How to Choose the Right CCM Consulting Services?
In the past, the way businesses communicated with customers could be compared to a “one-way street”. Most brands rely on one-dimensional, point-in-time outreach, where every customer is treated pretty much the same. Personalization is rare, and response times are often slow. Larger businesses with deep pockets often believe that having a well-known brand name and exposure in the media is enough to keep customers loyal and coming back.
Those days are gone forever
The digital age has “democratized” the world of customer experience, and the balance of power has truly tipped in favor of customers. Companies that cling to outdated ways of communicating with customers are paying the price.
Consumers today have more choices, which means their expectations of the brands they interact with are at an all-time high. With their short attention spans, switching brand loyalty has never been easier. Now more than ever, people want to be heard and feel important.
To attract and retain customers, you need to deliver hyper-personalized engagement, near real-time responses across multiple channels and platforms, and a constant focus on their needs, challenges, and goals.
It all starts with strategic Customer Communications Management (CCM).
In this article, we explore the “art and science” of being a successful CCM and what to look for when choosing a partner to support your efforts.
CCM Consulting: What is it?
For brands looking to rethink and inspire the way they communicate with customers in the digital age, help is at hand.
Today, professional CCM experts and consultants work with organizations to connect and engage with their clients in meaningful ways to create lasting, mutually satisfying results.
However, it’s important to remember that you can’t simply “buy” great customer communication. It requires research, planning, testing, precise execution, ongoing management, and iteration.
For these reasons, the best results occur when organizations work with a CCM provider that takes a consulting-led approach to ensure their solutions are aligned with the enterprise’s customer base, product and service portfolio, and growth goals.
Choosing the Best CCM Consulting Services for Your Company?
With a great CCM partner, you can put your company on track to deliver relevant, meaningful, and memorable experiences to every customer, every time, throughout the entire customer journey. But building and maintaining a loyal following requires you to choose your CCM consulting provider carefully.
Here are some tips on what to look for when narrowing down your search.
Ideally, as we mentioned earlier, you want a partner with a consulting-first approach and a proven track record of delivering impactful results to other clients in your industry, region, and market segment.
They should also have a proven method for handling the myriad tasks of managing your communications, from design and brand standards, content, and language, all the way to requirements and development. As part of this process, experienced partners will want to address the following areas:
Knowing very well why revisiting the CCM approach is a critical first step, no matter how large or small the scope of the program. Your CCM partner will help you plan and validate your goals, and draft a solid business case for presentation to senior management.
Identification of key stakeholders
A CCM project may require coordination with multiple internal teams. In addition to the individual business area and product owners, there are IT, marketing, security, fulfillment, and procurement. Your partner should help you ensure you have the support of all business partners and clarify roles and responsibilities. They should also be willing and able to support your initial internal awareness drive of the strategy so that everyone understands what you are doing and why. This will allow you to set clear expectations upfront.
Definition of project scope
This is where you and your CCM partner will start to understand the details. Remember that you don’t have to tackle everything at once, and it’s better to define an incremental path forward than no plan at all. For example, will your communications strategy include revisiting membership and sales forms? What about email and web forms and invoices? How will your social media presence and outreach work?
software selection.
Your CCM partner should help you determine the best software platform for your needs. Questions they might ask include, “What do you want the software to do? Who will use it? (For example, IT or the business?) What capabilities does your organization need? How often are you willing to upgrade?” Knowing your long-term goals will help right-size the software platform for your company.
Bentech CCM Consulting Services
Bentech has years of experience helping companies of all sizes and industries take their CCM to new heights with our tailor-made solutions.
With us, you can enhance customer communications across multiple touchpoints and cultivate customer relationships at scale. We can help you centralize and personalize your omnichannel customer communications, streamline customer service processes, map each customer journey, and deliver experiences that put your brand ahead of the crowd.
As part of our approach to engagement, we offer:
• CCM strategy and roadmap
• End-to-end development and testing
• CCM Center of Excellence (CoE)
• Implementation, migration, and upgrade support
• Managed support services
• Intelligent automation and data unification
• Web-based command and control interface
• Interactive content management
• Omnichannel customer engagement platform
• Training and post-implementation support
Bentech’s CCM solution is the smart answer to the challenge of bringing versatility, visibility, and efficiency to customer interactions through scalable, real-time, omnichannel communications. Feel free to contact us!!
