Customer communication is a core capability in every enterprise regardless of the market place within which it operates. Delivering products and services always involves communication and providing this capability incurs cost to the organisation as well as delivering opportunities for acquiring benefits. Communication can be viewed as part of the product that the customer is purchasing, not merely part of the mechanism for delivering it.
When executed well, communication with the customer builds a relationship which will enhance and improve their experience of dealing with the organisation, improving overall satisfaction and trust, as well as making future purchases more likely. Executed badly and the customer will likely feel frustration and dissatisfaction leading them to take their business elsewhere, request refunds and compensation, poor reviews and a reputation for shoddy products and poor service. Furthermore, the cost of dealing with poor communication can be much larger than the investment cost to mitigate it.
A good customer communication capability will deliver some core benefits:
- Consistent communication quality and adherence to brand and policies
- Management of regulatory risk (telling the customer the wrong thing, not including mandatory content, T&Cs, etc.) - ensuring compliance through controls and consistency
- Better cost management and efficiency - optimisation of reuse (content and composition)
- Efficiencies of scale in the operation - expanding existing use and wider adoption by new processes/business teams
- Reduced cost and effort for changes - ongoing maintenance and enhancement of shared content in a single place
- Opportunities to track, measure, and monitor effectiveness and so tune the content and processes to better effect
It will also open up a path to transformation which generally means strategic change that assures the future of the organisation and the attainment of growth and revenue goals set by business owners and stakeholders.
- Responding to customers’ preference for digital media rather than paper
- ChatBots and automated assistants
- Channel consistency - if a customer sends a communication via a particular medium they generally expect a response via the same medium; conversations may also span across different media and need to be viewed and treated consistently as one conversation
- More use of visual media such as video (particularly for explaining and demonstrating)
- Conversations rather than broadcasts - more two way interactions that are personalised and tailored to the ongoing interaction
- “In-App” communication (apps and portals that provide consistency to the experience rather than disjointed, external interactions aside from the product or service)