Writer: MARK TODES, Director at GhostDraft
While the concept of customer communications management (CCM) is well established in some markets such as the US, it is not yet so widely known or understood in South Africa, where we still tend to talk about the more limited notion of document automation.
This is a pity, because when businesses appreciate that a modern CCM platform can enhance their customer experience, streamline their communication processes, and ensure fast, accurate and personalised messaging to their customers, they always sit up and take notice.
This is in no way an indictment on local businesses. C-suites are understandably wary of the massive cost and time implications of new system implementations that sometimes don’t work as they should alongside legacy systems. But this is where the conversation should start: Modern CCM ecosystems have a very light footprint and don’t need to be baked into the code of their big back-end systems. That on its own is a groundbreaking paradigm shift.
Let’s take a glance at classic legacy document automation. These systems were generally one-dimensional – they solved one problem, such as how to deliver a high volume of bank statements or insurance policies. Many businesses will recognise this type of system capability.
In terms of architecture, they were intricately tied into back-end administration systems. In other words, the IP and logic around document creation were baked into the software code of big mainframe-based back-end systems.
This is where the first evolution towards a more modern CCM platform occurred. People wanted flexible, easy implementation that does not have to be molded tightly into the business’s back end. And so, modern systems such as GhostDraft have become full platforms in and of themselves; their own ecosystem, so to speak. This solved the first challenge: How to move away from massive implementations to simple, flexible solutions.
The second big evolution occurred with the introduction of natural language processing – the drag-and-drop coding of documents, or low-code solutions instead of heavy scripting.
This evolution wrested control of document design out of the IT department’s hands and placed the power firmly in the hands of business and marketing users.
Let’s be honest, IT folk hate having to “pixel push” on documents – they want them to work, and tend to care less about margin widths, fonts and colours. However, business and marketing users are responsible for protecting the integrity of an organisation’s corporate identity.
Modern CCM systems make it exponentially easier for business users to design and implement their documents – completely separate from back-end scripting.
Lastly, once CCM systems became easier to implement and put power into the hands of business users, the next evolution was inevitable. Instead of being one-dimensional in terms of the problems they solve, today’s leading CCM platforms are multi-dimensional. The solutions they provide are informed by the demands of modern customers who want a broad range of communication that is interactive, looks good, is digitised, readable, accurate and clear.
A modern CCM solution, therefore, is not one piece of software solving one problem, rather it is a full basket of different tools that are plugged into any back-end system using flexible APIs.
A business leader may well think: Great in theory, but what does this look like in practice?
One of our GhostDraft customers uses the platform to automate the production of wills and deceased estate management correspondence. The platform enables them to publish automated intelligent two-way interactions that gather relevant information The questionnaire is dynamic, with a built-in calculator to determine whether the estate will be liquid at the time of death.
This is important, because if it is not, the executor will need to liquidate assets to meet obligations before anything can be bequeathed. However, with the dynamic system, the company can raise a red flag for the customer and alert a relevant financial advisor with an opportunity to upsell a life-insurance product.
The system therefore automates the production of wills and also automates notifications to upsell products that the customer actually needs. This intelligence is built into the system.
Another one of our life insurance customers has built a function into its online portal to enable its own customers to request employee benefit statements. This insurance carrier previously had an army of workers that would produce these statements on a one-on-one basis. However, now when their customer clicks the button on their Web portal, GhostDraft takes over the automated workflow: intelligently requesting information, generating the statements, and then delivering them through a relevant channel.
Today there is a natural coalescence between CCM and customer experience management (CXM).
They are not the same thing, but they work naturally together. This means that if you are concerned about the experience of your customers then you appreciate that you must be channel agnostic.
As such, modern CCM systems need to embrace omnichannel delivery capabilities. An email is one thing, as is a printed-out document, but CCM platforms must also provide solutions that can encrypt output documents, load them into secure, password-protected microsites in the cloud, and send recipients a URL in a text or WhatsApp message.
As the concept of CCM becomes increasingly well-known, businesses would do well to seek out industry-strength platforms rather than one-dimensional pieces of code.
The key lies in engaging vendors that embody the type of intelligent ecosystem discussed in this article, along with ease of implementation, built in modern cloud-based architecture with flexible APIs and workflows.
Modern CCM turns customer communication into a strategic, intelligent engagement opportunity with the most valuable stakeholders in a business, elevating it beyond just the one-dimensional automation of documents.
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