Quadient Connects: Accelerating the CCM-to-CXM Evolution
Quadient was delighted to have Kaspar Roos, Founder & CEO of Aspire CCS, present as a keynote speaker for the Customer Communications track of Quadient Connects. A virtual conference held on May 15th, the event gathered customers, business leaders, and solution experts from all five of Quadient's key business areas—united under a common purpose of exploring how to "be more" by embracing the possibilities of digital transformation.
In the world of Customer Communications Management (CCM), being more means using the latest CCM technology innovation to transform your customer communications into a connected, omnichannel customer experience. Historically, CCM software was used to automate the generation of outbound, transactional documents, such as bills and statements. These documents were business-driven, managed in isolation from one another, and often produced as batch print workstreams. This reality is rapidly changing though.
Today, many businesses recognize customer communications as the foundation of customer experience. As this shift in thinking progresses, leaders are beginning to transition to a Customer Experience Management (CXM) approach. This movement is known as the "CCM-to-CXM evolution." In the Quadient Connects session, "Transforming for success: Why 2024-2025 are pivotal to the CCM-to-CXM evolution" Kaspar Roos shares what's driving the evolution, why the next two years are critical, and the capabilities proven to help accelerate the transition. Below is a summary of several highlights from his keynote presentation, which shared a wealth of revealing market research insights and helpful recommendations.
Key Trends Shaping the Evolution
Four trends are becoming particularly important in 2024-2025 and accelerating the pace of the CCM-to-CXM evolution.
Shift to bi-directional experiences
Customer communications are no longer limited to the boundaries of the document. Outbound, static communications are being replaced by bi-directional, digital experiences that respond to customer events and inquiries in real time. While statements, policies, and correspondence are still critical parts of the customer communications mix, the portfolio is expanding to include conversational interactions, such as digital onboarding and enrollment, as well as digital welcome kits, chatbots, and dynamic account information.
Transfer of CCM ownership
While CCM has historically been owned by IT, the user-friendly nature of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions is moving CCM out of the siloes and democratizing ownership. Organizations that have reached full CXM maturity have their line of business and/or customer experience leaders overseeing customer communications, including decisions on what gets sent, when, and to whom. CCM is becoming more of a collaborative, shared ownership practice led by the teams that define and drive customer experience strategy.
Rise of Communications Experience Platforms (CXP)
Traditionally, companies with limited IT resources have outsourced CCM application management, but as businesses evolve to CXM, many are realizing the need to bring communications composition into the broader CX capabilities set. To do so, organizations are looking to their CCM vendors to host and manage their customer communications in a cloud environment as a "Communications Experience Platform" that allows them to develop CX capabilities in the cloud, without the risks or costs of self-management.
Growth of generative AI
38% of organizations that have reached CXM maturity report that they have AI plans in production, making generative AI one of the biggest disruptors to the customer communications market. Organizations are looking for CCM vendors to integrate AI into their solutions in a way that simplifies and enhances content creation, while at the same time, strengthening compliance, approvals, and quality control.
These four trends explain what's shaping the CCM-to-CXM evolution, but what's making 2024 and 2025 so critical? According to Aspire, an anticipated "second wave" of digital transformation is forecasted. In 2019, 31% of all critical communications were sent through digital channels only. In 2020, that percentage grew to 38% - increasing by a dramatic seven percentage points in a single year in response to the pandemic.
While growth has since stabilized, survey results indicate that another digital wave is arriving in the next few years due to current market dynamics, such as labor shortages, inflation, rising fuel and postage costs, and new legislation. This outlook means businesses must transform their CCM today to survive the digital surge that's coming.
"You need to prepare for another big push of digital transformation that is coming." - Kaspar Roos
Critical Capabilities to Drive CXM Evolution
To transition from CCM to CXM, you must first understand how the two practices differ. CCM is often defined as the creation, delivery, and management of personalized, data-driven communications, which traditionally, have been driven by compliance. CXM, on the other hand, is the management of all interactions across channels as part of an omnichannel experience that's designed to drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement.
Effectively navigating this evolution depends on three key capabilities.
- Customer Journey Mapping (CJM)
Organizations that have achieved CXM evolution are 90% more likely to leverage customer journey mapping (CJM) than CCM 1.0 companies, making CJM a critical CXM capability. As a pioneer of the CCM-to-CXM evolution, Quadient was the first vendor to offer CJM fully integrated with CCM, in addition to supporting journey mapping integration with enterprise systems for a total picture view of all customer touchpoints.
"Quadient is one of the vendors early on to invest in this area because they recognized that true customer experience is built by getting that complete overview of all of the different touchpoints." - Kaspar Roos
Mature CXM organizations bring customer communications into their journey mapping to understand the impact of communications on the customer experience. By uniting CJM with CCM, root causes are quickly identified and solved, and the customer experience is looked at from a true outside-in perspective, which is essential to customer experience optimization.
- Intelligent Forms
Intelligent forms are key to making an effective transition to CXM, as they extend digital transformation to the larger customer experience and allow the collected data to inform and drive additional omnichannel interactions. Solutions like Quadient Inspire iForms simplify form design and auto-generate follow-up communications via integration with Inspire CCM.
- Generative AI
AI is another major CXM driver, with 60% of CXM organizations either planning to invest in or already investing in generative AI-based capabilities to enhance customer communications. The top area they're investing in? Content intelligence. Quadient's recently released Inspire AI capabilities bring AI-powered content intelligence into the Inspire template editing application, revolutionizing communications content management with AI-assisted authoring, sentiment analysis, readability scoring, translations, and more.
Accelerate Your Evolution with the Right Partner
According to Aspire, 20-30% of communications volume originates from legacy CCM systems, but businesses are realizing that now is the time for change. 84% of businesses plan to migrate or are in the process of migrating to a modern CCM platform. If you're one of the many considering migration, we encourage you to consider Quadient. Positioned as a Leader on three grids of the 2024 Aspire CCM-CXM Leaderboard, we have the capabilities, professional services, and expertise needed to bring your businesses to the forefront of the CCM-to-CXM evolution.
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