With the ever-evolving digital environment and rising customer expectations around communications, many organisations are slipping behind in technological capability while others forge ahead. This applies particularly to organisations with compliance obligations and large customer bases that are expanding to the next level. What’s holding them back is a number of ‘myth-conceptions’ about what effective customer communications look like today.

In the seven points below, you can check how to separate fact from fiction.

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Your customer communications system needs to be designed specifically for real-time, interactive document generation. Customer service representatives need an intuitive interface that provides ‘point-and-click’ access to a central repository housing sophisticated data-driven templates that contain pre-approved components (for example compliant paragraphs, logos, etc.) and preconfigured workflows that guide users through the assembly of communications in real time.

Microsoft Word can’t keep up with the volumes or personalisation of content that your business needs. While your customer base grows, so does its sophistication. Your customers want more than just great rates; they also want great service. It is critical to customer satisfaction – and your ongoing success – to deliver the right information, in the right format, to the right audience, at the right time, and for the right reason. Your customer communications system must be scalable to meet growing volume and enable your operators to generate personalised correspondence using complex logic, guided workflows and real-time data on demand from any of your databases.

Templates frequently need to be updated to accommodate changes in regulatory legislation and policies. Making those changes without centralised governance becomes complex, painful and overly time consuming. Organisations often end up with inconsistencies in look and feel across departments. And the situation leaves you open to more risk of non-compliance. Centralising all templates onto a common platform makes template management much easier, faster and more secure. So the question is: do you shape your processes around your IT solution or shape your IT solution around the processes that make the most sense?

To achieve all three at once, you need the right system. You need a customer communications system that provides centralised management and monitoring of all templates as well as comprehensive audit and version control facilities. Even when certain components within a document are editable by end users, administrators can lock compliance-critical components from any changes.

You should choose a system that best fits your unique business needs rather than changing your processes to fit the solution. Ideally it will be built on published, open standards and a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to leverage your existing technology infrastructure for seamless integration and rapid implementation. The other major factor is having a provider that deploys experienced, professional service teams.

You should choose a system that best fits your unique business needs rather than changing your processes to fit the solution. Ideally it will be built on published, open standards and a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to leverage your existing technology infrastructure for seamless integration and rapid implementation. The other major factor is having a provider that deploys experienced, professional service teams.

Historically, most customer communications solution providers have focused exclusively on structured, batch automation. However, these days your business doesn’t just issue generic, static documents; you need to produce personalised correspondence as well. An effective single solution is powerful enough for batch automation and versatile enough to enable the production of personalised correspondence on demand. The main challenge is finding a system that does all this and is easy to use and easy to integrate into your business.

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Know your facts from myth-conceptions

If you’re developing and expanding in your customer communications needs, be careful to have your facts straight and avoid these common myth-conceptions and you’ll do fine in your transformation journey. It’s these kinds of clear distinctions that will help you choose the right solution to meet your growing business needs.

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About the author

Russ Townsend is Senior Solutions Executive for Cincom Systems, helping A/NZ organisations with high volume customer communications needs to improve their communication performance.