Winning Markets - How Customer Communications Management Brings Competitive Advantage

I have already talked about the use of statements for cross selling purposes. Premise 1 is that by building on existing customer relationships, it is possible to enhance the value that customers can gain from your company by showing them relevant offers that encourage them to sign up for more of your companies products or services. Premise 2 is that for most businesses, the statement and its viewing forms one of the larger elements of the relationship between the two parties.

But think of the extra knowledge that additional sales brings about the customer. Every order that you receive from you customer gives you a greater level of knowledge about that customer, it enables you to further enhance your offers, perhaps with the advent of data modeling and advanced data management integrated with customer communications techniques even tailor offers on a one to one basis.

Another great by product of developing the relationship in this sophisticated manner is that each time that a customer extends their relationship with you, they move one step further away from you competitors. The philosophy of your company should be that more knowledge of that customer brings more opportunities with each interaction.

In the current information economy, knowledge is everything. The easier you make it for your customers to do business with you, the greater your understanding of them and they will enhance your 'permission' to extend their relationship with you.

We now have relative maturity in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) markets, the opportunity to enhance the CRM proposition as a result of the evolution of today's suite's of customer communications solutions renders us with tempting and powerful promises.

With pressure now upon companies to deliver more environmentally friendly ways of communicating with prospects and customers, the powerful features of  fully loaded customer communications management suites as offered by the likes of EMC Document Sciences,  HP Exstream, Pitney Bowes Group 1, Thunderhead and Xenos mean that companies have new ways to reach and develop the customer relationship.

For me, the challenge now seems to be achieving full integration between digital media channels as well as print. The rise of social networking and social media on the internet also seems like it is going to become an important marketing tool for companies.

I feel that currently the digital and traditional communication channels are in a state of early convergence. The recognition is there of the need to bring the platforms together, to create dynamic rapid communications with customers. It is almost like the old story of ERP leading to CRM which is similarly heading towards CCM.

I feel that the route to success in this lies in getting good solid data extraction and content management infrastructures in place. In parallel build a mail piece / document creation facility that is capbable of putting the power of communication in the hands of business users.

Ensure open API's in all that you purchase and make sure that content can be driven to your chosen message distribution; platform easily and routinely. Strongly consider the benefit of a system that can exist in a service oriented architecture. Component re-use is going to give strength to any system in this arena.

The opportunity is for business to move at a faster pace, to be able to react to market changes swiftly and to let customers who particularly need to know quickly about new and relevant offers. I think that I would recommend that all companies establish a review of their current customer communication infrastructures and assess the gap between that and much of the discussion on this website. The potential is significant and those that get the hang of this early are likely to reap significant rewards in terms of customer lifetime value.

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