A few decades ago, organizations’ concerns around modernizing their Customer Communications Management (CCM) ecosystem was mainly about transitioning their customer communications data from outdated legacy mainframes to the latest–and increasingly-ubiquitous–desktop Windows environment. Today, CCM modernization is more about managing and enhancing the myriad physical and digital components of the process. Undoubtedly, the main goal of such an endeavor is to consistently deliver valuable and meaningful experiences to every customer, across every touch point. Smart organizations realize this. But smarter organizations do something about it.
The theme of this article is CCM modernization–a subject that we’ll tackle in two parts. First, we first address the key elements of a modernization strategy, and then analyze why this is so critical for enterprises operating in today’s complex techno-business climate.
The Key Elements of A CCM Modernization Strategy
Although it’s rarely possible to predict the future requirements of customers with any degree of accuracy, it’s still prudent to assume that these will change. To ensure that they continue to meet their customers’ evolving needs, modernizing CCM should be an integral part of the enterprise customer engagement toolkit. This modernization strategy should involve these inter-linked, ‘synergistic’ sub-strategies:
i. Create new templates and unified branding that simplify life for the customer and for the organization.
ii. Implement centralized control of all equipment, people and processes in the CCM value chain and align them with customers’ needs, while keeping costs down and brand quality up.
iii. Validate customer-related data to minimize delays and ensure that communications flow smoothly across all channels and touchpoints.
iv. Add quality control technology to customer communications to mitigate the risks of errors and inconsistent customer experiences.
v. Incorporate new digital communications channels into the CCM ecosystem seamlessly and securely.
Three Powerful Reasons to Modernize Customer Communication Management
Here are three compelling reasons modern enterprises should modernize their CCM systems, platforms and processes today and not tomorrow.
i) Current customer communications strategies are not future-proofed enough to meet upcoming challenges
In the modern business landscape, it’s critical for organizations to engage their customers in ongoing, two-way conversations rather than in intermittent monologues (aka ‘sales-y push’). In fact, the former is the cornerstone of an outstanding customer experience strategy. But to make such conversations possible, organizations need to integrate digital communications capabilities with customer insights, personalization and relationship-building. Older strategies are just not robust enough to help them achieve these objectives.
ii) Legacy systems are nearing end of life
When budget cuts and regulatory compliance take precedence over customer communications, the firm is in trouble. Even knowing this, businesses often put off technology overhauls–or even upgrades. This becomes especially problematic when the existing CCM platform is on a ‘limited update’ program. Ultimately, the organization falls behind competitors who do embrace modernization.
iii) CCM modernization costs are falling
Reduced cost is one of the most significant reasons to consider CCM modernization. Two main factors are responsible for this positive development: a) CCM in the Cloud, and b) The increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and natural learning processes (NLP) technologies. Newer tools for effective content analysis, assessment, refactoring and migration also dramatically lower the cost of CCM modernization.
OpenText Exstream is one of the most powerful CCM platforms available today and WayPath provides the support that organizations need to optimize it for their CCM modernization goals. With our team of highly-skilled OpenText Exstream developers, we help re-design our clients’ CCM approach so that it’s less about one-way, transient transactions and more about meaningful, long-term customer experiences. If you’re looking for a world-class team of OpenText Exstream developers to help you meet your unique CCM modernization goals, fill out the form here. We’ll get in touch soon.
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