Traditional Customer Communication Management (CCM) platforms can be complicated. They can feature many moving parts. Making them work efficiently together often requires technical expertise beyond the level of the typical business user. This is problematic for several reasons. First, technical resources are scarce. Programmers with experience in document management and customer communications are in short supply. Second, creating dynamic document templates that allow organizations to use data to drive results requires advanced skills. This includes handling variable data substitutions or triggered element inclusion. Third, testing new or changed document templates requires meticulous work to create a comprehensive test deck.

Hiring outside consultants or programmers (if you can find them) is an option, but getting them up to speed with how your IT applications work together takes time. The purpose of CCM software is to provide a great customer experience for people that mean everything to you: your customers. In this regard, CCM maintenance is a task best served by your marketing team, even if they are not programmers. They know your customers.

Customer Communications Management Today

CCM is evolving from an operational tool designed to cut costs and free up time. Today, the focus is on improving the customer experience (CX). It is about providing personalized, relevant, and timely communications. The content is individualized. It speaks directly to Sally or Charlie rather than relying on generic messaging. CCM creates automated communications that do not seem automated. In today’s market, you cannot generalize. Personalization has become the standard rather than a luxury. Customers expect it.

Managing the Technology

Who is closer to the marketplace, your products, and your customers? Is it customer-facing business units or IT? The answer is self-evident. Expectations from the marketplace are in constant evolution. Approaches that made sense at one point, may seem obsolete or out-of-touch just a few months later. Companies now task lines of business with managing the technology instead of assigning the task to the IT department. This is possible using no-code CCM software. Non-IT personnel can make changes when they need to. This includes changing business rules, workflow, document design, content, and channel management. This makes your organization extremely reactive to the demands of the marketplace and your customer base. In fact, when knowledge workers in your organization can make CCM changes themselves, you are proactive rather than reactive. This will seldom happen with an overburdened IT department charged with CCM programming changes.

A business user who is adept at Microsoft Office and other standard applications can change the CCM application within pre-defined limits. The power resides with the business lines rather than with IT.

Vendor Responsibility

In a “no-code” CCM software environment, the installation and implementation steps require proficiency and advice from the vendor. Your vendor has worked on scores of installations for a variety of companies. Look to them for advice about what works and what does not. The CCM vendor involves your organization’s IT department in the configuration and implementation phase. This includes integrating data sources, line of business applications, and digital workplace platforms. However, the vendor will keep marketing, sales, and customer services in the loop during the configuration. These departments will be the lines of business making the changes in personalization, workflow, and document compliance going forward.

With the shift to cloud-based applications, CCM vendors bear more of the infrastructure burden compared to on-premise CCM implementations. Cloud technology improves productivity and competitiveness. Because cloud storage uses external servers to store a company’s data, secure data hosting and accessibility are available to remote and on-site employees. When the vendor completes a software upgrade, they push it to the cloud. Customers are always using the most current version.

Implementation

Quickcoms’ next-generation customer communications management platform enables organizations to build and execute effective communications while lowering operating costs and ensuring compliance. Residing in the cloud, Quickcoms’ technology provides banks, insurers, and other regulation-sensitive companies effective ways to improve change management and update address information and other data files. Quickcoms’ cloud-based CCM software uses advanced technology to automate rapid document updates. An intuitive interface and no coding give an organization the power to meet all regulatory deadlines and deliver superior customer service.