Part 6: Connecting the dots: megatrends in global customer experience

This post is part of a series based on content from my recent keynote presentation at Quadient Inspire Days 2023 titled “Connecting the dots: megatrends in global customer experience”.  In it, I discuss how to manage communications in times of uncertainty and how to “bring it all together” as you work toward connecting the dots to serve your customers better.  If you prefer, you can access the video recording of the webinar here instead.

Managing communications in times of uncertainty

If you are following the business news, economic predictions, inflation numbers, and employment analytics avoiding scary headlines is challenging.  This is where we collectively need to focus on future proofing our businesses – ensuring we can launch new products quickly and adjust our communications' tone to match macroeconomic conditions.

We also need to be able to integrate new technologies quickly.  As new AI chatbots and image generators become available, how do you quickly embed them into your processes?  And these processes need to be easy to learn because we hear from customers that their businesses are dealing with a significant amount of employee churn.  Creating a better employee experience helps reduce churn and simplify onboarding while better supporting hybrid work environments is essential in a post-COVID business environment.

And finally, cash flow – how do you optimize communications to deliver top-line revenue efficiently?  This point is top of mind for CFOs today.

How to bring it all together

There is good news out there as well.  Because when you look at customer experience, we see three main drivers that should make customer communications experts happy, proud, and excited for the future.

While more regulations are impacting digital communications and invoices – particularly questions around consumer and financial information – the technology exists to manage this data at scale.  The technology exists for data accuracy and security to make data more usable across your organization as you digitize your processes.

Digitizing interactions improves the experience for your customers and your employees.  And thanks to the cloud, the technology is available to both large and small to mid-size companies.  It’s anticipated that by 2030 companies of all sizes will have digitized these workflows in the cloud.

Automation remains a priority, as it drives efficiency, performance, and the bottom line.  The ability to leverage automation across the business is here, and we should be excited about that.  For the first time, businesses can choose the deployment model that works best for them, whether that be installed in-house, managed by an IT team, moving entirely to the cloud, or even outsourcing.

The options are available to help you quickly transition to digital and future-proof your business.  You can connect the dots and quickly customer experience applications. 

The 10-Step Checklist

Here is a checklist of items to ensure before moving to the cloud, as presented in the 2022 State of the CCM to CXM evolution published by Aspire Communications.  These are many of the top things we review with our customers before they embark on a CCM Cloud deployment: 

• Manage secure and trusted communications
• Have open APIs to integrate
• Promise simplicity for all internal/external stakeholders
• Provide flexibility for future changes
• Ensure interoperability
• Deliver with scale, speed, and within SLA
• Maintain efficiencies without sacrificing quality
• Ensure cost-effective solutions for the bottom line
• Comply with new and ongoing mandates
• Support future consumer technology

You need to have that flexibility when things change in the future, you need to deliver with scale.  To deliver on your existing service-level agreements with the business, customers, and partners.  In terms of the bottom line, a commitment to a cost-effective solution and making sure that you can support new consumer technology that you might not think of today.

Whether you want to drive the top line, bottom line, efficiency, or customer lifetime value.  Whether you want to stay compliant, give the business the tools to move fast, or differentiate your brand.  Connecting the dots is the key to generating world-class experiences for your employees.