Everyone in business today is focused on doing more with less. Organizations are continually looking for ways to cut costs and streamline processes, while still maintaining profitable growth. Most organizations are also faced with much more serious strategic and operational challenges to drive growth.
Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty have a major impact on revenue and profitability. Studies have shown that one of the key factors affecting customer loyalty is the relevance and clarity of the communications customers receive.
The relevance of communications is often based on an enterprise's ability to communicate with the customer based on a total view of the relationship. It is not uncommon for customers to have multiple relationships with a company. For example, a customer may have checking and savings accounts, mortgages, home equity loans, and retirement funds with a single financial services provider. These customers naturally expect the organization to have a single, unified view of their relationship-including all their accounts and interactions. They expect the communications to encompass the whole relationship. Unfortunately, that's not what typically happens. For example, how many times have you received offers in the mail for a service or product you've already purchased?
More often than not, inside the organization the customer is really a fragmented series of loosely related profiles across various systems. And with different lines of business managing different accounts with different technologies, it's very difficult for organizations to gain a 360-degree view of each customer. But without this complete view, organizations face diminished customer loyalty and weakened brand identity-and it shows in the inconsistent communications they send out.
The relevance of communications is also intimately tied to a company's ability to deliver innovative communications within a short period of time. Cross-selling, up-selling, and customer relationship management programs all depend on speed to market and a company's ability to treat different customers differently. Old technologies, new regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA, and an ever-expanding landscape of delivery media create many challenges to communicating effectively.
One way to get a leg up in this demanding business environment is with an enterprise personalization product designed to deliver timely and consistent customer communications with inherent value to the customer.
Enterprise personalization is an integrated content architecture that allows organizations to produce and deliver fully personalized, consistent and relevant communications through multiple print and electronic channels. It provides lines of business the ability to maintain and create content for mission-critical customer communications, reducing reliance on IT and driving the timely delivery of documents through production print/mail, on demand, and interactive delivery channels.
Any organization for which customer communication is mission critical needs a well-defined strategy for communicating cost-effectively, accurately, and consistently with customers across all touch points. But implementing such a strategy can be a huge challenge, especially when it is not uncommon to have silos of information distributed across the enterprise, each with different customer data, business systems, regulatory content, workflows and delivery channels. A successful enterprise personalization strategy protects the current IT investment, eliminates integration risks, and provides a common architecture for creating accurate and timely customer communications across the entire enterprise.
Developing and executing an enterprise personalization strategy that addresses the important issue of communicating effectively with customers across all touch points requires a product that enables a business to grow and adapt to changing market requirements. There are a few things to consider when determining the best enterprise personalization product for your organization.
To meet the enterprise personalization objectives of the entire organization, robust and sophisticated functionality is a must. The product must be able to easily integrate with existing business systems-from legacy and CRM to the disparate information-management systems in various lines of business-and it should streamline the process of creating personalized communications. It must make it easy to develop and deploy new document applications, and it must allow you to get to market on a timely basis with relevant information and targeted offers. To ensure consistency across all enterprise output, the product should allow the creation of any type of document quickly and easily. It should track what materials went out, when they were sent and to whom, as well as customer responses to offers and requests for information. Subsequent communications should be automated so that interactions are always relevant and meaningful.
It is imperative to find a product flexible enough to meet current business requirements, as well as future needs that might not even be apparent yet. The vendor should be a technology leader and a true partner, one that listens to and accounts for all the bank's needs by providing timely product enhancements.
Think big, but start with those mission-critical communications like bills, notices and other important correspondence. Be sure the product provides a collaborative authoring environment and meets the needs and varying usability requirements of every department that will use it-from the marketing staff to operations personnel to IT employees. Ensure that the product provider offers flexible and comprehensive training and consulting services, especially for marketing and customer-service staffers, who should be the biggest users. Then consider the applications and needs of suppliers, consultants and outside salespeople: remember, they all have a big stake in the company's success.
An effective enterprise personalization product must have multi-channel delivery capabilities, allowing the quick building of document applications that can be driven from any originating system and delivered to internal or external customers through any channel. For example, an outside sales representative might need to access product information from several corporate systems to quickly and easily create a customized document to hand to the customer-on the spot. And don't forget the growing group of customers that want on-demand personalized and relevant information directly from your Web site.
Smart companies focus on creative ways to retain and grow their top-tier customers, drive down the cost of communicating with the middle tier, and minimize the resources spent on the least valuable customers. Look for a product that automates the process of differentiating communications based on different customer categories, and allows the management of personalized content for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities on routine business correspondence. The product should also prioritize which messages are included in a document to maximize use of valuable real estate, and have automated cost control features to ensure remaining within budget limitations.
The right enterprise personalization product can provide the foundation for strengthening relationships with customers across all contact points, including postal mail, electronic methods and interactive options. And because it provides a single streamlined product that uses the most up-to-date information, communications are consistent, reach customers faster and are relevant to their interests. By providing a whole view of the customer, companies can use mission-critical documents-like statements, bills, enrollment kits, and correspondence-to cross-sell and up-sell additional products and services, and lines of business can reinforce brand.
Companies that have implemented a successful enterprise personalization product reduce customer churn, enjoy stronger brand identity, cut the cost of creating and delivering customer communications and introduce new products and services to a customer base more willing to buy.
Davis Marksbury is president and CEO of Exstream.
