
Customer Communication Management: The Essentials

Customer communication management should be high on any company’s agenda – and yet, 88 percent of organizations aren’t satisfied with how they manage customer-facing communications across the customer journey.
That’s a worry, because how you go about communicating with your customers is one of the biggest factors in creating outstanding customer experience. And that’s something all businesses should aim for: no less than 64 percent of people believe customer experience is more important than price in their choice of brand, after all.
But what exactly is customer communication management? And how can it help your business?
Let’s take a look.
According to Gartner, “Customer communications management (CCM) is defined as the strategy to improve the creation, delivery, storage and retrieval of outbound communications, including those for marketing, new product introductions, renewal notifications, claims correspondence and documentation, and bill and payment notifications.”
A core part of CCM is analyzing the success of each type of communication through data. This involves looking at factors such as open rates and click-through rates of emails, communication marked as spam, number of responses from customers, unsubscribes, and post-communications surveys results.
Companies can then use this information to improve their communication strategy, helping nurture and improve on relationships with their customers.
Although the concept of customer communication management has been around for a while, it’s now vastly more complex than ever before – largely due to the shift towards digital communication, rather than through other means.
Digitization has led to certain trends, including:
So, effective customer communication management should aim to offer quick, two-way, omnichannel interactions to customers, otherwise your brand (and its growth) may suffer.
In an omnichannel world, keeping a handle on all this complexity and open fronts requires good tech. And that’s where customer communication management solutions come in.
CCM software helps companies create, deliver, organize and retrieve customer communications by allowing them to compose, personalize, format, and deliver content from a variety of sources to their customers. These communications can be distributed through a number of media formats, including mobile, email, SMS, web pages, social media, and print.
Learn more about how Acquire can help you better communicate with customers.
The functions of customer communication management solutions bring positive benefits to your business. And that’s because they can help you:
So, if you want a truly comprehensive solution that can help you achieve all these goals, keep an eye out for software that can:
As the digital revolution changes what’s possible in the world of communication, so customer communication management software is advancing its own capabilities to keep up. Two things in particular to look out for in future are:
Software is a great help in improving communication with your customers, but getting there doesn’t happen overnight – it’s part of a longer journey. And different companies are at different stages of this journey. Knowing where you sit can help you understand what you need to do to move your company towards the end goal.
The “The State of CCM-to-CXM Transformation” report, breaks down this journey into three specific parts:
Even with CCM software at your fingertips, moving through this journey still means getting your strategy spot on. Here are a few important things to remember:
Even with watertight processes in place, and the best software at your disposal, ultimately, communication is a human thing. Your team should be ready to go the extra mile to offer the best communication experience to customers – whether that means quickly jumping on a Zoom call, connecting through Skype, or sending a follow up email. Cultivate this open culture and your customers will thank you for it.
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