New Research from Aspire Maps Out the Future of Customer Communications

Tuesday 29th October, 2019:

Aspire recently published the results of a multi-client business survey that provides an in-depth examination of the seismic shifts currently reshuffling the customer communications landscape.

The extensive report, entitled, “The State of CCM-to-CXM Transformation”, traces the epicenter of the market evolution to a fundamental shift in enterprise priorities. Businesses are taking their focus off cost and risk reduction and instead strengthening efforts to increase business value. Consumer expectations of instant access to relevant, personalized information has made customer experience (CX) an increasingly important metric in customer communications. As the graphic illustrates below, Aspire’s survey found that CX was the top priority for nearly two-thirds of the 512 businesses surveyed globally, outpacing all other customer communications concerns.

CCM vendors have begun to change their approach and embrace new technologies so that they can enable business users to improve CX for the end consumer. By doing so, they have effectively transformed CCM into Customer Experience Management (CXM), or the practice of managing all interactions that a business conducts with its customers with the goal of improving the perception that customers have about that business.

Enterprise transformation from a CCM to a CXM mindset requires them to not only direct technology investment toward better understanding customer behavior and seamlessly interacting with them across every device and channel, it also demands organizational changes to break down silo walls and improve coordination and collaboration, thereby developing more agile and automated processes. As a core principle, CXM strategy positions customers front and center, using data analysis to understand their needs, know their communication preferences, and anticipate their behavior, looking holistically across all touchpoints and channels to intuit where the experience is broken or can be improved.

The benefits that an enterprise hopes to secure by investing in CCM software can tell us a great deal about their place on the CCM-to-CXM evolutionary scale. Enterprises who have embraced a transformative strategy centered around customer interactions were much more likely to report that their CCM investments are motivated by efforts to increase customer satisfaction and up-sell/cross-sell opportunities while those with no strategy or only a rudimentary one remain focused on short-sighted gains like cost savings and risk reduction. Aspire has designated three stages of maturity along the path of CCM-to-CXM transformation, illustrated in Figure 2 and detailed below.

The first stage is CCM 1.0. In these systems, IT continues to control CCM. The organization retains a document-centric perspective and invest in CCM so that they can reduce cost and remain in regulatory compliance. Instead of being guided by coordinated strategy, their CCM investments are reactionary and defined in terms of cost and risk reduction. Advancements at this level tend to be more tactical in nature, like migrating from print to digital communications, though, characteristically, this digital push is aimed at cutting postage expense rather than achieving a more valuable (albeit intangible) benefit, like improving CX.

As organizations advance along their evolutionary journey, cost savings eventually becoming secondary or tertiary factors when planning CCM investments. Business needs become paramount. Investments in this middle stage, CCM 2.0, are directed by the line of business user and are focused on agility and the adaptability to achieve the fastest time to market through the customer’s preferred channel.

To reach the third and final stage of CXM maturity, organizations must place the needs of the customer ahead of the business when planning B2C communications strategy. True converts to CXM prioritize CX through data analytics and the development of meaningful customer and journey insights. Within these systems, customer communications are owned and managed by a centralized CX team or steering committee who understand the journeys that customer take across all touchpoints and continuously monitor them to ensure that those experiences are optimized and relevant.

Aspire’s full report offers all the details on this market transformation, explaining in greater detail the evolving principles of enterprise communication technology investment and their preferences for pricing, purchasing, and cloud integration. In-depth interviews with stakeholders throughout the ecosystem also provide insight into what measures vendors and service providers are taking to support their enterprise clients’ adjustment to this market realignment. To find out more or to discuss purchase options please contact Lisa Corbridge at Lisa.Corbridge@aspireccs.com.

This piece was taken from the Insights page of the Aspire Leaderboard portal. Find more independent CCM insight and analysis from the team at Aspire, here.