If you’re a business owner who’s looking for proven and efficient ways to improve your customer interactions, you might need to refine your customer communication management efforts (CCM). Back in the day, CCM used to mean dealing with print materials, phone calls, and not much else. However, a lot has changed regarding communication technology, and CCM has changed with it.
Today communication is a vital component of customer experience, so you can’t skip over it and hope for the best. Instead, you need to consider multiple elements, which may or may not include finding a reliable VoIP phone service provider, maintaining regulatory compliance, clearly defining the roles and responsibilities within the Center of Expertise (COE), and many more.
The key to a better customer experience is through effective customer communication management. Besides improving the customer experience, it can also increase your company’s overall efficiency, reduce risks, and even allow more automation.
Read the article below to learn more about all the benefits incorporating CCM can bring to your business and how to set up a successful CCM system!
Types of Customer Communication
Business owners need to understand there are two aspects of customer communication:
- Internal communication management ensures that your employees are aligned and up-to-date with all the latest happenings, including changes in your products and services. Doing this helps you ensure that your staff can provide consistent experiences for your customers.
- On the other hand, external communication management ensures that you stay up-to-date about your customers’ needs and expectations. It helps you deliver relevant and timely customer experiences.
With these two aspects in mind, it is clear that customer communication management should be a vital component of every customer experience management strategy. Each aspect requires a different level of focus and attention to detail, so an effective CCM system is the best way to tackle them.
How To Set Up a Customer Communication Management System
Step 1: Design Your CCM Strategy
Before creating an effective CCM system, you must first develop your strategy. This step involves asking yourself the following questions:
- What is the purpose of my customer communication?
- What is the purpose of customer communication within my company?
- What types of customers do I have?
- What is the priority order for my customers?
- How many customers do I have?
- How much time can I devote to improving my CCM strategy?
- What communication methods work best for me?
- What channels do I use most often?
- How can I improve my customer experience through efficient customer communication?
By answering these questions, you’ll better understand what makes sense for your business needs and what doesn’t. For example, some businesses might not have the resources to dedicate too much time to customer communication, while others might have more resources available.
Depending on your answers, you might need to adjust your customer communication efforts accordingly. Ultimately, you will be better equipped to create an effective strategy for managing your customer communication by answering these questions.
Step 2: Create Your Communication Plans and Processes
During this step, you will focus on creating the action plans for achieving your CCM strategy. You want to ensure everything you’ve planned out in Step 1 will get done, so you’ll begin by planning out:
- A detailed process for how you’ll manage your customer communication.
- The resources/tools/materials you will need to manage your customer communication effectively.
You’ll also want to plan out how you’ll manage:
- Customer service processes,
- Sales processes,
- Marketing processes.
The key is to keep track of all your communication activities in one place so that you can more easily identify and resolve issues. Doing this will make it easier for you to manage all aspects of your customer communication and achieve the results you’re looking for.
To do this, it helps if you keep a detailed record of everything — from calls and emails to social media interactions. Make a note of what was said or done during each interaction so that you can easily see patterns in your interactions or trends in your customers’ behaviors.
Overall, doing this will help you better understand how your customers perceive your company and decide how best to improve their experiences with your company.
Step 3: Implement Your Communication Plans & Tools
This is where the rubber meets the road. You’ve created a plan (Step 2), and now it’s time to put it into action. You’ll need to determine which tools or platforms are best for managing your customer communication efforts (i.e., email campaigns, social media, telephone calls, etc.). Then, you’ll need to purchase or create each tool or platform that you need.
After that, you’ll need to train staff on how they should properly use each tool or platform and explain to them any new processes they may need to follow while using these tools. Once they’ve been trained, they’ll need time to practice and become comfortable with the new processes before they are comfortable implementing them on autopilot.
Finally, after all is done, you’ll need to observe how these tools and platforms work for your company. Are they helping you achieve the results you’re looking for? If not, it’s back to the drawing board!
Final Word
Customer communication management needs to be an essential aspect of your overall customer experience management strategy. If it is not, you risk missing out on many potential opportunities.
By designing the right strategy and using the right tools, you can see a measurable improvement in your company’s customer interactions. It allows you to build a stable customer base and increase customer loyalty.
There is a lot of information to take in. Still, if you take it one step at a time, you’ll be able to create an effective customer communication management strategy that will allow you to improve your customer experience. Your customers will thank you for it!