Madrid, February 14, 2023 – Think of Customer Communications Management (CCM) solutions as the heart of an enterprise. Imagine CCM platforms pumping blood to other areas and functions of the companyand nourishing them with everything they need to succeed.
CCM systems can have a major impact on many aspects of companies and represent the cornerstone on which key business indicators such as customer satisfaction, loyalty and engagement, and business revenues are built.
Everything is connected. Everything is part of a single “body”. And everything must work like clockwork. Customer Communications Managementsolutions can be the master watchmaker needed by companies that are looking at the future with ambition.
Satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement
Communication is the basis of all relationships, including customer-supplier relationships. That is why it is essential to deploy all means of communication available to companies (which abound today) to reach their customer base with impactful, customized, and relevant messages.
In addition, high-quality communication must be maintained throughout customers’ lifecycle in order to extract their full potential, which is achieved by pulling two key levers: retention and expansion.
How can these two levers be operated? Many companies already have a function called Customer Success, which is responsible for boosting customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. To do this, the function works along six dimensions:
1 – Purpose of the Customer Success function
best practices define success as the main purpose of the organization, which is why they establish a vision inspired by four main customer needs:
- Value extraction: the Customer Success function helps customers extract maximum value from software proactively, i.e., customers do not have to ask questions, but are informed of the things they do not know.
- Knowledge of the customers’ business: Customer Success knows the customers’ business processes well, understands their challenges and difficulties, and helps them to solve them.
- Trust: Customers trust that Customer Success works to make their lives easier, represents and protects them, and treats them as if they were valuable and important.
- Convenience: Customer Success knows everything about the business and the specific needs of customers and works collaboratively with all areas of the company to provide support throughout the customer lifecycle.
2 – Engagement model
It must be well defined, with clear roles and handover points. If we list the phases of the customer lifecycle (landing, deployment, adoption, support, expansion, and renewal), it is on adoption and expansion where Customer Success has the most impact, as it is responsible for training and onboarding customers, as well as monitoring them and making proactive interventions to provide solutions. It also plays a key role in identifying cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
3 – Coverage
Customer Success must reach all customer segments through high- or low- intensity contacts based on alerts.
4 – Predictive analytics
It is important to develop a real-time scorecard to monitor the adoption of each product according to predictive metrics related to customer behavior. This involves measuring three essential indicators:
- Scale of adoption: How often customers use the product.
- Scope of adoption: How many functionalities are used by customers.
- Measurable value creation: How much value customers generate by using the product.
5 – KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
It is vital to define and track KPIs that truly measure success in terms of consumption, renewal, expansion, and advocacy.
6 – Skills/experience
It is advisable to hire employees with a deep understanding of business processes and extensive experience in customer-facing roles. It is about moving away from generalist profiles and hiring specialist profiles that support specific products and buyers and drive utilization and adoption.
Revenues and Customer Communications Management
If the above dimensions are mastered, we will already have satisfied, engaged and loyal customers. But make no mistake. Revenue growth is not automatic and will not come by itself. Customer communications and engagement must be proactive, personalized, and continuous. It is not enough to get it right at the beginning and then relax.
According to the consulting firm Bain & Co.,between 60% and 80% of satisfied customers do not do business again with the company that initially went out of its way to fulfill their wishes. The reason? Despite providing customers with valuable experience, the company failed to really connect with them and build a long-lasting relationship.
It is no wonder that loyal customers bring more revenues to companies that meet their growing and changing expectations. Companies that have implemented sophisticated CCM processes and supporting software know this, which is why they focus on improving the experience they deliver to customers, not to mention employees and external contractors.
Top-notch Customer Communications Management solutions can serve customers from anywhere and through any device with an internet connection. This avoids the hassle of having to go to the service provider’s premises. The less dependence on IT support, the greater the satisfaction.
There is a direct correlation between customer experience and revenues. In fact, Forrester developed the Customer Experience Index and was able to quantify how much each CX point represents in the revenues of companies in various industries.
The time has come to change the focus of CCM solutions and its role in the CX vision. CCM needs to be taken out of the isolation it used to live in. This is because it was originally born out of batch printing processes and email delivery workflows. In most cases, it was a cost center.
Customer Communications Management needs to break through and take the leading role in enterprises, as its use will help them design innovative, high-impact digital experiences and, in the process, generate greater revenues and savings.
About DocPath
DocPath is a leading enterprise document software company that offers its international customers the technology that allows them to complement their ERP and implement advanced Document Output Management, Customer Communications Management and document software pooling processes.
Founded in 1993, DocPath is based in Europe, USA and Latin America and is present with its Solutions in companies around the world. Among its customers there are prestigious banks and top-tier corporations, facilitating the difficult and complex task of designing, generating and distributing their business-critical documents. DocPath keeps a strong commitment to R+D+i, an area to which it allocates a large part of its revenues, and in which lies one of the keys to its success.
For more information, visit: www.docpath.com.
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