If we think of a customer before the 2000s, almost regardless of the industry, the customer received the information that the company considered appropriate to encourage him in his decision to purchase a product, by the most massive means possible to reach the largest possible population, seeking to economize communication costs and with a generic message. In other words, communication was focused on the product to be sold unidirectionally from the company to the largest possible portion of the market.
Today, society as a whole has changed, demanding higher quality at the time of purchase: from the most basic aspects, such as the product or service to be acquired, to the pre-sale, purchase, and post-sale experience. Quality in terms of the complete shopping experience is expected as an individualized treatment, with relevant information for me, efficient and reliable.
This radical change in such a short time is strongly influenced by the new technologies that have been developed in the last decades. Since the birth of the Internet, the customer has at his fingertips, if he wishes, any information to compare products, services, and companies, so that the minimum expected characteristics are no longer a novelty and are taken for granted. The “experience” becomes the most relevant element in the decision-making process.
It is for this reason that mainly medium and large companies have been forced to find ways to adapt their internal processes to have an integrated view of the information to be provided to a customer, incorporating in this ¨mix¨ different areas, whose communication until now had perhaps been null. This is where Customer Communication Management (CCM) solutions began to play an important role since they are the ones that allow meeting these new customer relationship challenges: to create the appropriate and personalized message for each one of them, at the time and through the channel expected by the customer.
The difficulty of carrying out these messages designed for each customer may lie in the synchrony of the 2 types of communication required, namely:
In both opportunities, the CCM solution must be strategically integrated to store and process customer information in real-time, adding data that may come from the Legal, Customer Service, Commercial, or Product areas. In addition, there are the technological functions to join both communications, which are called Transpromotional Communications, where the targeted message – be it a promotion, an institutional communication, or a birthday greeting – can be included in the pre-established messages, increasing, even more, the efficiency of the Communication Policy.
All these possibilities are provided by automated technology, which improves the efficiency in terms of time and way of generating, dispatching, and following up a communication. But the general strategy of communication, the content of the messages, and the use of any post-communication information is a matter for the specialists in this branch and for which the CCM solution established by the company must be as friendly with an operational user as it is technically efficient.
If the first characteristic, which mixes aesthetics with ease of use and adaptation, is not fulfilled, it will be difficult to achieve any of the objectives set out in the Communication Policy established at the time of implementing a CCM.
We can think of having predefined business rules that require modification over time, for example: which customer segment the company is interested in congratulating on its anniversary; or the ease of being able to create, modify and reject variable message templates; that customer preferences can be modified dynamically (with some systems integration or from a customer service channel, such as Call Center); and that information can be obtained by the CCM itself from the data generated by the communications made (how many customers were interested in the message sent compared to what was expected, which channels were the most effective, how many interactions have been achieved, etc.). All this retroactive information contributes to cost reduction, sales projections, and even changes in any marketing or product strategy.
An integral and unified CCM solution that reduces costs and increases value in the information rather than in the data; that is adaptable over time, that allows, for example, the incorporation of new channels (new social networks or communication technologies) and that can provide technological independence for its use by internal users, such as Marketing, Advertising or Product areas; will allow any company to drastically increase its relationship with the customer, retaining and exceeding the expectations set in the new century.
With Coldview you can achieve these goals! We invite you to read more about our CCM solution: Coldview CCM – Manage all inbound and outbound communications.
