Taking a Look at Current Trends in Customer Communications Management

Looking back five years, there was talk in the industry about the benefits of full-color inkjet and white paper factories, but at that time only a few printers made the move to adopt them. Fast forward to now, and I think it is safe to say that almost all our customers are using full-color inkjet in some fashion. Of course, part of this evolution, beyond just the equipment required, is that we have seen a major shift to PDF for output and, therefore, the ability to have software solutions that offer optimized PDF output for size control and speed efficiency along with improved color management has become a major point of emphasis.   

 There is no doubt that customer expectations have changed significantly in the last five years to keep up with the temperature of the conversation. Today, customer preference is dictating what companies offer because customers want to choose their method of receiving communications. They are going to seek partners that can offer multiple communication channels, whether it’s print, email, SMS (text messaging), online payments or all the above. We are working with a multi-generational demographic of buyers that want options and, surprisingly, they are even willing to switch providers if they aren’t providing those options.

 An impetus behind this trend is the continued increased use of mobile. Everybody wants to do things on their phone. Whether that's accessing an app or a mobile website, you better have a way for it to be done on a smartphone—it's simply the quickest and easiest way to get your information to a recipient and for them to act on it.  We can clearly see that industry trends are indicating this.  A text message to a phone or pushing/streaming the document directly through an app is garnering higher response rates, quicker response times and even an increase in online payments.

One of the most significant trends we are seeing in the customer communications management (CCM) space today pertains to the use of artificial intelligence (AI). AI's impact on CCM is already profound, bringing transformative changes to the way businesses engage with customers, handle queries and analyze feedback. The opportunity to improve all aspects of CCM is significantly expanded with AI, including the use of ChatGPT, which continues to grow exponentially. For example, AI provides the ability to ask which words are best to use in a transactional document that might increase the likelihood of getting paid faster or elicit another action.

Another example would be learning through sentiment analysis what the best way is to communicate certain messages to ensure you trigger the response you want. Businesses that use tools to analyze sentiment can review customer feedback more regularly and proactively respond to changes of opinion within the market. AI also has tremendous implications for automation in both document composition steps and workflow. The advancement of AI is moving very quickly and we expect it to fully continue into 2024.  We see great opportunity for advancement in this space around AI and companies will need to get on board with this new technology or risk falling significantly behind.

Of course, we wouldn’t be talking about current trends if we didn’t bring up the issue of security. Security is one of the biggest challenges all businesses face. Five years ago, security was not the issue it is today. Now, in meetings with service bureaus and transactional service providers, it is the first topic of conversation. For industries such as insurance, financial services and healthcare, the stakes are high when handling sensitive communications and navigating an ever-changing regulatory landscape with increasing penalties and risk—non-compliance penalties that could ultimately put them out of business. Compliance is critical moving forward and we consider it a top priority.

At Transformations, we take all these trends into consideration as we work to develop and enhance products and services that meet—and anticipate—the changes our industry is going through. With products like uCampaign, which makes it possible to collaborate effectively with your customers, to uSecure and Smart Delivery which provide unmatched security for sensitive data, to our Professional Services offerings which assist our clients’ teams to ensure successful implementation of projects, to our forthcoming enhancements that will implement AI across our platform, we are with you to ensure you stay ahead of the curve in all aspects.

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