The Importance of Customer Communication Management
As recent pandemic restrictions have challenged businesses, one function has become imperative in maintaining success: customer communication management. Whether your organization is primarily B2B or B2C focused, the means in which you communicate with your customers is important. As the customer preference for online communication has increased over the past year, organizations have been challenged to meet these expectations with a fully realized customer communication management strategy. For many customers who conduct their business online, they’ve been pleased with the advancements many organizations have made in regards to communicating with their customers online.
However, with that in mind, there are a number of customers who have reported that nearly half of the businesses they come into contact with have a poor customer communications management approach. In situations where these customers don’t feel respected or aren’t getting the answers they’re looking for, they’re more likely to find an alternative and take their business there. Talk about a disaster for less established businesses. Without the ability to adequately communicate to their customers, businesses are more likely to lose their existing customers and will find it inevitably harder to attract new ones. However, with high-quality CCM, any company can achieve success.
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.
Despite these three aspects being the main driving force behind businesses CCM strategies, there are a number of other attributes that support these strategies. For example, the interactivity a business is able to provide through their online presence. Think back a couple years, prior to COVID. How common was a fully fleshed out live chat service on an organization’s website? Back then, even if the service wasn’t functioning properly, it was still impressive. Now? These live chat services have become commonplace, almost expected of most businesses in spaces like online retail.
Just as important, and the glue of most CCM strategies, is the omnichannel communication a business is able to provide. Customers don’t want to be limited in regards to how they’re able to communicate their needs to businesses. As such, having a well-established presence on social media platforms allow customers to more freely and openly communicate with your business. Only providing one means of communication with your customers can soon prove to be a major weakness.
For more information on the right CCM strategy for your business, please check out the featured resource accompanying this post. Courtesy of Conduent.
