The vast majority of people in 2024 live in a state of always-on connectivity, where goods and services are just a screen tap or mouse click away. Companies with deep pockets that are household names have invested heavily in the technologies that allow them to nurture their customers with personalised messages and experiences. The investment has clearly paid off, with some brands now synonymous with a sector: people now ‘grab an Uber’ and ‘Google it’ rather than take a taxi or search the web.

And while the majority of companies can only aspire to the same levels of market penetration, what’s apparent is that the quality of customer experience offered by the big players sets the standard by which all are judged.

It’s all too easy for any brand to mis-step in customer engagement, especially given that the journeys customers take with brands are long and, in an ideal world, continuous as companies seek to build loyalty and repeat business.

In previous articles we’ve covered the importance of unifying customer communications by using a CCM platform (customer communication management) to create a coherent, personalised experience at scale both with an existing customer base and prospects. If we take the need for such a solution as a given, choosing a CCM (or migrating to a new CCM platform) comes down to examining the fundamental capabilities of the offerings from different vendors and identifying the business impact the core strengths of each will have on an organisation in 2024.

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The Quadrant Knowledge Solutions SPARK Matrix^™ breakdown of the leading vendors’ offerings in this regard is highly informative, describing the 11 fundamental capabilities that a CCM must offer and highlighting six key differentiators that are especially relevant in today’s business environment. In this article, we want to focus on two standout features that deliver significant competitive advantage for companies that embrace the concept of putting digital technologies and resources at the heart of customer experience building.

Enhanced CX and Personalisation

It’s essential that engagement with customers happens throughout the full lifecycle of the customer journey, and high-impact CX depends on two mutually connected factors: personalisation and channel preferences (the what and how). By giving customers control over which channels they communicate on (how) and ensuring each touchpoint comprises personalised and relevant content (what), brands create better relationships with each individual and establish trust that, in turn, encourages continuing business.

For that to take place, the CCM that oversees each engagement needs to be able to create individually customised content, offering different data in different ways. Blanket messaging down a limited number of favoured channels is a hit-and-miss approach that can easily alienate as many customers as it converts, with potential buyers or service-users looking to competing companies that they feel they have a stronger association with.

An unfocused messaging strategy also sparks fears in a user base that their data is not respected and that their privacy is being abused. Carefully personalised messaging through favoured channels also tells the customer that a brand’s data governance and security measures are in place and observed.

The right data AND the right messaging

Most companies actually use only a proportion of the information they have access to about customers and prospects. Their data sources can be, at best, only partially integrated with the central CCM. With a deeper integration of disparate data sources drawn from right across the business, communication professionals have a deeper insight into what makes each contact tick.

Today’s best CCM platforms draw from rich data sources, using AI tools to sanitise and normalise information to create more detailed pictures of the individual, better to tune messaging at every touchpoint. With a CCM platform like the market’s technology leader Quadient, data can be pulled into the central messaging platform from rich yet uncommonly-used data sources like member portals, helpdesk, or support databases like JIRA, SMS records and email.

Brands using InspireXpress migration technology, for example, get automatic ingestion of data, aided by AI algorithms, from legacy CCMs and templates. The same systems not only normalise all available information so it’s ready for use in communications but also can be used to propose rationalised CCM templates to increase a team’s efficiency and reduce duplicate content. A clear migration path and tools to enable it should be a priority when considering which CCM to deploy.

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Yet whatever the data sources, every message – especially in highly regulated sectors like healthcare and finance – has to adhere to compliance standards to avoid fines and potentially disastrous reputational damage. The CCM platform is responsible for readying data for comms so it complies with evolving rule sets that keep the organisation on the right side of industry-specific governance.

An open and extensible approach to data allows the growth of a CCM over time, extending capabilities with differentiating elements, like BlueRush’s video capability to add enriched experiences to comms, or Salesforce integration for enhanced CRM-based capabilities.

With a host of potential third-party services in the cloud and drawn from a company’s existing IT stack, brands have the capability to go above and beyond their competitors’ offered customer experiences and turn customers into brand advocates.

Next steps

You can read the Quadrant Knowledge Solutions SPARK Matrix^™ report to dig deeper into the 11 fundamental capabilities of a CCM by following this link. The leader in all the paper’s measurements, Quadient, can be found here. If you need measurable business outcomes from your brand communications, you can start building using the best, host-anywhere (on-premise or cloud) solution today.