Customer Communications Management, or CCM is the automation of customer communications and an integral part of elevating the customer experience. Organizations that regularly send transactional communications with your customers such as policies, warranties and statements would benefit from integrating this platform. You may not have adopted CCM for various reasons such as; its only paper based, too difficult to implement and besides it's only a marketing tool.

Here's a few myths we would like to dispel for you.

Myth: Since CCM is technology that is based on paper, CCM technology will eventually disappear.

Fact: With the explosive increase of mobile technology, the opportunity to leverage CCM as an effective channel is a key consideration for increasing customer engagement. Mobile technology is the ever-expanding channel to engage with customers. CCM enables customized, targeted and relevant communications delivered to customers as a means to upsell, cross sell or just providing branding touch point.

Myth: CCM is just a marketing tool.

Fact: CCM platform goes beyond just marketing by providing customer information that builds engagement, not just a sales transaction. These communications can be customized and automated dictated by business rules you create, so your customers are more likely to interact with your message. You wouldn't want to receive marketing offers relating to boat insurance when you don't even own a boat. Start sending a few disconnected offers like this and it won't be long before your customers are wondering why they are doing business with you, "since they don't know anything about me."

Myth: We outsource all our transactional communications, so why bring this process in house?

Fact: First off, no one is going to care more about your customers than you do. And you will have the most to lose if you aren't able to effectively orchestrate these customer touch points using policies, claims, reports and contracts (just to name a few). With CCM you'll remove the additional costs of continuous buy outs and can better leverage your existing systems of record (with minimal IT interaction) to reach all your customers.

Myth: We need to work with IT to update content and it typically takes weeks make changes to layouts and content.

Fact: With the right CCM solution, flexible templates can be set up for different use cases and edited on the fly. Business users like you have the ability to change content in hours and always keep your content current for your customers. With business users managing these templates, your organization is more agile as it's a shorter time to market. Communication is part of the business process, not IT. (Plus your IT staff will appreciate being able to concentrate on other projects instead of CCM).

Myth: CCM solutions don't look as modern or professional as other forms of communications to our customers.

Fact: Your marketing employees can easily pull in existing brand elements, mastheads, logos and various visual element in a simple word document that your customers easily recognize. It's merely dragging and dropping elements to a page to create that communication. Suppose your organization sends monthly invoices or statement to customers. Contrary to paper junk mail, this type of paper correspondence are opened and read by your customers, so you have an opportunity to embed a specific marketing or service offer.

By the same token, emails like this work just as effectively; you can place a visual banner ad or inline text with a relevant offer to upsell or cross sell your products or services.

The bottom line: CCM is the ideal solution to create and deploy communications that relate to your customer interests. If the old business adage remains true, it takes 10 times amount of money to acquire new customers than to keep your current ones, doesn't it make sense to nurture that existing customer relationship long after the sale is made?

Find out how Customer Communications Management can improve customer engagement.

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