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The Authoritative Guide to Achieving CX Excellence:

Unlocking the Power of Customer Communications Management (CCM)

2016 © GMC Software.All rights reserved.

Dear Reader,

I know what you’re thinking—not another “authoritative guide.” I don’t blame you. As one who produces and consumes a significant amount of content on a daily basis, I’ve seen my share of guides and papers, including a number of Customer Communications Management (CCM) guides.

I promise, this one is different.

Every industry and market changes. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) evolved from three separate markets—sales force automation, marketing automation, and service management. The market continues to evolve to include analytics, collaboration, and business process management. Once upon a time, CCM was focused solely on print and transactional content. They continue to be important for many companies, however, the world has changed and as a result CCM has as well. The world is digital, consumers are mobile, devices evolve faster, content is dynamic, compliance is mandatory, competition is fierce, and customer experience matters. Everything that was true 7-10 years ago is no longer true.

Once upon a time, communications were managed by the IT and operations center—today many more stakeholders take part in the process due to the importance of communications. Consumers are engaged with brands across channels and expect answers now. It’s no longer acceptable to wait until the monthly statement for balance updates—they have to be one click away in a mobile app. This is precisely the reason why the Chief Experience Officer is now involved with the CCM process.

Every company, small or large, is forced to support customer demand or they won’t survive. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that—there are countless examples of this across all industries and geographies. This guide is intended to update you on the new CCM trends, the business requirements for driving change, and best practices on connecting CCM to the office of the customer.

The world has evolved and promises to continue changing—this guide is a resource to help you drive change within your organization so you are better prepared for the future. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as the team enjoyed putting it together for you. After you read this guide, we want to hear from you. What are your current challenges? What was the most useful part of the guide? How are you using this to enhance your CCM practice? What did we forget? Please email us at [email protected].

Tamir SigalChief Marketing OfficerGMC Software

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamirsigal

https://twitter.com/tamirsigal?lang=en

What is customer communications management (CCM)?

A window into CX: customer journey mapping

CCM as a strategic advantage: top four business benefits

Financial Services: applications and benefits

The verdict is in: omni-channelvs. multi-channel vs. cross-channel

Insurance: applications and benefits

With the rise of CX, where does CCM fall?

The CCM Maturity Model: where do you fit?

The critical path to CX excellence: four CCM fundamentals

Selecting the right CCM platform

Table of contents

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1What is customer communications

management (CCM)?

5

The Authoritative Guide to Achieving CX Excellence: Unlocking the Power of Customer Communications Management (CCM)

1What is customer communications management (CCM)?It begins and ends with the customer journey

When thinking about customer communications, the customer journey is the best place to begin.

Consider this: your organization spends millions to attract prospective customers with engaging messages and content distributed through modern communication channels, including YouTube, social media, mobile ads, and more.

Now, think of all the interactions that take place after you have won a customer; contracts, welcome kits, bills, statements, claims processes, customer correspondence, upsell and cross-sell communications, and so on. How do they measure up?

• Are they relevant, personalized, and accessible on-demand?

• Do they reflect positively on your brand? • Are they consistent and compliant?• Are they bi-directional?• Are they delivered via the customers’

preferred channel today? What if they change their preferred channel?

• Do they incorporate the knowledge of subject matter experts across your organization?

• Do they help or hinder the overall customer experience?

The truth is, once you’ve earned a new customer, the rest of the customer journey is just as important. And that’s where many organizations fall short.

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Thanks to super-brands like Apple, Google, and Amazon, consumer expectations are higher than ever before. Today’s customers want personalized, relevant communications that are available on-demand and accessible via the device of their choice.

But for many large organizations—particularly in regulated B2C industries such as insurance, financial services, telecommunications, and utilities—delivering on the customer experience (CX) promise is easier said than done. When it comes to digital and communication transformation, these enterprises face a number of challenges, including:

Customer communications management (CCM) solutions have been developed to help large enterprises overcome these challenges.

Complex legacy IT systems & data silos

Operational & digital silos

Changing market regulations

Lack of IT time and resources

Pressure to improve time-to-market

The Authoritative Guide to Achieving CX Excellence I 1. What is customer communications management (CCM)?

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CCM

CRM

ERP

ECM

CCM defined

CCM software enables organizations to design, manage, and deliver high-volume and on-demand personalized communications such as letters, invoices, statements, policies, contracts, and customer correspondence from one centralized platform.

CCM technologies began 30 years ago as a transactional print-centric technology. Today, leading CCM solutions act as a centralized hub to design, manage, and deliver targeted customer communications through a number of channels including mobile, email, SMS, web, social media, print, and more.

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BY 2020, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS EXPECTED TO SURPASS PRODUCT AND PRICING AS THE KEY DIFFERENTIATOR FOR BUSINESSES.

Forbes

Lines of business

Centralized CCM platform

Customer

Information Technology

Workflow

Remote authoring

Cross-channel preview

Approval

Template creation

Data / Core Systems

Rules

Marketing

Sales

Customer service

Operations

Legal/Compliance

Why it matters

Customer experience is one of the most talked about trends in business today, and a key reason why many large organizations are investing in a modern end-to-end platform to manage customer communications—making mass changes and consistent customer experiences much easier to execute.

Engagement is also a top priority. Whether customers are clicking a link, scanning a QR code, interacting with dynamic content such as graphs and charts, or simply responding to a payment request in real time—communications must be a two-way street. Modern CCM technology powers these interactions.


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THE CCM MARKET’S NECESSARY EVOLUTION BEYOND DOCUMENT COMPOSITION AND OUTPUT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES IS EVIDENT.

VENDORS ARE PROVIDING NEW DELIVERY MODELS, SUCH AS CLOUD/SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS), AND INCORPORATING SOCIAL, ANALYTICS AND MOBILE FEATURES INTO THEIR PRODUCT ROADMAPS. THE NEXT— AND NECESSARY—EVOLUTIONARY STEP IS TRANSFORMING CCM SOFTWARE INTO CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT (CXM) PLATFORMS.”

Gartner Predicts 2016: Evolving Print Market Published: 3 December 2015

CCM PLATFORMS WILL CONTINUE TO ENHANCE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX), EVOLVE TOWARD BROADER COMMUNICATION NEEDS, AND MORE TIGHTLY INTEGRATE WITH OTHER BUSINESS APPLICATIONS.

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS LOOKING TO HELP LINE-OF-BUSINESS (LOB) OWNERS IMPROVE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE NOW REALIZE THE POTENTIAL OF CCM.

TODAY, THE ABILITY TO LINK CCM TO ALL POINTS IN THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY IS GAINING GROUND, WITH STRONGER MOBILE SUPPORT AND INTEGRATION WITH MARKETING AUTOMATION AND DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DELIVERY PLATFORMS.

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Communications Management, Q2 2016, Craig Le Clair

From CCM to CXM: analyst perspectives


The Forrester Wave™: Customer Communications Management, Q2 2016

Analyst report

Forrester evaluated 14 Customer Communications Management (CCM) vendors across 22 criteria. Find out who was named a Leader in this complimentary report.

Gartner 2015 Magic Quadrant for Customer Communications Management Software*

Analyst report

IT leaders can use this research to assess the tools that can improve this communications process, reduce costs, and deliver highly relevant communications.

http://www.gmc.net/resources/forrester-wave-tm-customer-communications-management-q2-2016


http://www.gmc.net/resources/gartner-2015-magic-quadrant-customer-communications-management-software



http://www2.gmc.net/MagicQuadrant


http://www2.gmc.net/ForresterWave


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2CCM as a strategic advantage:

top four business benefits

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Customer Experience Leaders Outperform the Market8-Year Stock Performance of Customer Experience Leaders vs. Laggards vs. S&P 500 (2007-2014)

Watermark defines Customer Experience Leaders and Laggards as the top and bottom ten rated public companies in Forrester Research’s 2007-2015 Customer Experience Index studies. Comparison is based on performance of equally-weighted, annually readjusted stock portfolios of Leaders and Laggards relative to the S&P 500 Index.

Customer Experience Leaders

107.5%

S&P 500 Index72.3%

Customer

Experience Laggards27.6%

© 2015 Watermark Consulting watermarkconsult.net/CX-ROI

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120%

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CCM as a strategic advantage: top four business benefitsWhile the business benefits to adopting a centralized CCM platform are plentiful, in this chapter we highlight four fundamental ways it improves your business, builds profitability, and provides a strategic advantage.

1. Improve the customer experience

Consumer expectations of how brands should engage are shifting as a result of the high standards set by a number of e-commerce and technology leaders. There are some compelling economics associated with a streamlined customer experience; including:

• Better engagement• More up-sell and cross-sell opportunity• Higher brand advocacy• Cost reduction (as result of fewer complaints,

lower service needs, and reduced acquisition costs)

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Centralized CCM platforms that enable real-time, cross-channel, interactive communications result in dramatically higher customer experience. They achieve this in the following ways:

Personalization & channel preference

Leading CCM solutions enable you to leverage existing templates, archived content, and data from your core systems to create highly personalized, relevant communications across virtually any channel available today or in the future. Further, CCM channel preference management tools ensure that you’re always engaging with your customers via the channels of their choice.

Interactivity

Dynamic visualization capabilities facilitate real-time mobile (and web) experiences that enable customers to engage with content using interactive charts, graphs, and sliders.

Consistency

Centralization enables a better customer experience since designs are created in a channel-agnostic way and pushed to customers via their channel of choice. Consistent messaging, just like consistent experiences, builds trust. Trust keeps customers coming back.

Convenience

A centralized CCM platform enables you to get the right messages to your customers, faster. Additionally, it makes creating a seamless on-boarding experience easy with pre-populated digital forms, electronic signature capabilities, and more.

All of these aspects help businesses create more differentiation, higher customer satisfaction, and ultimately higher customer lifetime value.

2. CCM as a strategic advantage: top four business benefits

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2. Improve efficiency: a centralized approach to cross-channel communications

Along with improved CX, increased efficiency is a key benefit to implementing a centralized CCM infrastructure. Here’s how:

Business user enablement

Centralized CCM solutions enable business users to create, edit, and manage content, instead of relying on IT to make changes. At the simplest level, business users are given access to (parts of) documents through an online web editor. At a more complex level, business administrators specify which templates may be accessed by whom, what types of changes are allowed to be made, and define approval rules and workflows. Template administrators are able to build or modify templates based on data or content components that are made available by the IT organization.

The benefits of business user enablement are very clear: it gives the business more agility and speeds up the time to market, while reducing IT costs. It also helps IT manage risk better, as compliance personnel want to closely define what type of content should be locked or edited by business users.

3. Marketing controls the personalized promotional messaging

4. IT department monitors document production and delivery

1. Line-of-business users control body text

2. Compliance teams control and approve disclaimer content


WHITEPAPER. The New Role of the CIO and COO - Making Cross-channel CX a Reality

Faced with budget cuts, shadow IT and digital transformation, CIO’s and COO’s must become tech brokers and masters of configuration. Find out what these leaders must do to help propel the CX strategy.

http://www2.gmc.net/NewRole


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Eliminate operational and digital silos

Many organizations still have separate teams dedicated to creating communications for print, mobile, email, and web—leading to operational inefficiency, high costs, inconsistency, and increased risk. A centralized CCM infrastructure, however, delivers a better customer experience; and there are efficiency gains thanks to the fact that changes are easily propagated across various touchpoints and channels.

A centralized platform accrues lower maintenance costs too, and there is a reduction in specialized skill sets currently managing a disjoined and siloed process. Additionally, the centralized tracking of communications offers benefits from not only a compliance and risk perspective, but also a customer experience and customer engagement perspective.

3. Speed digital transformation

Many traditional industries including financial services, insurance, utilities, and government have a complex infrastructure of mission-critical legacy IT technology —old systems that were developed 15 to 20 years ago for print-centric output only. Today, it’s paramount CCM integrates with existing core systems, enabling a seamless cross-channel experience through one easy-to-use interface. This way, organizations don’t need to upgrade their existing legacy core systems to achieve their digital transformation goals. Upgrading legacy systems is sometimes too risky, expensive, and time consuming.

Today, leading CCM solutions enable you to leverage existing templates and data from your core systems to create higly personalized, relevant communications across virtually any channel.


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4. Reduce risk: integrating compliance into innovation

For most financial services and insurance companies, compliance risk is unnervingly high. These firms often struggle to keep up with changing regulatory requirements to avoid the growing financial penalties of noncompliance.

Content managers often treat compliance as a barrier, when a better approach is to find ways to make compliance part of the design and development team by involving them and asking for input throughout the creative process.

Lack of control. For many organizations, customer communications compliance processes have become so cumbersome and complex that some breakdown seems all but inevitable. Compliance in these cases has become a time-consuming and expensive exercise in frustration.

Lack of time. Content owners responsible for shepherding content changes through existing processes typically rely on IT to handle these changes. Considering that IT and compliance departments often have more pressing priorities, these changes take weeks or months.

Lack of compliance oversight. Existing communications compliance processes often do not build in enough time for effective compliance oversight. As a result, content owners are constantly pushing compliance personnel to be more responsive. Not surprisingly, these circumstances create an adversarial relationship between many content creators and their peers in compliance. Content managers often treat compliance as a barrier to be overcome, when a better approach is to find ways to make compliance part of the design and development team by involving them and asking for input throughout the creative process.

Top three compliance challenges


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Integrating compliance into innovation

The key to overcoming these challenges is to involve the compliance function in the design and development of customer communications from the very beginning. This is only done through a centralized CCM solution that enables:

Collaboration. A collaborative content development process where compliance, legal, and line-of-business teams are able to share drafts from the beginning of the process, helps reduce internal frustration and speeds time-to-market.

A holistic view. To reduce ‘errors of omission’ compliance teams require a full view of the entire communications package in every form in which that material is going to appear—paper, web pages, mobile applications, and so on. This way, compliance is able to fully review and analyze not only what customers will see, but how they see it.

Greater control. Compliance personnel require the ability to manage, track, audit, and approve regulatory language quickly and easily. Modern CCM solutions ensure that changes are only made in one location and applied everywhere you choose, and content blocks are locked down to safeguard regulatory language where required.


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3The verdict is in:

omni-channel vs. multi-channel vs. cross-channel

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The verdict is in: omni-channelvs. multi-channel vs. cross-channelThe days when customers did business through a single channel are long gone. Yet, many companies are still struggling to find the right customer communications strategy. When it comes to customer engagement, there is a passionate discussion taking place today on what terms like cross-channel, multi-channel, and omni-channel communications really mean.

Let’s unpack these concepts and define them together.

Multi-channel communication simply means communicating with customers via multiple channels such as print, SMS, e-mail, web portals, and mobile applications. From an internal management perspective, multi-channel communication involves sending out material and information via multiple channels. There is often little internal coordination or consistency in what is being sent. For example, a piece of communication may look different in e-mail than on paper (in terms of data, branding, and so on). Additionally, a multi-channel communications strategy does not support bi-directional or interactive communications with customers.

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So, what’s the verdict?

The desired end state for next generation customer communications is clear: companies need to provide the information and functionality customers want, how they want it, and where they want it. Whether you call this cross-channel communication, omni-channel communication or something else—the key is to have every experience be consistent no matter the channel, and enable customers to complete transactions how and when they want.

While technology providers, industry experts, and business professionals may not agree on the meanings behind the terms multi-channel, omnichannel, and cross-channel—certainly we all absolutely agree on this:

In order to be successful, organizations must clearly define their customer communication goals as a part of the overall CX strategy. When evaluating a CCM solution, business leaders are urged to ensure the technology provider is able to meet their needs and requirements. After all, every vendor can claim an omni-channel or cross-channel experience in their sales and marketing pitches—but can they prove it? You be the judge.

An omni-channel communications strategy enables companies to send consistent, centrally managed messages across all channels.

Cross-channel communication is primarily transactional. Customers start their experience on one channel and complete it on another. For example, a customer might receive a credit card offer in an email but complete the application on paper and mail it in.

Another customer might start a mortgage application on a smartphone but complete it online using a web browser.

When the changes between channels are invisible, it’s a cross-channel experience. Further, cross-channel communications support bi-directional or interactive communications—a strategy that empowers customer-facing staff to converse with their customers through these systems in a consistent, seamless manner.

3. The verdict is in: omni-channel vs. multi-channel vs. cross-channel

WHITEPAPER. The Verdict is in: Omni-channel vs. Multi-channel vs. Cross-channel Communications

The terms multichannel, omnichannel and cross-channel have been the source of much confusion and argument among industry experts today. This whitepaper helps to define these terms and aims to help businesses find the right tools to accomplish their customer communications goals.

http://www2.gmc.net/channels

http://www2.gmc.net/channels

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4With the rise of CX,where does CCM fall?

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With the rise of CX, where does CCM fall?

Why focus on customer experience?

Consumers today have more choice in their purchasing decisions than ever before. With increased access to online price information and reviews, and informal public opinion on social media, many businesses have recognized that building a better customer experience is essential for sustaining competitive differentiation.

In highly regulated B2C industries, such as financial services, insurance, utilities, and telecoms, this is often achieved by focusing on creating cross-channel communications. By providing deeply personalized and seamless experiences across the customers’ channels of choice, businesses build more loyalty and increase retention.

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PODCAST. Talking CX with Annette Franz, CCXP

Annette discusses the importance of customer experience as a key brand differentiator for enterprises today. She offers tips on designing a great customer experience and shares the risks of not creating an actionable customer journey map.

Defining customer experience

Let’s take a step back and define customer experience and explain why it’s so important for companies to focus on the customer.

In its simplest definition, customer experience is (a) the sum of all the interactions that a customer has with a company over the course of the relationship and includes (b) the customer’s feelings, emotions, and perceptions of the brand during the course of those interactions. Examples of “interactions” include: making a purchase, using a product, viewing statements, reading correspondence, calling support, visiting the company’s website, receiving an email from the company, receiving notifications via mobile app, and more.

Focusing on the customer experience results in increased customer satisfaction and retention, stronger revenues and profitability, reduced costs (of servicing and of acquiring), as well as growth through word of mouth/referrals, repurchases, and expansion among existing customers to the brand’s other products and services.

57% OF FIRMS EXPECT TO SPEND MORE ON CX IN 2016, AND ONLY 6% EXPECT TO SPEND LESS.

Temkin Group CX Expectations and Plans

for 2016

4. With the rise of CX, where does CCM fall?

http://www2.gmc.net/podcast1


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Communications and the customer experience

When it comes to the CX strategy, customer communications are often one of the most overlooked—yet critical—components of the customer journey. In many cases, the CX strategy tends to focus on frontline communications—training and coaching employees regularly on how to best speak (and interact) with customers. Yet, customer communications such as contracts, customer correspondence, customized quotes, welcome kits, invoices, and statements, are equally important to the overall customer experience and represent a significant percentage of overall customer touchpoints.

With these communications, rarely does the customer voice and the customer’s experience get incorporated into design and delivery. These documents perpetuate inside-out thinking, where the company knows best, rather than outside-in thinking, where the customer is a part of every design and decision.

Invoices, statements, and other necessary customer communications aren’t going away. They are fundamental essentials of the business.


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Connecting marketing, customer experience, IT, and operations

The challenge with these necessary documents is how they are created: in a proven and stable environment. Historically, they have been IT- and operations-driven. Many disparate legacy systems flow into the creation of one piece of communication. For most organizations, none of that aligns with—or connects to—the marketing, branding, or customer experience.

In many cases, the CMO and the CXO (Chief Experience Officer) are not involved in that process, and so the message that these documents send to customers is vastly different from what the CMO conveys elsewhere. It’s important to communicate to customers, across the organization, and along the entire customer journey, in one voice.

How then do we give CMOs and CXOs visibility into all customer communications? What tools are at our disposal to align the operations folks with those in charge of delivering seamless branding and experiences for the customer? How do we reduce the friction between operations and experience professionals? How do we help them do their jobs more effectively in the name of a better customer experience?

1. Ensure all communications, regardless of the channel, deliver a seamless brand experience for the customer.

The right cross-functional teams need to be involved to ensure that disparate voices, systems, and channels don’t sidetrack the brand messaging and, hence, the experience. Consistent messaging, just like consistent experiences, builds trust. Trust keeps customers coming back. Communications support both the brand promise and the customer experience.

2. Map the customer journey—bringing into the map artifacts that customers use or interact with along the way including marketing communications, letters, welcome kits, statements and bills.


Enterprises today require a CCM solution that enables them to:

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5The critical path to CX excellence:

four CCM fundamentals

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The critical path to CX excellence: four CCM fundamentalsThus far, we have established the business benefits of implementing a centralized CCM solution as a part of your overall CX strategy. But what are some of the ideas business leaders should consider during the evaluation stage? How can you be sure you are investing in the right solution for your business? In this chapter, we highlight four important considerations when evaluating a CCM solution for your organization.

1. Invest in a centralized platform

Today, customer preference demands, and a constantly changing communications landscape, are driving enterprises to rethink how they manage customer communications. The more customers, communication channels, products, and services an organization has, the more likelihood there are many systems—both legacy and modern—in place to manage it all.

The result is an infrastructure of software, hardware, and business rules that requires a lot of care. In most cases, the management of customer communications lacks a holistic strategy.

Enterprises that invest in a centralized end-to-end CCM platform to design, manage, and deliver cross-channel customer communications are able to realize the following benefits:

• Increased operational efficiency• Streamlined processes and elimination of

organizational and digital silos• Consistency in brand image and messaging• Reduced risk• Cost savings • Improved time-to-market• Enabling next-gen communications• Improved CX

However, it’s important to note that technology migration is sometimes a complex undertaking. Therefore, selecting a CCM provider who has a proven methodology and extensive migration experience is critical.

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GUIDE. Moving Toward CX Excellence: Four Steps to a Successful Migration

This guide highlights the four-step methodology to ensure a smooth CCM migration, and explores three unique examples of successful enterprise CCM migrations.

The importance of a seamless GUI We’ve already concluded that consistency is a critical factor to delivering an exceptional customer experience. But what about business users?

When it comes to designing, managing, and delivering cross-channel communications, the user experience is also an important consideration. A seamless graphical user interface (GUI) across all applications not only helps to expedite employee on-boarding, but also eliminates frustration and increases user efficiency.

PROVIDING A SMOOTH AND EASILY RECOGNIZABLE UI FOR THOSE DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING COMMUNICATIONS AND MESSAGING WILL SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE AND LOWER THE LEARNING CURVE.

IDC. GMC Software: Advancing CCM into Customer Experience with Mobility and Cloud Services, Doc# US41266516, June 2016

5. The critical path to CX excellence: four CCM fundamentals

http://www2.gmc.net/4steps

http://www2.gmc.net/4steps

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2. Empower business users

Many businesses are recognizing the need to become digital masters and are rethinking how they serve customers in new, faster, and better ways. In the past, when IT were the only ones involved in developing systems, it led by default and maintained control. However, as the business itself becomes more digital, it is the line-of-business that dictates how things should be done, with the IT department often acting as an enabler.

Collaboration is becoming increasingly important, both between cross-functional employees as well as between employees and customers. In order to create and deliver timely, relevant, and personalized communications, business users require the ability to take ownership of communications, with simple or sophisticated approval workflows created to connect various stakeholders.

Executives are advised to select a CCM platform that enables people in the business to create, edit, and manage content, instead of relying on IT users to make necessary changes. Large organizations send millions of customer communications each month, which are potentially based on thousands of document templates. Managing change for those document templates is very costly and time consuming, so it is clearly a win-win to offload those responsibilities to the business.


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3. Architecture that matters

Arguably the biggest challenge for managing communications is the lack of standardized management or a holistic strategy. The older the enterprise is, the more varying levels of technology, both legacy and modern, exist. The rapid introduction of new communication technologies has led to organizations adopting one-off tools to handle the output to these channels. Additionally, for many organizations, mergers and acquisitions have resulted in a greater number of IT tools and platforms to manage.

Migrating to a single end-to-end CCM platform ensures consistency in how communications are created and delivered among the various lines of business. It also helps to standardize processes that might otherwise remain separate within their own solutions.

In terms of architecture and itegration, here we identify four important considerations: One platform to rule them all. Earlier, we established the importance of a seamless GUI. This is critical not only from a usability standpoint, but also from an integration standpoint. A number of leading CCM solutions are comprised of several acquired applications or products, resulting in a mishmash of technologies that make integration (and IT support) a challenge.

Flexibility. Whether you want to deploy a solution on premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid of both, it’s critical to seek a platform that meets your current deployment needs and future requirements.

Discover

Buy

Evaluate

Experience

++


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WHILE IT IS TEMPTING TO FOCUS ONLY ON THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, THE REALITY IS THAT THE EXPERIENCE OF USERS INSIDE THE ENTERPRISE IS JUST AS CRITICAL FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT SUCCESS. IDC RESEARCH INDICATES THAT DISCONNECTED ENTERPRISE EXPERIENCES—LACK OF CORE SYSTEMS INTEGRATION, POOR COMMUNICATION PROCESSES, AND POOR (OR NO) ANALYTICS CAPABILITIES OR DASHBOARDS —MAKE IT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO BUILD COHESIVE CUSTOMER JOURNEYS AND UNDERSTAND THEIR RESULTS. GMC SOFTWARE IS AMONG THE VERY FEW PLATFORM VENDORS ADDRESSING THESE CRITICAL NEEDS FOR THE ENTERPRISE.

IDC GMC Software: Advancing CCM into Customer Experience with Mobility and Cloud Services, Doc# US41266516,

June 2016

Integration & open technology. Customer communications touch nearly every part of the business. In order to create personalized, timely, and relevant communications across all channels, your CCM solution must have the ability to integrate seamlessly with the following technologies:

• Core systems (CRM, ERP, ECM, etc.)• Line-of-business systems (core banking,

claims/billing, underwriting, etc.)• Legacy systems (transactional systems,

homegrown applications, production management, etc.)

• Adjacent technologies (BI and BA tools, archiving systems, mobile applications, MDM, data cleansing, etc.)

Enabling next gen communications. Implementing technology that aligns with near-term and long-term goals provides assurance that the technology will evolve as communication requirements do. Many CCM solution providers are keeping up with the latest trends, implementing a single, modern CCM platform to provide enterprises with the right tools to quickly go-to-market with communications delivered in the new channel.

13:55

80F


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4. Hyper-personalization: using data to build customer loyalty

When it comes to data, banks and insurance companies are sitting on a goldmine. They have access to billions of data points on their customers that can be leveraged to engage in a highly contextualized manner. While 94% of companies agree that personalization is critical to their current and future success, almost half say that IT roadblocks (47%) and legacy technology (46%) are “major barriers” to their personalization efforts1.

The key to delivering a personalized communications experience lies in the supporting technology and its integration capabilities. That is, your CCM solution must be able to pull data from anywhere within your existing data ecosystem to create higly-personalized, relevant, and timely cross-channel communications.

Buyer beware: some CCM technologies require you to extract, transform, and load your data into an XML file before you are able to leverage it—wasting valuable time and resources and potentially damaging the customer experience. When evaluating a CCM solution, business leaders are urged to ensure that the technology provider is able to meet their integration needs and CX goals. Thus, a proof of concept is critical.

With this real-time access to data, enterprises engage with their customers on a new level. For example, banks deliver things like dynamic account statements that illustrate the customers’ monthly spending habits using interactive charts and graphs—on their channel of choice.

1 The Realities of Personalisation Report. Econsultancy & Monetate

Insurance companies have the ability to upsell new products to their customers using mobile push notifications with convenient pre-populated forms and e-signature capabilities for easy on-boarding.

When it comes to leveraging data to build customer loyalty, the possibilities are endless.


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6A window into CX:

customer journey mapping

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A window into CX: customer journey mappingIt’s critical that the entire organization works together to create the customer experience that your customers want and expect. But how do you shift the focus of the entire company to put the customer front and center? How do you help employees in all departments work together, collaborate, and innovate in the name of a better customer experience? Particularly, how do you give the CMO and the CXO visibility into the entire end-to-end process across multiple CCM systems? How do we ensure that the CMO oversees all messaging and communications, while the CXO infuses them with the customer voice, and the CIO focuses on implementing and integrating technologies that make data and information access easier?

There’s one tool that you must have in your marketing and customer experience toolbox to help you:

• Get organizational buy-in for customer focus and customer-centricity

• Understand your customer and his interactions with your organization, across competitive CCM systems

• Build empathy for the customer and what he’s going through as he interacts with your organization

• Bring the customer voice to life for the organization

• Return the business to human thinking, not number (policy, account, invoice, etc.) thinking

• Take action if and when you see something that must be corrected

The tool? Customer journey maps.

In this chapter we examine why customer journey mapping is a critical component to the overall CX strategy, some common customer journey mapping mistakes, and six industry best practices for creating a powerful customer journey map within your organization.

6

Discover

Buy

Evaluate

Experience

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Designing a great customer experience

Understanding your customers and the current state of their experience is critical to your success. To gain that understanding, you need to:

MAXIMIZING SATISFACTION WITH CUSTOMER JOURNEYS HAS THE POTENTIAL NOT ONLY TO INCREASE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION BY 20%, BUT ALSO TO LIFT REVENUE BY UP TO 15% WHILE LOWERING THE COST OF SERVING CUSTOMERS BY AS MUCH AS 20%.

McKinsey&Company, The Three C’s of Customer Satisfaction: Consistency, Consistency,

Consistency, 2014

Listen. Don’t just ask customers about the experience, listen, as well. There are a lot of different channels and ways for customers to tell you about their needs and desired outcomes, and how well you are performing against their expectations.

Characterize. Research your customers. Identify the tasks they are trying to complete. Compile key personas that represent the various types of customers that (might) buy from you or that use your products or services.

Empathize. Walk in your customers’ shoes to get a clear understanding of the steps they take to do whatever job it is they are trying to do with your organization. Map their journeys to understand the current state of the experience.

6. A window into CX: customer journey mapping

WHITEPAPER. Don’t Waste Your Time With Customer Journey Maps

This whitepaper illustrates the challenges and best practices of designing a best-in-class customer journey map and provides tips and tricks on the effective management and maintenance of these assets.

http://www2.gmc.net/CJM


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Five common customer journey mapping mistakes

Empathy is all about understanding and sharing the needs and feelings of others. To walk in another’s shoes is to understand and to live what they are doing, thinking, and feeling; these details are all part of the journey mapping process. When we know them, we understand how to deliver a great experience for each customer.

Unfortunately, journey mapping has often been criticized as a pointless exercise and a waste of time. It absolutely is, if it’s not done correctly. Some common journey mapping issues include:

1. Lack of detail. Without the level of detail that must be captured in the maps, they cannot be used to transform the experience.

2. Too high level. If you’re mapping lifecycle stages instead of individual journeys, you’re too high level to affect change in the customer experience.

3. Failure to bring experience to life. In order to do this, maps need to include artifacts that customers use or interact with along the way. Examples include marketing communications, letters, welcome kits, statements and bills, or audio files of customer service calls.

4. Wrong perspective. Customer journey maps need to be created from the customer’s viewpoint, not the company’s. If you’ve included company lingo and steps taken by the company, then start over.

5. Stagnation. If you create a map and just leave it hanging on the wall or sitting on your desktop, then you’ll suffer stagnation. It needs to be created through collaboration. It needs to be shared. It needs to be actionable. And it needs to be updated as the experience is redesigned and evolves. Customer journey mapping is not a one-time exercise.

PODCAST. Top Five Customer Journey Mapping Mistakes

This podcast episode features an exclusive interview with customer experience expert Annette Franz on the most common customer journey mapping mistakes.




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The overlooked detail

Outbound customer communications are often one of the most overlooked details of a journey mapping exercise despite the fact that 85% of firms believe that seamless experiences are critically important or very important to their overall CX strategy and business goals 2.

When it comes to CX, companies tend to focus on frontline communications, training and coaching employees regularly on how to best speak—and interact—with customers. Your customer communications are equally important. They must be streamlined, consistent, clear, and relevant wherever they’re delivered along the journey.

It’s critical to capture these communications in your journey maps as they are often a key moment of truth for your customers. For example, if there are miscommunications, e.g., “I couldn’t make sense of my bill,” then the experience is negatively impacted. And that impacts you in the form of increased call volume and decreased customer satisfaction, potentially increasing customer churn.

Customer journey mapping helps ensure that you’re aware of where and how to best deliver these communications and to ensure that they not only meet the needs of the customer but also remain consistent with the brand promise.

2 Overcome Document Communication Roadblocks to Boost Customer Experience, an October 2015 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of GMC Software


37

Mapping doesn’t have to be a waste of time

Done right, customer journey mapping is a powerful tool. Here are six best practices to follow to ensure your journey maps are actionable and transformational:

1. Use a digital mapping tool. Digital tools facilitate sharing, collaborating, and doing some of the other things noted in the following bullet points.

2. Add artifacts. This is important. Bring into the map any documents, images, audio or video files, or other messaging formats. This not only brings the journey to life but also lets you confirm whether your messaging is streamlined, consistent, clear, and relevant to that point in time.

3. Connect all the dots. Don’t miss any steps. Make sure you capture all communications the customer receives throughout the journey.

4. Go detailed. When in doubt, more details are better. The more we know, the more steps documented, the better we understand.

PODCAST. Customer Journey Mapping: Measurement and Maintenance

This podcast featuring CX expert Annette Franz, walks us through how to properly measure and maintain a customer journey map over time so that it remains relevant and impactful.

5. Assign ownership. In order to drive accountability and action, assigning owners to each of the steps along the journey is critical.

6. Connect to other systems. The customer journey mapping tool should connect to your customer communications assets (regardless of underlying CCM tool) for easy online collaboration and change management.




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7Financial Services:

applications and benefits

39


Financial Services: applications and benefits

3 Accenture, KPMG4 American Banker5 McKinsey & Company, 2015

For the last couple of years, the financial services industry has been ripe for digital disruption: investments in global FinTech companies grew from $4Bn in 2013 to nearly $20Bn in 20153 and over 50% of banks are increasing their technology spend for digital banking in 20164. There are more than 12,000 FinTech companies moving into every banking activity and market, and up to 60% of traditional bank profits and revenues could go to these start-ups in the next 10 years5. For traditional banks, the stakes are high and missteps are costly.

Incumbents, unlike digital start-ups, face many challenges when it comes to innovation, including excessive complexity due to the sheer size of the operations, a high number of legacy systems, outdated document output processes, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory compliance, and so on.

With so much activity happening in the marketplace, financial institutions have no choice but to follow (or lead) the transformation. FinTech companies threaten to erode margins, yet at the same time, they provide a strong incentive for incumbent players to change. Banks and other financial services providers cannot be complacent. They must radically rethink how they do business with their customers.

Digital disruption in the age of FinTech

VIDEO. Banking is Personal

When selecting a bank to manage our money—and our future—it’s personal. This animated video provides a glimpse into the journey of life from the perspective of a banking customer. Learn how to make banking a truly personal experience across all of life’s major milestones.

7

http://www2.gmc.net/BankingisPersonal

http://www2.gmc.net/BankingisPersonal

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Retail banking: key challenges

With new technologies becoming mainstream, consumers are living in an always-on and always-connected world. They want to be treated as individuals with personalized service that is delivered at the right time and via the right channel.

New communication technologies are bringing with them new opportunities and challenges for retail banks as increasing numbers of consumers opt to interact via online and mobile channels. However, customers still enjoy traditional methods of engaging with their bank, so it is essential to take a centralized approach and invest properly across all channels to ensure the same seamless level of service regardless of touch point.

Wealth management: key challenges

Global growth has led to an increase in the number of High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), and the competition to serve these high-value clients remains intense. These clients are constantly on the move, so they want mobility, flexibility, choice, and multi-language information.

Wealth Management firms know how and why they need to improve the CX, but they’re stuck with the basic problem of merging and presenting data from multiple sources in a way that works for their clients.

PODCAST. Let’s Talk Digital Disruption

This podcast features an in-depth discussion with banking customer communications management expert Antoine Hemon-Laurens on how digital transformation is effecting the financial services sector worldwide.

7. Financial Services: applications and benefits



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It’s time to get personal: CCM capabilities at a glance

As financial services organizations seek to improve their competitive position, improving the customer experience through a centralized cross-channel communications strategy has become a key area of focus. From paperless onboarding to interactive account statements and mobile push notifications, modern CCM solutions enable financial organizations to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. Some key capabilities include:

Paperless onboarding

Modern CCM platforms have the ability to make onboarding for new products and services easy by providing application forms that are pre-populated with customer data. Then, customers are able to quickly sign contracts using any device with integrated signature capabilities.

“OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, DIGITAL BANKING TEAMS HAVE IMPROVED TRANSACTIONAL FEATURES SUCH AS P2P MONEY TRANSFERS AND MOBILE BILL PAY. BUT FEW BANKS PROVIDE USEFUL SERVICE TOOLS —LIKE LETTING CUSTOMERS NOTIFY THE BANK WHEN TRAVELING ABROAD—OR HELP THEM RESEARCH OR APPLY FOR FINANCIAL PRODUCTS DIRECTLY IN THE MOBILE APP.”

2016 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark. Forrester Research, July 2016

Benefits include:• Increased efficiency • Reduced application abandonment rate• Reduced in-bound call volumes • Faster onboarding• Reduced print and mailing costs

Mortgages Loans Credit Cards New accounts


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Dynamic, interactive statements, billing, and reports

By integrating with existing core systems, leading CCM technologies enable organizations to transform their existing account statements, reports, and bills into personalized responsive communications that include interactive tables, charts, and special promotions. Additionally, customers are able to make bill payments from the convenience of their preferred devices, improving cash flow.

Benefits include:• Improved customer engagement• Reduced in-bound call volumes• Improved customer experience• Reduced print and mailing costs

Statements Reports Bills


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Complex document assembly

From investment portfolio packages to proxy statements and contracts, many organizations struggle with complex document assembly and delivery. Leading CCM solutions enable you to create, assemble, manage, and track complex documents from one centralized communications hub and deliver them across all channels. They allow full control over the complex relationships between different types of content, document order, compliance messaging, and more.

The result? Your customer receives a personalized, interactive, easy-to read information package via their channel of choice complete with sortable tabs, interactive charts and graphs, and built-in electronic document sign-off capabilities.

Benefits include:

• Increased efficiency• Improved customer experience• Reduced in-bound call volumes• Quick and easy onboarding

With the rise of Millennials and Generation-z, the emergence of new digital FinTech innovations, the adoption of more connected devices, and a growing expectation among consumers for seamless customer experiences, the importance of personalized cross-channel communications will only become greater.

VIDEO. Mobile Advantage for Banking

Step up your mobile game by extending the power of your CCM solution to your mobile banking apps.


http://www2.gmc.net/mobilebanking

http://www2.gmc.net/mobilebanking

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8Insurance:

applications and benefits

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Insurance: applications and benefits

The age of the customer

When it comes to purchasing insurance, digital consumers are changing the rules of the game. The customer is now in control more than ever before, with numerous purchasing options, vast online research tools and multiple touch points. With product information, reviews, and price comparisons at their fingertips, digital natives are turning to brands and services that offer choice, convenience, and personalized service.

8

WHITEPAPER. Insurance and CCM: Give Customers What They Want

This white paper explores the significant shift in consumer communication expectations, the traditional hurdles that insurers face and how these can be overcome with a broad CCM vision based on practical, achievable business goals.

http://www2.gmc.net/InsuranceCCM


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8. Insurance: applications and benefits

Fragmentation. For insurers, customer communications have traditionally been handled by siloed operational and IT teams. External agencies often produce marketing communications. Social media strategies might be outsourced to a leading consultancy firm. This chaotic mix of uncoordinated efforts has resulted in a fragmented customer experience that has left customers feeling frustrated.

Key challenges: technology and engagement

Quick wins or false starts?

“Going digital” for many insurers has meant putting paper-based processes online or attaching PDFs to various contact points in the policy lifecycle. This is not the solution that consumers want or need. It is a static, non-interactive approach to clients’ digital expectations. Consumers expect to see content and services easily explained and optimized, not just a web page or PDF attachment.

Engagement. The relatively low frequency of insurance interactions, such as claims or policy renewals, also represent a challenge. Insurers have a limited number of client touch points to make an impact—these are opportunities to demonstrate outstanding service and transform the customer experience. When it’s time to “use” their policy, digital customers expect quick, seamless, and informative communications on their platform of choice.

Legacy technology. The cumbersome nature of existing technology infrastructure, or legacy systems, affects virtually every insurance company. Legacy systems create a significant barrier for insurers when it comes to supporting modern communications.

To overcome these challenges, insurance firms require a CCM solution that produces highly personalized, cost-effective correspondence on demand, interactively, or in high-volume batches for delivery across all channels—without ripping out and replacing legacy systems.

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Gain their loyalty: CCM capabilities at a glance

Policy creation and binding

Centralized CCM solutions are equipped with automated and on-demand policy creation tools. Business users and compliance personnel are able to work collaboratively, increasing compliance, reducing time-to-market and reliance upon IT. In addition, capabilities such as mobile push notifications and electronic signature capabilities expedite the binding process. All of this equals fast, seamless transactions that make it easy for your customers to do business with you.

Claims processing

Claims is often the largest expense for an insurance carrier, and is the most important customer interaction opportunity, where future business is won or lost. Modern CCM platforms faclilitate a timely, transparent claims process with advanced capabilities including mobile push notifications, photo capture, electronic signatures, and more.

Agent enablement

Agents and brokers remain a vital insurance distribution channel. CCM software is also used to build intuitive internal and channel agent applications that make it simple to build customer-centric quotes interactively on the phone and on premise using mobile devices and tablets.

• Interactive quote creation• Welcome packages• Insurance policies• Regulatory documents• Paperless onboarding• Digital signature• Dynamic statements and reports• Paperless claims processes• SMS & mobile push notifications• Personalized up-sell and cross-sell promotions• Paperless billing• Annuities• End-user apps• Mobile photo capture• Agent apps

Interactive quote creation

Modern CCM solutions make onboarding new customers easy by facilitating an interactive and transparent quoting and binding process. Once quotes are customized, they are quickly sent to the customer on the channel and device of their choice for review. Additionally, digital communications allow dynamic elements— including sliders and interactive charts—to be leveraged to highlight and upsell additional coverage.

VIDEO. Mobile Advantage for Insurance

Step up your mobile game by extending the power of your CCM solution to your mobile insurance apps.


http://www2.gmc.net/mobileinsurance/

http://www2.gmc.net/mobileinsurance/

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Conclusion

The shift required for insurance companies is one of organizational commitment, operational agility, and top-down leadership. This strategy has to include existing technology infrastructure, a comprehensive understanding of all distribution channels (broker, agent, direct, online) and a 360-degree view of all customer touch points in the policy lifecycle—from quote to bind to onboarding to continuing service requirements to claims handling.

A big part of a customer-centric approach is communications. An effective CCM strategy, combined with proven technology, drives customer satisfaction and cements customer loyalty. The potential of digital technology is to treat every customer as a unique individual, develop a tailored risk profile, then match that customer with truly customized communications about products, pricing, and services.

Today’s digital consumers expect no less.

Discover

Transform legacy templates into omnichannelcommunicationsin just hour

Find customers onthe channels of their choice

Leverage your data to deliverpersonalized cross-sell and upsell campaigns

Buy

Reduce reliance upon IT

Increase contract completion rates with paperless policies and digital signatures

Evaluate Transparent and interactive quoting

Send quotes through multiple channels

Use dynamicelements toshowcaseyouroffering

Guide agents through complex documents

Empower business users and compliance personnel tomake content changes

Experience

Interactive elements (charts, graphs, sortable elements) simplify complex subjects

Digital and printed welcome packages

Customer channelpreference

1

2

Automate turning quotesinto policies


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9The CCM Maturity Model:

where do you fit?

WHITEPAPER. The CCM Maturity Model

The CCM Maturity Model outlines five levels of maturity when it comes to customer communications management. It further explains how you will move from your current level to the next and beyond.

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The CCM Maturity Model: where do you fit?Thus far, we have determined the many ways in which a centralized CCM solution should be leveraged as part of your overall CX strategy, and we’ve identified some important considerations for evaluating such technologies.

But now that we’ve shared this information with you—what’s next? How do you put all of this information to good use? Where do you begin?

In order to see where you stand in comparison to other organizations within your industry, a great place to start is with a maturity model. A maturity model allows you to have your organization’s methods and practices assessed according to industry best practices, against a well-defined set of benchmarks and objectives.

The goal of this chapter is to assist you in conducting a preliminary evaluation of your customer communications programs and practices by leveraging the CCM Maturity Model. Setting a strong baseline of optimized customer communications management is a critical first step in defining and optimizing the customer journey for companies looking to move toward holistic customer experience management.

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http://www2.gmc.net/maturity


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How to get started

Before diving into the CCM Maturity Model, the first step is to better understand and document your company’s strategy on customer support, communication transformation, customer experience, and line of business (LOB) vision. First, gather key stakeholders in a room (don’t forget the pizza). Ensure you have proper representation from the business—including legal, marketing, IT, operations, customer experience, and so on. Second, define a vision and strategy for your customer communications. The objective is to get a big picture of where your company wants to go within the next 18-36 months regarding customer communications.

Meticulous and accurate consideration of the organization’s practices allow stakeholders to determine the initial maturity of their organization’s customer communications practice. To get started, organizations should look to the four steps outlined below:

1. Document gaps. Identify and document the gaps between your organization’s current program and the desirable level of maturity for your organization or line of business.

2. Risks and benefits. Assess the risk(s) and benefits to your company, based on the biggest gaps.

3. Additional analysis and key stakeholders. Determine what additional information and analysis is necessary, as well as the proper key stakeholders within your company.

4. Further development and communication priorities. Think about how to assign accountability for further development of your customer communications.

9. The CCM Maturity Model: where do you fit?

52

PODCAST. The CCM Maturity Model: Where Do You Fit?

In this podcast, Tamir Sigal, Chief Marketing Officer at GMC Software, identifies and explains the five levels of maturity as it relates to customer communications management.

Assess your CCM maturity

The next step is to leverage the CCM Maturity Model to assess where your organization is in comparison to others within your industry. The CCM Maturity Model consists of five stages.

GUI based document

content – batch centric

Legacy composition - fragmented

Template with Word - proliferate

Email delivery not integrated

Lack of visibility

Backlog of projects growingInitial

1

Standard Templates2

Cost Efficiencies

4

Customer Aligned 5

Competitive Advantage

Content - fragmented and

unmanaged

Adhoc correspondence

No compliance on documents

No CCM strategy

Dependency on IT & lack of

business control

Limited response to market

demands

Initial

W

DevelopEnterprise

CCM strategy adopted

Single platform inbound &

outbound (hub)

Leveraging digital delivery for

email / SMS

Social media strategy defined

Customer Preference

Management

Customer Journey Mapping

Manage

3

Automated Process

Communication content –

automated & organized

Integrated delivery but

limited digital

Early adoption of channel choice

Reducing multiple point solutions

Establish document compliance

Faster response to market &

business

Define

Optimize

Customer self-service CCM

Agile to market needs

Digital Centric Delivery agnostic (channel & device)

Mobile technology

Analytics Cloud and on premise

Process Improvement + Personalization




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Stage 1: Initial

In this stage, content and communications are primarily handled on an ad-hoc basis. Often times, the processes to create and send a piece of communication are unpredictable, poorly controlled, and reactive to an event, with little thought to management or consequences.

By now, most companies have progressed beyond this stage, however, some companies still remain in this category. For example, a few companies have legacy-coded solutions and use Microsoft Word for ad-hoc correspondence. The reasons some companies have not progressed beyond Stage 1 may include more legitimate ones, e.g., the cost to modernize the infrastructure or insufficient IT skills.

Stage 2: Develop

In Stage 2, there are multiple publishing processes—usually in silos with little or no connection between them. In some cases, with this stage, organizations are still running legacy applications, however, batch communications are being managed with one or more graphical user interface- (GUI) based tools.

There are very little “on demand” capabilities, and ad-hoc documents are Microsoft Word-based and difficult to migrate due to the volume of documents and their complexity (compliance requirements). The most prominent characteristic of this stage is fragmented and legacy composition—with digital delivery not integrated.

Content - fragmented and

unmanaged

Adhoc correspondence

No compliance on documents

No CCM strategy

Dependency on IT & lack of

business control

Limited response to market

demands

Initial

Standard Templates

W

GUI based document

content – batch centric

Legacy composition - fragmented

Template with Word - proliferate

Email delivery not integrated

Lack of visibility

Backlog of projects growing

Develop

Cost Efficiencies


This approach forces organizations to look at “project-based” solutions, precluding a holistic approach to customer communications. The result is often ad-hoc projects designed to provide functionality to the business unit that are not available from enterprise-wide solutions.

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Stage 3: Define

In this stage, companies have managed to integrate digital delivery with design, however, digital delivery is still limited to email. The organization has one or two solutions in place, and to some extent, the process is automated, organized, and controlled. Both batch processing and on-demand CCM are centralized, with a dedicated team focused on the enterprise needs, rather than distributed departmental solutions. Microsoft Word is replaced, or in very few cases has tight controls (with templates, rules, auditing etc.).

This stage is for organizations who strive to provide preference management to their customers and start offering more channels.

Communication content –

automated & organized

Integrated delivery but

limited digital

Early adoption of channel choice

Reducing multiple point solutions

Establish document compliance

Faster response to market &

business

Define

Automated Process

Enterprise CCM strategy

adopted

Single platform inbound &

outbound (hub)

Leveraging digital delivery for

email / SMS

Social media strategy defined

Customer Preference

Management

Customer Journey Mapping

Manage

Customer Aligned

Stage 4: Manage

Stage 4 calls for a single platform for all inbound and outbound communications—essentially creating a customer communications hub. Everyone in the organization agrees content is a corporate asset and there are checks and balances for the management of content.

In contrast to Stage 3, companies in Stage 4 have adopted an enterprise-wide strategy and platform covering structured batch, on-demand, and interactive communications. The key to this stage is the ability to leverage all core systems (cloud-based, on premise, legacy).


Companies in Stage 4 are capable of leveraging digital delivery across major channels including Web, email, and SMS, with a strong preference-management-process to support customer choice. The IT department is in a position to provide business control over content changes, ensuring brand consistency and compliance. Companies in this stage have defined a social media strategy for customer communications.

It is at this stage that companies begin to truly benefit from creating and optimizing customer journey maps.

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Stage 5: Optimize

Companies at this stage understand the value of content and communications, which have now become a key element of the company’s customer experience strategy. The focus at this stage is on continuous improvement, flexibility, and speed to market. These companies now rely on analytics and are able to map communications to the entire customer journey. It’s very simple (and almost free) to support new mobile devices, tablets, wearable technologies, and other devices. This stage also has a mature mobile connectivity framework—enabling communications to be quickly pushed out to customers within native mobile applications.

As mobile technology continues to evolve, enterprises must remain current in the tools they have available to create impactful communications with end-users, business partners, and employees. As devices continue to proliferate, a mobile development platform that is integrated with your CCM solution is an important differentiator.

To glean even more benefit from their integrated CCM solution, companies who have mature CCM implementations realize additional benefits by turning to incremental cloud-based solutions.

The road to great customer communications management requires a continued commitment to improving the customer journey. The CCM maturity model offered herein is a tool that provides a launching point to help you assess your organization’s current level of effectiveness. Aligned with a well-defined customer journey map, your CCM solution holds the key to optimizing customer experiences across devices, channels, and communities.

Optimize

Customer self-service CCM

Agile to market needs

Digital Centric Delivery agnostic (channel & device)

Mobile technology

Analytics Cloud and on premise

Competitive Advantage


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10Selecting the right CCM platform

57


Selecting the right CCM platformWith so many solutions available for enterprises to choose from, it is difficult to determine which solution is the best fit. The fear of repercussion in making the wrong choice often results in no choice at all, leaving the enterprise and its lines of business to make due with what it currently has.

This situation is preventable with a strategic approach to acquiring the right solution. Through careful planning, detailed requirements gathering, and a strong team driven by an aligned organization and the support of executives, enterprises find the right solution and successfully implement it to provide a framework for the future of customer communications.

24

POC

10

58

Future-proofing communications

One common goal for enterprises when selecting CCM technology is to future-proof communications, or at least come close. Not all trends and enhancements are predictable, but selecting a technology partner that is actively involved in tracking the next big thing in communications will increase the likelihood that when an enterprise is ready to implement a new feature or enhance communications, the capability will already be in the software solution. It’s ciritical to understand the vendor’s propensity to extend the platform and stay current with incremental enhancements in some demonstrable way. Don’t just take the salesperson’s word on it.

Gaining leadership support

Often technology acquisitions are delayed when the proper leadership support is not obtained and there is a lack of organizational alignment. Understanding who from a leadership perspective should be involved is critical.

Various members of IT, line-of-business, and procurement are often the first thought. Other stakeholders may include legal and compliance officers, finance, customer experience, marketing, production staff responsible for managing output, as well as other stakeholders who have a responsibility to provide or review these communications. This group of stakeholders will ultimately be the steering committee.

Managing the selection process

It is a challenge to manage the opinions and needs of the many enterprise CCM stakeholders, so a plan on how to manage the selection process and how the decision will be made should be put in place.

With the selection committee defined, a comprehensive and consistent evaluation plan should be put into place that outlines how each stakeholder will provide their requirements and how vendor responses to these requirements will be graded and scored. Once the team is in place and the approach to selecting and grading is established, it’s time to determine which vendors will be offered the opportunity to respond to the RFP and showcase their capabilities. Another option is to leverage industry resources familiar with CCM vendors and technology to fast-track the short-list selection process.

10. Selecting the right CCM platform

5959

Strategy for post-implementation success

One overlooked area is how implementation will be managed once a solution is decided upon. While IT will be greatly involved, someone outside of IT, ideally with project management skills and implementation experience, will ensure that all of the goals of the solution are met from start to finish.

Selecting a vendor with significant implementation and migration experience will also ensure success. Vendor involvement and support during implementation is the best way to ensure the solution is implemented in the most effective and efficient way possible, as well as integrated properly with exisiting systems. Reviewing options for support and professional services will show what expertise and experience is available to leverage directly from the vendor to fill any gaps in resources.

The importance of a live POC

A proof-of-concept or POC is a step that many organizations talk about but few seem to follow through on at a level that ensures an experience exactly like they should expect to receive once the contract is signed and implementation begins. Even when a robust evaluation process is completed, there are issues that may be uncovered during a POC that will reduce any roadblocks during implementation.

For a detailed POC, each shortlisted vendor must showcase exactly how their solution meets the needs of the enterprise. This is key as variations between prospective vendors may only be exposed when they show how their solution

meets the business needs. Differences such as how data is handled, how business rules are captured, which functions are included in which modules, all the way through to performance, may be uncovered during this process.

The proof-of-concept should be developed on-site and involve key staff members who will be using the technology so they develop a deeper understanding of what is involved. No matter the application, the enterprise will need to

POC


60

provide the vendors with sample data structured in the same way live data is, as well as other communication components such as fonts, logos, and other graphics.

Conclusion

Investing in new CCM technology is no small task, but success is achieved with the proper planning and support early on. Acquiring the support of influential leadership is a key step in ensuring success. A thorough needs assessment that will feed a requirements document is also critical to finding a solution that meets current and future needs. And finally, enterprises must perform a rigorous evaluation and selection process to find the right solution.

Achieving a successful CCM infrastructure does not end with finding the right solution. Consideration, support, and dedication to the implementation and migration of applications to the new system is essential for long-term success.

GUIDE. Selecting the Right CCM Platform: A Guide for Enterprises

This piece was designed to help guide enterprises through the process of selecting the right CCM solution for their business.


http://www2.gmc.net/selecting


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Lessons learned

62


Lessons learnedIn order to remain competitive, businesses must be able to provide information as a utility, making it available to clients in the right format, at the right time. This requires a centralized CCM solution that has easy access to data, the ability to reformat that data, create the right communication, adapt to the best design, and deliver it to the right channel in an optimized format. Enterprises around the world are facing choices in the next thirty-six months that will affect their ability to effectively make information available to clients for the next ten years.

Let’s take this opportunity to recap some key take-aways to share within your organization:

• Consumers today have more choice in their purchasing decisions than ever before. With increased access to online price information and reviews, and informal public opinion on social media, building a better customer experience (CX) is critical to sustaining competitive differentiation.

• When it comes to the CX strategy, customer

communications are often one of the most overlooked—yet critical—components of the customer journey.

• Organizations are able to significantly

improve the CX, build loyalty, and increase retention by providing deeply personalized, interactive, and seamless experiences across all channels.

• For many organizations—particularly in regulated B2C industries—delivering on the CX promise is easier said than done. When it comes to digital and communication transformation, they face a number of challenges, including:

• Complex legacy IT systems and data silos

• Operational silos• Changing market regulations• Lack of IT time and resources

• Modern customer communications

management (CCM) solutions offer the following four key business benefits:

1. Improved CX and engagement. Real-

time, personalized, cross-channel, interactive communications result in dramatically higher customer experience.

2. Improved efficiency. They act as a communication hub to design, manage, approve, and deliver personalized, timely, cross-channel communications—eliminating the need for multiple siloed teams, speeding time-to-market, and reducing reliance upon IT.

3. Speeding digital transformation. Today, leading CCM solutions integrate seamlessly with existing legacy technology and data ecosystems, transforming legacy communications templates into personalized, bi-directional, cross-channel experiences.

4. Reducing risk. In highly regulated B2C

industries, organizations must be agile enough to respond quickly to changes in the regulatory landscape. Modern CCM technologies facilitate a collaborative approach to creating, managing, tracking, and approving communications, resulting in reduced risk.

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• Customer journey mapping (CJM) is a critical component of the overall CX strategy, yet it has often been criticized as pointless because, in many cases, the maps aren’t actionable. Linking CJM tools with your CCM platform (or multiple and competitive CCM systems) is critical to providing visibility into, and improving, the CX.

• Bringing artifacts that customers interact with into the map enables customer experience executives and business users alike to take action to improve the customer experience across all touchpoints. Let the customer journey guide your communications.

• Some important considerations when evaluating a CCM solution for your organization include:

• Investing in a centralized end-to-end platform that offers deployment flexibility and seamless integration with your existing technology and data infrastructures.

• Ensuring the solution enables your internal subject matter experts (SMEs) to collaborate in the creation, management, approval, and delivery of communications.

• The technology must align with both near-term and long-term CX goals.

• Providing a framework for the future of customer communications entails careful planning, detailed requirements gathering, and a strong team driven by an aligned organization and leadership support.

• During the evaulation phase, a live proof-of-concept is critical.

• The CCM Maturity Model should be

leveraged to conduct a preliminary evaluation of an organization’s customer communications programs and practices. Setting a strong baseline of optimized customer communications management is a critical first step in defining and optimizing the customer journey.

Lessons learned

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Related resources

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Resource List

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Communications Management, Q2 2016

Type: Analyst report

Forrester frequently receives inquiries on customer communications management from enterprise architecture (EA) professionals looking for direction on how to update their technologies for new business demands and usage patterns, including the need for unified and consistent content across multiple communication channels. To assist them, The Forrester Wave evaluated 14 CCM vendors across 22 criteria.

Gartner 2015 Magic Quadrant for Customer Communications Management Software*

Type: Analyst report

Digital business is revolutionizing how, when, and where communications between organizations and their customers are created and delivered. IT leaders can use this research to assess the tools that can improve this communications process, reduce costs, and deliver highly relevant communications.

The InspireCast Podcast

Type: Podcast

The InspireCast Podcast features interviews with key industry experts offering insights into the latest trends around customer experience and customer communications management.

* Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.








http://www.gmc.net/inspirecast-podcast

http://www.gmc.net/inspirecast-podcast



http://www2.gmc.net/inspirecast

http://www2.gmc.net/inspirecast



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The CCM Maturity Model

Type: White paper

The CCM Maturity Model outlines five levels of maturity when it comes to customer communications management. The objective of the CCM Maturity Model is to help you and your organization to:1. Conduct a preliminary evaluation

of your customer communications programs and practices

2. Understand where your organization fits on the maturity model scale

3. Move from your current level to the next and beyond

Selecting the Right CCM Platform: A Guide for Enterprises

Type: White paper

With so many modern customer communications management solutions available to choose from, it is difficult to determine which solution is the best fit. This piece was designed to help guide enterprises through the process of selecting the right CCM solution for their business.

The Future of Mobile Banking: Delivering an Exceptional CX in the Age of FinTech

Type: White paper

Exploring how the latest developments in customer communications management help the financial services industry build modern, agile, and cost-effective mobile communications platforms that are part of a seamless, omnichannel experience.

Resource List

http://www.gmc.net/resources/ccm-maturity-model

http://www.gmc.net/resources/ccm-maturity-model

http://www.gmc.net/resources/selecting-right-ccm-platform-guide-enterprises



http://www.gmc.net/resources/future-mobile-banking






http://www2.gmc.net/Future



http://www2.gmc.net/Future

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Don’t Waste Your Time With Customer Journey Maps

Type: White paper

This white paper highlights the challenges and best practices of designing a best-in-class customer journey map. It offers tips and tricks on the effective management and maintenance of these assets.

The New Role of the CIO and COO: Making Cross-channel CX a Reality

Type: White paper

As ownership of customer communications shifts from IT to marketing, IT and operations leaders need to evolve to stay relevant. Faced with budget cuts, the rise in shadow IT, and an increasing need for digitization, leading CIOs and COOs have an opportunity to become technology brokers and masters of configuration. By adapting, they enable the business to pursue growth through more valuable communications, better customer experience, and higher customer engagement.

Insurance and CCM: Give Customers What They Want

Type: White paper

This white paper explores the significant shift in consumer communication expectations, the traditional hurdles that insurers face and how these can be overcome with a broad CCM vision based on practical, achievable business goals.

Resource List

http://www.gmc.net/resources/dont-waste-your-time-customer-journey-maps



http://www.gmc.net/resources/new-role-cio-and-coo



http://www.gmc.net/resources/insurance-and-customer-communications-management-give-consumers-what-they-want









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Must-attend events

CCM Events Analyst Events Industry Events

http://xplor.org/

http://documentstrategyforum.com/

https://go.forrester.com/events/

http://www.gartner.com/events/na/digital-marketing

http://www.idc.com/prodserv/insights/financial/index.jsp

https://www.iasa.org/

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