4 Strategic Trends to Adopt for Long-Term Customer Communications Success

Wednesday, Nov 2nd 2022
Diverse group of 9 young people standing next to each other against a limestone brick wall using smartphones

When formulating or refining your organization’s customer communications strategy, it’s important to consider not only where the customer communications management (CCM) industry is today but also where it’s heading in the future.

Having the ability to anticipate the future state of CCM and take the steps necessary now to ensure you’re prepared for what’s to come is the key to your customer communications efforts being successful down the road.

To assist you in predicting where the marketplace is going, we have tapped into a number of industry peers to get their perspective on what they think forward-thinking organizations should consider including in their customer communications strategy today to ensure success tomorrow.


1. Customer Experience will Remain a Top Priority

Most organizational leaders agree that customer experience (CX) should remain a priority. The impact CX has proven to have on customer loyalty, continued growth, and staying competitive is undeniable. As a result, digital transformation--which is an integral core element to delivering customer experience—will be imperative.

“In 2019 the CCM market will continue its evolution towards customer experience (CX). This does not mean that the more traditional customer communications will go away—the need for bank statements, insurance policies and business correspondence will remain, but they will be embedded in digital applications,” says Kaspar Roos, Founder & Principal Analyst, Aspire.



2. A Unified Strategy for Customer Communications

Year by year, project by project and trend by trend; many organizations have inadvertently assembled a large collection of communication systems. What seemed to be a series of easy solutions to isolated problems have, in many cases, has morphed into a tangled mess of technologies that negatively impact the customer experience. As regulations continue to change, customer expectations increase, and organizations align around customer experience (CX,) many organizations find it impossible to clearly communicate with customers – which is deadly in today’s CX-focused market

Communication hubs that can unify and manage various channel interactions are critical now, and in the future. 

“These hubs will also help break down organizational silos as they will act as a gateway for all types of customer communications,” explains David Stabel, Customer Communications Advisory Services, Keypoint Intelligence.

A unified communications platform will make it possible for every team to improve the way they communicate with their customers; no matter where each customer’s journey started or what department issues the communication.



3. The Connected Customer is Here to Stay

The connected customer is the new reality.

“Customers’ expectations are that brands know them, anticipate their next moves and communicate in real-time with content that is relevant and timely for the journey they are on,” says Annette Franz, Founder and CEO at CX Journey. 
 

80% of consumers expect a response within 6 hours of posting to social channels.
- Forbes 


Personalized and proactive communications are the key in 2019 and beyond. 

According to Econsultancy, organizations with a cross-team approach with the customer at the heart of all initiatives are nearly twice as likely to exceed their business goal by a significant margin. 

 

4. Personalization & Customer Empowerment

Reg Bath, Managing Director at Beehive Online Solutions believes that customer communication needs to enable true personalization and empowerment of the customer.

“The ability for customers to receive more than just a communication is important,” Bath explains, “but I envision a future where personalized ‘vaults’ with enriched data will allow the recipient to view, search and consolidate all of their communication in one place, thus enabling them to take ownership of their own ‘data’.”

Kirk Spellman, Manager of Integrated Media, echoes Bath’s point of view on customer empowerment. 

“Customers will expect insurance carriers to provide personalized, relevant information without face-to-face contact” when it comes to purchasing.

 

Learn more about these strategic trends and how leveraging them can lead to long-term customer communications success. Download a free copy of our new eBook “Top 12 Customer Communications Trends to Watch in 2019 and Beyond” today.

4 Strategic Trends to Adopt for Long-term Customer Communications Success