If you missed the webinar on The Future of Mail: Print’s Place in a Digital World, I encourage you to take a look. Will Morgan, Senior Research Analyst for Aspire CCS shared key findings from a recently published report. Understanding the new digital reality: How to transform your customer communications in a time of rapid change, provides an in-depth analysis of the profound effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the business environment and its impact on how businesses communicate with customers. For the study, Aspire surveyed 2000 consumers in North America and 300 businesses in the United States.
During the webinar, Quadient launched several polls to get a pulse on how attendees were coping with their own digital reality.
Poll Question #1.
Has COVID changed the way you communicate with customers?
A whopping 85% of attendees answered yes. Those who primarily relied on in-house mailing operations and print had to find alternative means to communicate with customers when office employees were relegated to remote work.
It’s not surprising that the impact of COVID forced a shift in their business priorities and how companies manage customer communications. This poll reinforced Aspire’s findings that COVID brought about unprecedented digital acceleration.
Poll Question #2.
Where are you in the digital shift of your customer communication strategy?
While it was encouraging to see almost 45% placed a greater priority on digital transformation, nearly one quarter feel they are still behind where they should be. In the past, Aspire found SMBs tended to overestimate their progress, however according to their study that no longer seems to be the case.
The key to understanding where your business might fall in this chart is to calibrate the definition of digital transformation. For many SMBs, “digitization” simply means transforming a static print document into a PDF. Also, an organization might redesign a document in HTML but fail to take advantage of any of the actual digital capabilities it offers, such as deep linking or interactive displays and charts.
It’s also important to note just because your business still mainly relies on print and physical mail, doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing. You should never go digital just because you can. Digitize where it would make the most impact for your customers.
Be sure you understand the job that a printed piece does before you change it out for digital. There are definitely situations in the customer lifecycle where print might be more powerful and even preferable, at least for some clients.
Learn how to break barriers preventing you from moving forward in your digital transformation in our e-book. Enabling Your Digital Office for SMBs: Breaking Barriers to Document Automation.
Poll Question #3.
Of the following what would you consider your top business priority going into next year?
Growing revenue seems to be on everyone’s mind with leaner budgets and a leaner staff, while other priorities seem to be evenly split. A company could accomplish all of these goals by investing in a simple and flexible Document Automation Platform.
Adopting automation will reduce manual processes and help connect front and back-office systems. Document automation has the potential to not only improve customer experience but to provide a consistent level of interaction throughout the customer lifecycle.
The ultimate goal is to provide a seamless interaction and experience across all print and digital channels. Businesses must be emphatic, flexible, and exhibit transparency through their communications in a time when doubts are rampant, and trust is at a premium. To hold on to customers and maximize their lifetime value, start by thinking strategically about customer communications and see if you can make a superior communications experience a competitive differentiator.
