BE MORE by Evolving from CCM to CXM
Quadient was delighted to have Kaspar Roos, Founder & CEO of Aspire CCS, present as a keynote speaker for the Customer Communications track of Quadient Connects. A virtual conference held on May 15th, the event gathered customers, business leaders, and solution experts from all five of Quadient's key business areas—united under a common purpose of exploring how to "be more" by embracing the possibilities of digital transformation.
In the world of Customer Communications Management (CCM), being more means using the latest CCM technology innovation to transform your customer communications into a connected, omnichannel customer experience that creates a positive brand perception. Historically, CCM software was used to automate the generation of outbound, transactional documents, such as bills and statements. These documents were business-driven, managed in isolation from one another, and produced as batch print workstreams. This reality is rapidly changing though.
Today, many businesses recognize customer communications as the foundation of customer experience. As this shift in thinking progresses, leaders are beginning to transition to a Customer Experience Management (CXM) approach. This movement is known as the "CCM-to-CXM evolution." In the Quadient Connects session, Transforming for success: Why 2024-2025 are pivotal to the CCM-to-CXM evolution, Kaspar Roos shares what's driving the evolution, why the next two years are critical, and the capabilities proven to advance CXM maturity.
Below is a summary of several highlights from Aspire's keynote presentation.
Key Trends Shaping the Evolution
Four trends are becoming particularly important in 2024-2025 and accelerating the pace of the CCM-to-CXM evolution:
Shift to bi-directional experiences
Customer communications are no longer limited to the boundaries of the document. Outbound, static communications are being replaced by bi-directional, digital experiences that respond to customer events and inquiries in real time. While statements, policies, and correspondence are still critical parts of the customer communications mix, the portfolio is expanding to include dynamic interactions, such as digital onboarding/enrollment experiences, interactive welcome kits, chatbots, and more.
Transfer of CCM ownership
While CCM has historically been owned by IT, the rising adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions is moving CCM out of the siloes and democratizing ownership. Organizations that have reached full CXM maturity have their customer experience and/or line of business leaders overseeing customer communications, with the CCM user community expanding to new departments and teams, such as sales and marketing. CCM is becoming a collaborative, shared ownership practice led by those responsible for CX performance.
Rise of Communications Experience Platforms (CXP)
Traditionally, companies with limited IT resources have outsourced CCM application management, but as businesses evolve to CXM, many are realizing the need to bring communications composition into the broader CX capabilities set. To do so, organizations are looking to their CCM vendors to host and manage their customer communications in a cloud environment as a "Communications Experience Platform" that allows them to develop CX capabilities as an extension of core CCM functionality.
Growth of generative AI
60% of organizations that have successfully evolved from CCM to CXM report that they have plans in production or underway to invest in AI to automate or enhance customer communications, making generative AI one of the biggest disruptors to the customer communications market. Organizations are looking for CCM vendors to integrate AI into their solutions to empower business users to create high-quality communications—faster, while strengthening compliance, brand consistency, and approvals.
Why the Next Two Years are Pivotal
2024 and 2025 are two of the most pivotal years in the CCM-to-CXM evolution. According to Aspire, an anticipated "second wave" of digital transformation is forecasted. In 2019, 31% of all critical communications were sent through digital channels only. In 2020, that percentage grew to 38% - increasing by a dramatic seven percentage points in response to the pandemic.
While digital growth has stabilized since 2020, survey results indicate that another digital wave is expected to arrive in the next few years due to current market dynamics, such as labor shortages, inflation, rising fuel and postage costs, and new legislation. This market outlook means businesses must transform their CCM today to survive the digital surge that's coming.
"You need to prepare for another big push of digital transformation that is coming." - Kaspar Roos
Critical Capabilities to Advance Maturity
To evolve from CCM to CXM, you must first understand how the two practices differ. CCM is often defined as the creation, delivery, and management of personalized, data-driven communications, which traditionally, have been driven by compliance and business processes. CXM, on the other hand, is the management of all interactions across channels as part of an omnichannel experience designed to drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement.
Businesses effectively navigating the evolution are merging the power of CCM with three key capabilities:
- Customer Journey Mapping (CJM)
Organizations that have achieved CXM transformation are 90% more likely to leverage customer journey mapping (CJM) than CCM 1.0 companies, making CJM a critical CXM capability. As a pioneer of the CCM-to-CXM evolution, Quadient is the first and only vendor to offer CJM fully integrated with CCM, in addition to supporting data integration with enterprise systems, such as CRM, for a total picture view of all customer touchpoints across channels.
"Quadient is one of the vendors early on to invest in this area because they recognized that true customer experience is built by getting that complete overview of all of the different touchpoints." - Kaspar Roos
Mature CXM organizations bring customer communications into their journey mapping to understand the impact of communications on the customer experience. By uniting CJM with CCM, root causes are quickly identified and solved, and the customer experience is looked at from a true outside-in perspective, which is essential to effective customer experience management.
- Intelligent Forms
Intelligent forms are key to advancing CXM maturity, as they extend digital transformation to the larger customer experience and allow the collected data to inform and drive additional omnichannel interactions. Solutions like Quadient Inspire iForms simplify digital form design and implementation, and auto-trigger personalized follow-up communications via integration with the Inspire CCM engine. By digitalizing forms and feeding the captured data to CCM systems, businesses can increase cohesion and personalization across CX touchpoints.
- Generative AI
AI is another critical CXM capability. AI-driven content intelligence can dramatically accelerate communications creation while improving content quality, relevancy, and compliance. Quadient recently integrated AI-powered content intelligence into its Inspire CCM template editor, which is revolutionizing content management with AI-assisted authoring, sentiment analysis, readability scoring, translations, and more. By harnessing the potential of AI, businesses can create more effective communications with less time and effort.
Transforming for Success with Quadient
According to Aspire, 20-30% of communications volume originates from legacy CCM systems, but as the need for evolution grows, businesses are realizing that now is the time for change. 84% of businesses plan to migrate or are in the process of migrating to a modern CCM platform that can help them realize their omnichannel customer experience goals.
If you're considering migration, we encourage you to consider Quadient. Positioned as a Leader on three market segment grids of the 2024 Aspire CCM-CXM Leaderboard, we have the world-leading software capabilities, professional services, and expertise needed to bring your business to the forefront of the CCM-to-CXM evolution.
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