Regardless of what industry you’re in, if you’re in business to drive revenue, then you’re in the customer experience (CX) business. How you communicate with your customers matters more than ever. Every person in an organization – from customer-facing sales and services reps to the engineers and product designers building your product behind the scenes – impact the brand, product and service experience.
CX remains a broad discipline, covering customer feedback management, customer engagement and satisfaction and customer growth - just to name a few. But the least discussed is probably the one with the biggest potential and impact: customer communications management (CCM).
Customer communications are the bedrock of CX
Savvy strategic leaders know that customer communications are the foundation for driving lasting business outcomes.
If we think about all the things we love about our daily experiences: at the grocer, opening new accounts, getting our vehicles serviced, going to a local restaurant – we always want three things: consistency, speed, reliability. We want to know what we are getting, when and the quality in which it will be delivered. Combined, these elements can shape a valuable experience, one that keeps customers happy and loyal. But unlike our favorite restaurant service, most customer interactions with brands like insurance, healthcare, banking, regulated services and more, center entirely upon customer communications. And today's consumers expect – and demand - value at every touchpoint.
But CCM is not always easy to implement – in fact, it’s proven elusive for many. In some organization's customer communications may fall under marketing, while it belongs to customer growth or specific lines of business for others. No matter where CCM falls, the common denominator is the ability where you create and deliver great customer communications drives excellent customer experience. So, empowering your business users across all departments with these tools is critical to success.
Think like your customer to empower your customer-facing teams
So how and where do you start on your path to transforming customer communications? Here is a list of questions that reframes your communications initiatives with a customer lens. Use these questions to evaluate the value your organization provides for consistency, speed and reliability measures that are crucial to exceeding customer demands.
Consistency
Communicating continually with customers shouldn’t be your goal. Quality over quantity still rules, but organizations also must communicate in a way that is aligned to customers’ immediate and future needs, and consistent with their in-the-moment channel and device preferences. Consistency also has a lot to do with your brand – and with consistently delivering value to your customers.
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How do your teams, large and small, design communications that deliver value through content, tone, look and feel?
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What benefits could your business unlock if changing a customer communication template, or updating brand or regulatory content only took seconds?
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Take an email for example, how many people are involved in sending a customer email and what controls are in place to minimize error, yet still allow for an empathic and personalized touch?
Speed
Nowadays, a minute is an eternity. Really. When someone says “I’ve sent you a text message” the first thing we all do is check that we’ve received it. And if we haven’t after a minute, we’d likely assume something has gone wrong with our phone or service. Every customer communication your business sends is met with those same expectations. A minute too late could cost your business greatly.
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What results can your business unlock if you could deploy a customer communication solution in hours, so your teams can proactively communicate with customers within days?
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Is your organization set up to respond to customers via email or SMS at the time customers need it? How long does it take to make meaningful content changes to communications?
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How many teams or individuals are signing off on communications and how long does that take? And, how valuable would it be to have multiple threaded approval workflows or rejection capabilities?
Reliability
Fairweather or turbulent times, businesses can no longer be responsive on your terms and expect customers to trust them. Consumers want to know that brands have their interests and needs in mind because they rely on proactive information to manage their lives: to live better, healthier and to protect their family and future.
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How are your employees empowered to communicate with customers in a human-centric way that sets your brand apart, but also keeps your business protected?
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What tools help you empower employees to add a human touch to digital communications to deliver high-value or high-risk communications to ensure the highest level of quality?
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Can your teams monitor the delivery, receipts, open rates, unsubscribe rates and more for email and SMS in one place to inform the next relevant and timely communication?
At Quadient, we believe that providing a market-leading customer experience means providing best-in-class customer communications. Every interaction can be meaningful because connections matter.
Want to learn more? Visit quadient.com/experience for a wealth of CCM and CX resources.
