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other systems that you may have in place.
Finally, you must also ensure you make the experience for your employees amazing. It’s essential to understand what the experience looks like for the customer and what it looks like from the employee's perspective. As more data is available to the different stakeholders, we need to be able to analyze that data to make both communications and the experiences they power better for the customer and the employee.
We also then must consider mergers and acquisitions (M&A). If you acquire two or three companies, how do you integrate them into the organization? In summary, the question is how do we connect all the dots? Historically, doing so has been difficult due to political, technical, financial, or strategic factors.
In my next post, I’ll discuss strategies for how to address these challenges. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog series capturing the content from “Connecting the dots: megatrends in global customer experience”.
