A customer communication platform is essential for businesses that want to deliver consistent, coordinated communication through different channels while also gathering metrics for key business functions such as ticket volume resolution, cost per touch and more. In this blog, I’ll share with you the 10 essential features of a CCM platform that can help improve your business’ engagement and overall customer experience.
1. Omnichannel communication
This allows businesses to communicate through customers’ preferred channels such as email, SMS, social media, chatbots and more. This approach ensures that customers receive consistent branding and messaging across all channels and can interact with the business in the way that is most convenient for them. It eliminates inefficient silos, integrates all communications touchpoints and leverages the power of intelligent automation. In doing so, it offers a unified view of the customer across the entire journey and transforms communications into highly personalised engagements.
2. Personalised communication
It helps customers to feel more connected to brands and encourage them to spend more money over time. According to McKinsey & Company, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions, while 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
3. Automation
Saves businesses time and resources by automating repetitive tasks such as sending out emails or notifications. This approach can also help businesses improve their customer experience by providing timely and relevant information to customers.
4. Analytics for insights into customer behaviour & preferences
Track customers’ engagement and measure the effectiveness of communication deliveries. By analysing data, insight can be gained into customer behaviour and preferences. Data visualisation, such as charts and graphs, summarise data analysis findings and supports predictive analytics. Predictive analytics uses data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data.
5. Systems integration
Integration helps streamline communication processes, improve the customer experience, and enhance efficiency by automating manual processes and reducing errors. It allows for different processes and systems to utilise the same CCM platform. This can be achieved through:
- APIs to connect different systems and enable data exchange.
- Webhooks to trigger events in one system based on actions in another system.
- Middleware to connect different systems and enable data exchange.
- Custom integrations development to meet specific business needs.
6. Security for both you & your client
Security is essential to protect customer data from unauthorised access. Not only is it important to protect your customers’ sensitive information, it is also important for maintaining a positive reputation and building trust with customers. It is also a requirement for businesses that need to comply with regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
It can be achieved through:
- Encryption to protect customer data from unauthorised access.
- Access control to restrict access to customer data to authorised personnel only.
- Authentication to verify the identity of users accessing customer data.
- Audit trails to track user activity and detect unauthorised access attempts.
7. Scalable to your business’ needs
Scalability allows one to scale up or down depending on your business needs. Auto-scaling helps you to save costs by only paying for the resources needed. The scalability feature in a CCM platform is important if your business needs to handle large volumes of customer data to ensure the consistency of performance. Scalability can be achieved through:
- Cloud-based infrastructure to scale up or down depending on business needs.
- Distributed architecture to distribute the load across multiple servers.
- Load balancing to distribute the load across multiple servers.
8. Easy-to-use interface
A CCM platform should be easy to use and require minimal training for employees to allow quick onboarding and effective use of the system.
9. Customised information that meets your customer’s needs
This is important to tailor your communication processes to meet your customers’ needs. As an example, the ability to customise communication templates will enable your business to improve the customer experience by providing personalised communications that meet the needs of each customer.
10. Seamless collaboration between teams
A CCM platform should enable collaboration to improve efficiency and the alignment between different teams to work together for an improved customer experience. It can be achieved shared data, collaborative workflows and real time communication.
Whether you’re looking to streamline your communication processes, personalise your interactions with customers, or simply gather more data on your customers’ needs and preferences, a CCM platform with the above features can help you achieve your goals. Take the step towards achieving your goals by embracing the power of a comprehensive CCM platform.
