As more and more operating aspects of B2B and B2C organizations move online, the key to driving growth and maintaining a balanced scorecard becomes abundantly clear: customer communication management is critical to achieving sustainable growth. Despite businesses being prepared for the shift of customer preference toward digital communication, pandemic restrictions made it so that any business conducted in-person would be highly limited. Many organizations weren’t prepared for such limitation, meaning their digital communication may have been lacking. However, a majority of organizations made significant enough changes to keep their customers pleased.
What about the customers who weren’t pleased with the adjustments? Well, believe it or not, according to the infographic coupled with this post, other customers have indicated that nearly half of all businesses they interacted with throughout the pandemic had not made significant enough changes to their customer communication management strategies. When customers feel this way or are treated in a way that makes them feel respected, they’re more likely to disregard any given business and spend their hard-earned money elsewhere. For struggling businesses without the ability to communicate to their customers effectively, they may face losing their most loyal customers while also losing their ability to attract new customers. Therein lies the advantage of a high-quality customer communication management strategy.
The three primary aspects that make up a solid CCM are personalization, security and privacy. Personalized communication is important as it allows customers to feel like their unique and individual needs are being heard and met by businesses. While sharing this information regarding their needs, customers also want to feel like their private information is remaining secure. Providing a delicate mix between personalization and privacy can be a challenge for businesses. A majority of the time this requires highly sophisticated digital communication platforms that are integrated with other critical business operating systems to meet the demands of customers.
These three aspects are meant to provide a foundation to customers, but businesses around the globe have come to integrate more unique aspects into their customer communication management strategy. For example, online retailing businesses have prioritized including live chat services for the sake of interactivity. Shoppers can communicate with a representative in real-time regarding stock, sizing and even deals they might’ve overlooked. Years prior, some customers wouldn’t have even considered this possible; now it’s become the norm in the industry. Similarly, most organizations in the e-commerce space have come to utilize omnichannel communication. This method includes using every channel available to communicate with customers. Rather than limiting how customers interact with your organization and how your organization interacts with customers, omnichannel communication breaks down all barriers. Social media tags and notifications, e-mail communication, text message deals and coupons, the possibilities are truly endless. Allowing customers to communicate through any of their preferred channels is one of the keys to a fully realized customer communication management strategy.
While these aspects may be some of the most important in CCM, they are not the only ones. Another important attribute comes from interactivity. One example of this has been the advancement of live chatting services on businesses’ websites. The ability to communicate with a representative in real-time digitally today can make or break if a customer decides to spend money with your business. Which leads to the last, and perhaps most important attribute of CCM today: omnichannel communication. As more and more advancements have been made technologically, customers no longer want to be limited to one way of receiving information and communicating with businesses. A fully realized social media presence, in addition to a website equipped with a live chatting service, coupled with text-based notifications, all make for the best customer experience. Limiting your customers to one channel can prove to be disastrous.
While the breakdown provided in this post can help organizations struggling with their customer communication management strategies, there’s still more to learn. Some additional information regarding these strategies can be found within the infographic featured alongside this post. Infographic courtesy of Conduent.
