2020 Archives - Smart Communications Blogs

3 Ways Insurers Can Prioritize Technology Investments to Improve CX

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Ayla

By: Neil Greathead, CCO at Smart Communications

Having meaningful customer conversations has always been important, especially for insurance companies. But due to COVID-19, more customers are looking to insurers for security and guidance, forcing them to challenge the status quo in order to effectively respond to the drastic increase in customer demands. As a result, many insurers are questioning where they should prioritize their investments. Here are three important thoughts to consider to ensure you are focusing on the most important elements.

Determine Where You Want to Go First

Be realistic and pick your battles! When it comes to making technology investments to support digital transformation initiatives, remember it’s a marathon not a sprint. How do you need the investment to make a difference within your organization? Is the goal to grow revenue? Reduce expenses? Improve customer satisfaction? Knowing the answers to these questions will help identify which technology systems will bring the most value to the company – these are likely the systems you’ll want to get in place first. Investing in a modern customer conversations platform can move the needle on all of these priorities. By enabling enterprises to engage in interactive, real-time conversations across multiple channels, and giving consumers choices when it comes to channel preference will lead to deeper customer trust and loyalty, and ultimately increased ROI.

Identify The Right Integration Approach

Now more than ever, insurance providers need to be able to take full advantage of insurtech and other CX-focused technologies to meet the growing needs of the customer. To create a more seamless customer journey, McKinsey & Company reveals it’s crucial that insurers build a flexible API-based architecture that supports a quick integration of offerings that are vital to providing a more cohesive customer experience. By selecting a customer conversations platform that allows for key pieces of customer-facing technologies to be easily integrated, insurers can provide a more holistic view of the customer, quickly adjust and adapt to customer communication preferences and leverage data insights to break down silos in order to increase internal efficiency as well. According to Patrick Knight, Regional Vice President, UK Insurance at Salesforce, “Insurers need to leverage the wealth of data they have been collecting for all these years across all of their businesses and silos to make journeys that are easy, joined up and use the customer’s channel of choice.”

Consider The Entire Customer Lifecycle

Keep in mind that customer experience is informed at multiple points across the entire customer lifecycle. Look at the various reasons a customer interacts with you and identify all your customer touchpoints. Are there interactions that are causing friction? This will give you a better idea of which interactions should you hone in on more urgently. For example, think about your forms processes. Are you still expecting customers to complete paper-based forms or fillable PDFs that are not mobile friendly and are prone to errors, or are you collecting information via more intelligent, conversational user experiences? By selecting a conversations platform that can transform the forms experience and then use the information collected to deliver more personalized and relevant communications you can have a positive impact on customer experience from onboard to servicing and every interaction in between. You’ll also gain a better understanding of customer workflows and can identify which interactions can be done strictly via chatbots and virtual assistants and which require more in-depth, personal conversations.

There’s no denying that the increased importance on digital interactions has taken unprecedented priority for insurers. If you’re looking for more inspiration on how to overhaul your customer conversations strategy by capitalizing on new technologies, watch our webinar, Leveraging technology to drive the next phase of customer engagement: from trust to hyper-relevance, or download the full summary here.

Digital Acceleration in Insurance

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By: Thomas Harrington, Global Industry Markets Leader for Insurance at Pega

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wax and wane across the globe, now is the time for insurers to use the digital acceleration triggered by the crisis to reinvent themselves as digital-first businesses fit for the 21st century.

In the U.S., the unemployment rate reached 14.7% in April, a level not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The U.K. saw its highest rate of welfare support claims in six years; and a 3% rise in unemployment is forecast for Asia Pacific. Many insurance regulators have implemented guidance for payment grace periods or temporary protections to prevent policy cancellations. But as mandated forms of help expire, a significant number of consumers will reach out with questions and concerns about their insurance portfolios.

Tackle customer service volumes with digital channels

Industry leaders are asking, “How do we weather immediate customer service challenges and prepare for the new normal?” Requests related to premium holidays, policy options, hardship withdrawals, and rebates are increasing, yet closed offices and distributed workforces slow the ability to respond. As the volumes of inquiries increase, the ability to scale capabilities to distributed workforces, capture a policyholder’s questions or concerns, connect the data from all of these channels and mobile apps, and provide an accurate response is exposing major operational gaps.

The insurance business over the last few decades was built around an inbound model where you wait for something to happen and then react. By contrast, a digital-first experience creates opportunities for customers to engage how they want, and when they want. Increasingly, this means self-service through digital interfaces. This frees time and capacity to deliver more personal and empathetic service to customers who have more complex queries. It’s not just taking some volume off the plate; it’s a fundamentally different thought process.

Digital servicing options help address these pressures now and prepare for the increasingly digital-first preferences of future consumers. In many cases, you can stand up a digital service capability that connects with your systems of record and other apps within days. Examples of the most cost-efficient ways to do this are:

Reduce manual work by automating email – Email bots can process thousands of incoming emails and email attachments fast. Natural language processing capabilities can read, triage, and route incoming mail. You can even automate responses to simple inquiries and personalize the messaging.
Intake and track requests to provide responsive and accurate customer service – Integrate your current systems and apps to capture, triage, and route customer inquiries to the right person or team. Systems should be designed to adapt to changing business processes and regulatory requirements, to help you streamline operations and provide an auditable trail of actions for all customer inquiries.
Unify messaging in a single desktop – Seamlessly connect digital channels and enable agents to smoothly navigate among conversations to deliver efficient user experience. Virtual assistants work alongside agents to help contain service volumes and deliver immediate answers to common inquiries.

Examples of success with this digital servicing approach include an insurer with an at-home workforce that used both chat and email bots to help improve customer service response times; and a government agency that was able to design and implement a case management-based economic assistance app in just five days.

Start engaging proactively with your policy holders

Another way to mitigate customer service volumes is to get ahead of them. Don’t wait for that phone call. If your data shows a customer is experiencing a financial hardship or their needs have changed, proactively reach out. Provide something as simple as the initial steps to submit a claim or arrange a payment to mitigate policy cancellation. An empathetic approach goes a long way in letting customers know you understand their situation and value their relationship.

Think big, start small, scale fast

Companies trying to navigate their way through an uncertain world can be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed. So, start with something small and grow. Do not think about the end point in five years’ time, but about what you can achieve in the next two weeks, the next 60 days, or the next 90 days to deliver value that will make a tangible difference to your customers.

It’s important to think pragmatically as you start any project in the digital space; recognize that you are making initial forays and it’s highly likely that what you do will be changed at some point. This mindset of build and grow puts you in a different stance to build long-term success. More importantly, immediate improvements should be foundational elements of a digital experience that enables insurance carriers to change, expand, and automate servicing today and in the future.

Luckily, implementing new digital tools and leveraging a case-based approach to eliminate operational complexity and deliver customer outcomes does not require ripping and replacing existing systems. It just requires focusing on one customer outcome at a time and building from there. For example, think about the steps needed to respond to and complete a claim status request. Pega calls this a microjourney – an interaction that is part of a customer’s overall journey with your business. By focusing on the steps needed to complete that one microjourney, you define the data you need to access and define the rules for the channels you’ll use to connect with your customers. When you build those processes and rules into the operational layer of your architecture, you can easily reuse and modify them for other microjourneys. Pega calls this building from the center out – an approach that helps businesses transform across all channels and systems. A center-out approach not only frees staff to spend more time helping customers with complex inquiries now, but also enables them to deliver the customer experiences of the future.

About the Author

In his role as Global Industry Markets Leader for Insurance at Pega, Thomas Harrington works with leading organizations to drive performance, customer experience, and revenue growth through digital transformation.

To hear more from Thomas and Neal Keene, Field Chief Technology Officer at Smart Communications, watch the on-demand webinar: Digital Acceleration in Insurance: Meeting New Demands at Speed or read the webinar recap.

Delivering Excellence for Vulnerable Customers in Banking and Insurance

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Ayla

By: Marc Andrews, Vice President, Financial Services and Insurance Industry Market Leader at Pegasystems

Business as usual is not going to work for vulnerable customers as we continue to deal with the impact of COVID-19. The pandemic not only affects the health of individuals, but also their financial wellbeing. As the pandemic and unemployment continues, more customers will be unable to pay their bills. There will be a significant increase in customers and companies declaring bankruptcy, or at a minimum, in need of restructuring their debt. But financial institutions and insurers can take steps now to help vulnerable individuals remain solvent. The key is to do so while also preventing their operations from becoming overwhelmed with customer service calls.

Ideally, banks and insurance companies need to proactively identify customers most at risk, but also with potential to recover, in order to make proactive offers of help. Not only has the crisis made it more important than ever to work with vulnerable customers, but suddenly a whole new group of customers has moved into the vulnerable category.

In the United States, an Interagency Statement, encourages banks to “work prudently” with borrowers and offer loan modifications, such as deferrals and extensions, to assist customers who have been affected by COVID-19. Multiple agencies have already suspended all collections activity. A new bill before the Senate, if accepted, would ban collections work during times of crisis.

In addition to proactively identifying the customers to focus on, banks need to dynamically adapt their collection strategies. Customer-facing staff must understand how to identify customer needs and determine the optimal approach forward both for the bank and the customer. As such, even existing well-trained collections staff will need guidance on how to best handle individual collection efforts, let alone the new personnel that will likely have to be added to support the anticipated increase in volumes.

Technology: A Key Tool

Technology is making it easier to identify and support vulnerable customers. AI and machine learning can provide continually evolving analysis of all customer activity, including transactions, interactions and historical behavior, to help the business identify customers at risk earlier. Using AI combined with rules about ethics and empathy, companies can determine the next best action to take for a vulnerable customer, including which methods will provide the best chance of recovery and the optimal channels to engage each customer. AI can either make the decision on its own, based on the data collected and the rules in place, or it can recommend a course of action to a human agent.

This really came to the fore during the first wave of the pandemic. Banks were struggling with call volumes from distressed customers and faced an unprecedented surge in demand. While most financial services organizations had invested in technology to manage processes, the crisis highlighted many of the gaps in their servicing capabilities. In addition, the application of AI was primarily focused on identifying cross-sell offers, and most banks were unable to quickly adapt their models to identify vulnerable customers in need of service. However, those that were able to rapidly identify and respond to customer needs were viewed much more positively by their clients and the market, while at the same time relieving pressure on their call centers.

For example, the most successful banks used data to identify the types of individuals who could struggle with their next mortgage payment, based on their occupation, transactions, location, and other history. That meant that they could reach out proactively, offering to reduce mortgage rates or to automatically defer payments without requiring customers to contact the call center. This makes the financial institution not only be viewed as client focused, but also reduces the incoming call volume and related customer support costs.

Data, Privacy and Difficult Conversations

Financial services organizations often know more about a customer’s private life than their family or friends – and this can create some challenging issues. So, companies need to be wary of crossing privacy boundaries. However, when it comes to customer service and providing assistance, clients actually expect their banks to know about them. In fact, they get frustrated when banks ask for information they know their bank already has, or send them offers the bank should know are not relevant based on their spending and account balances.

Channels Choice

Channel choice can influence how well customers receive interventions from their financial services provider. Financial institutions are learning that they need to determine which channel is best for each customer and each communication type, and tailor their response accordingly. Preferences and responses will vary from delivery of marketing offers to providing customer service to making collection attempts.

To do this, staff must have access to the tools and training to deal with a wide range of vulnerability-related issues. One of the challenges that banks had going into this crisis was that their policies were not necessarily codified into their system. For example, a set number of people knew how to handle bereavement issues, versus mortgage servicing requests, versus collections activities. The rapidly shifting volumes of customer requests and operational needs are driving a requirement for more cross-training to support these requests with existing staff. This can be greatly streamlined if banks can systematize their policies to provide more guided processing. The leading banks are moving towards more flexible operations and shifting work across teams to improve overall operational efficiency.

Financial services organizations on a journey to offer excellence to vulnerable customers should consider three things. First, understand your customer needs to make sure you are focusing your outreach and engagement in the right places. Second, identify activities that can be automated and services that can be better delivered through digital channels. Third, look for ways to codify your policies and use technology to guide staff so that decisions can be streamlined and operations can become more flexible. Banks must figure out how to drive efficiencies while still providing effective customer service and retaining their client base. Because when we get through this, those once vulnerable customers are going to be the backbone for companies to move forward again.

One thing seems clear. As the pandemic moves into its second wave, the strategies and tools for serving vulnerable customers will be put to the test as never before.

To hear more from Marc, watch our webinar, Delivering Excellence for Vulnerable Customers in Banking and Insurance or download the full recap here.

—

Marc Andrews recently joined Pega to lead their Financial Services and Insurance industry markets. Prior to this, Marc led the creation of a new organization within IBM to build industry specific solutions for the financial services industry, where he was driving the design, development and delivery of offerings that apply analytic and cognitive technologies to streamline regulatory compliance, combat fraud and financial crime, and generate increased customer insights.

Communications in the Time of COVID-19: Delivering SMARTER Digital Conversations Just Became More Critical

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By James Brown, CEO of Smart Communications

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted nearly every aspect of daily life for everyone around the world. While we continue to limit human contact in an effort to slow the spread of the illness, businesses still must support their customers from a distance. As a result, many enterprises are now faced with accelerating their digital transformation plans in order to deliver the high touch, yet digital, interactions customers need and expect.

We knew 2020 would be a critical year to evolve from static communications to two-way, interactive, SMARTER conversations, but we couldn’t have even imagined just how quickly this shift would need to occur. We’ve been talking about digital disruption for years now, but businesses are now faced with a new type of disruption. Futurum Research Senior Analyst, Oliver Blanchard, said it best, “At its core, disruption is disruption. It doesn’t matter if it’s technological, economic, environmental, political, or a pandemic.” This pandemic is a wake-up call for businesses of all shapes and sizes – and IT leaders are faced with an unexpected opportunity to revisit their business continuity plans and response strategy. As they do so, it is critical to prioritize and stay focused on what matters most—the customer experience.

Keeping the Customer at the Center

Even before this crisis began, consumers have been trying to tell businesses that they need more. They don’t want to simply receive communications, they want to have SMARTER conversations—interactions that are digital-focused, interactive, relevant and timely.

With anxieties heightened, the need to receive accurate information quickly is more important than ever. Companies that can’t deliver highly personalized, nearly real-time interactions risk losing customer trust and loyalty, and eventually losing customers altogether to a vendor that is better equipped to meet their needs.

By going beyond delivering static, one-way communications and engaging in SMARTER, two-way conversations, companies can actually deepen customer relationships and increase customer loyalty at a time when customers need to feel genuinely supported by every one of their business relationships.

Removing Friction is Key to Meeting Customer Needs

To facilitate more dynamic, interactive conversations, companies must efficiently collect needed information from customers, and use that information to respond appropriately, quickly and via preferred channels. Those companies holding customers on the line for indefinite periods of time aren’t winning deeper loyalty points today. Your customers are as busy and as taxed as you are right now. Emotions are running high as bills mount, family needs continue to grow, and demands skyrocket for each of us. The way you gather information from your customers sets the tone for the immediate interaction – as well as those that will follow during this current pandemic period and beyond. If your company is still highly reliant on paper or scanned PDFs you are delivering an outdated experience that is time-consuming, not customer-centric and ultimately putting your business at risk during this unprecedented pandemic.

Now is the time to transform your forms processes and shift to more adaptive interview-like processes that are more efficient, more meaningful and deliver more value. By asking intelligent questions you can eliminate unnecessary fields and the need to enter and re-enter information into a static form. Customers are guided to either confirm known information or provide necessary details via the shortest route possible. All of this improves customer experience and speeds up processes—both more critical today than ever before.

We Can Help

In our latest piece of thought leadership, we address in more detail the specific shifts enterprises can make to improve their business processes and engage in more meaningful conversations across the entire customer lifecycle. Some of these items can be initiated today; others are items businesses are beginning to consider now knowing that digital transformation is no longer a “nice-to-have” initiative. As stated by Strategy Meets Action’s Mark Breading, “The more that people and businesses get used to operating remotely via digital tools, the more it will be expected – even after the virus is contained. The genie is out of the bottle, and it will be hard to put it back.” Regardless of where you are in your journey, we’re here to help navigate through these uncertain times.

As we work through this global challenge together, we stand with you in support of a stronger community that remains connected through SMARTER digital conversations.

Brexit and Its Impact on Customer Communications

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By Chris Murphy, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Smart Communications

The political and economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit – the UK’s exit from the European Union – is leaving thousands of organizations with a plethora of unanswered questions surrounding the possibility of significant commercial impact as well as an inability to adequately to prepare for the unknown. Companies are not only having to effectively react to the impact of leaving the EU in and of itself, but open questions remain as to the exact conditions of that exit. Many large UK-based companies have already sunk a combined $1.1 billion dollars preparing for GDPR, a future of similar of operational upheaval stemming from Brexit looks ominous.

Yet, despite so many unanswered questions, forward-thinking companies can respond to the uncertainty around Brexit by preparing for the one thing that they know will definitely come – change. This change is going to manifest itself in a variety of methods — the way that companies communicate with their customers, regulatory and compliance standards changes, as well as significant shifts in governing body oversight.

With many companies in the midst of significant digital transformation efforts and a renewed focus being firmly placed on customer experience, interruptions caused by Brexit have the potential to destabilize a lot of the stellar work that has gone into improving companies’ relationships with their customers. Customers will look to the brands that they do business with to provide them with a clear path detailing how Brexit will impact their ongoing relationship and require a clear communication strategy via their preferred channels of choice.

Even before Brexit, a Thomson Reuters study shows that financial institutions in the EU need to implement 44,000 regulatory changes per year; that’s one every 12 seconds.

It’s clear that Brexit will provide both challenges and opportunities to leading insurance and financial services organizations – both regulated and non-regulated – regarding their relationships with customers, internal stakeholders and regulators. As forward-looking organizations prepare for the upcoming raft of changes, leveraging a modern customer communications platform can empower businesses to move with both speed and agility – helping them to better navigate the uncertainty that lies ahead. Below are a couple of questions organizations should ask to help understand if it’s time to rethink your customer communications strategy.

How do I remain compliant and maintain consistency across communications?

As a result of Brexit, some organizations will be impacted by legal entity changes requiring updates across thousands of different communication documents. A modern customer communications platform equipped with a centralized relationship map with shared content will identify exactly where each content asset is currently being used and allows updates to be made once and shared across all dependent communication templates.

For existing communications, do I have to rely on IT to make any changes?

With a heavy reliance on IT, many legacy communication platforms require a large investment and long lead times in order to update their mission-critical documents. A platform that is designed to leverage shared content and can be used by business users across various departments can not only speed up the efforts of these critical updates but will allow IT to dedicate more time and resources toward other strategic projects.

Can I work collaboratively on communications across multiple stakeholders?

Depending on Brexit’s outcome, customers could become subject to existing British laws or will remain part of current European laws and protections – all of which will need to be communicated to customers in a timely and consistent manner. Collaboration across IT, legal and compliance, marketing, CX, and line-of-business owners will be imperative to achieving the required alterations to communications.

One insurance company is saving thousands of hours a year through business user ownership of their templates.

Do I have the speed and agility to perform required changes?

Speed and agility are the hallmarks of a successful digital business. But they will also be required to ensure compliance with mandated changes to avoid financial penalties. The ability to elastically scale on a modern cloud-based communication platform will afford organizations the speed and agility required to not only respond to required changes brought about by Brexit but will also effectively launch new products and services in a fraction of the time that legacy communications platforms allow for.

It’s clear Brexit will introduce a multitude of organizational, economic, political, and jurisdictional changes for organizations. Being able to effectively navigate these changes in an agile fashion to maintain transparency and trust with your customers through this period is going to be a strategic imperative for every organization.

Smart Communications is the leading cloud-based customer communications platform. Contact us to learn how we can help you navigate Brexit and the impact it will have on your customer communications strategy.

Achieving Digital Agility in the Age of COVID-19

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Ayla

By Neal Keene, Field CTO of Smart Communications

The coronavirus pandemic hit businesses quickly and unexpectedly and introduced significant challenges and a need for rapid response. While no one expected the massive impact of this crisis and the speed at which it happened, one thing is certain – we must adjust to the new “normal.” Experts predict that even when the crisis is under control, its effects will last far longer than a few weeks or months.

Below we highlight a few of the challenges businesses are facing in the age of COVID-19 and ways to improve digital agility in order to overcome this disruption and lead meaningful conversations with customers at a time when it is more important than ever.

Need for Speed

Businesses are quickly adjusting their processes and operations to meet a new set of customer demands and employee needs, while continuing to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. Even before this crisis, KPMG found that 80 percent of revenue growth will be reliant on digital offerings and operations by 2022. COVID-19 has undeniably accelerated the need for digital transformation, making it imperative for businesses to transform the way they operate. So, how do businesses continue to provide the high-level digital experience customers need and expect during this now “all-digital world”?

Especially during a time of crisis, the cloud needs to be in your arsenal. This pandemic has further increased the demand for digital capabilities including self-service portals, mobile communications, eCommerce portals, and more. Moving to a cloud-first, scalable solution where digital, adaptive engagement and process automation enable customer-driven interactions, guided conversations, and personalized communications provides the infrastructure needed to support convenient, compliant, accessible communications that can be quickly delivered through the customer’s preferred channel.

With the vast majority of people now working from home and an increased desire for “hands-off” approaches, reducing reliance on print communications is key. Those companies that have invested in cloud-based technologies focused on digital delivery are better positioned to quickly shift their focus to all-digital or nearly all-digital communications more quickly and can rest assured that these communications are timely, personalized, and interactive.

Quickly Adjusting to New Policies and Changes

While face-to-face meetings are at least temporarily a thing of the past, how do you reach those customers that relied on in-person interactions? With the speed at which new policies and changes are coming, companies who were caught off guard are realizing the urgent need for a solution to quickly replace those transactions that were historically done in person.

Take the recent launch of the US Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) as an example. In response to the new Small Business Administration (SBA) relief effort, businesses began flooding lenders with applications to take advantage of newly available funding, which offered federally backed loans on a first-come, first-serve basis. With the initial $349 billion in funds depleted in less than two weeks, small businesses are now anticipating the next wave of funding to be approved by the House, which would add an additional $310 billion to the government-backed program.

If you’ve seen people standing in line on the news or the flood of complaint articles appearing online, that’s because the PDF form was released before banks were ready to process the influx of applications, let alone provide a digital way to accept them from borrowers. This could have been prevented via a completely mobile guided process to apply and file for essential relief. Companies that never want to experience this frustration again, will certainly now be encouraged to transform their forms process.

Improving Business Continuity

Brian Solis, a world-renowned digital analyst, anthropologist, futurist, and now global innovation evangelist at Salesforce, recently stated: “One thing I’m sure of: we’re not going back to business as usual. We need a new perspective to see problems and opportunities in a new light. What’s happening now is a tremendous exposure to weaknesses in digital transformation and innovation initiatives. Beyond infrastructure modernization, organizations need to invest in systems and operations that learn from shifts in behavior, preferences, and aspirations.”

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are adjusting to operational risks and searching for new ways to reshape their business continuity plans. Specifically related to communications, EY emphasizes that “clear, transparent and timely communications are necessary when creating a platform to reshape the business and to secure ongoing support from customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, investors and regulatory authorities.”

As communication volume continues to surge, at the same time as internal operations are far from business as usual, successful companies need to be in a position in which business users are in control and can quickly implement changes and manage processes quickly and easily, without the reliance of IT.

Where do you go from here?

It’s more important now than ever before for businesses to be equipped with the tools and capabilities needed to be more digital-focused, agile and customer-centric. In fact, digital agility will be a key factor in determining who continues to struggle and who perseveres and emerges stronger once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided.

The good news is, there are solutions that can empower businesses to succeed. Need help navigating your next steps toward achieving digital agility in the age of COVID-19 and sustaining it moving forward? Connect with us and one of our experts will be in touch.

5 Ways SMARTER Conversations Ease the Impact of COVID-19

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Ayla

By Chris Murphy, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Smart Communications

The impacts of COVID-19 may be with us for quite some time, so companies will continue to deal with a vast amount of uncertainty when it comes to planning for a new normal. However, one thing is certain—the demand for digital solutions to support remote work and collaboration while continuing to continue to deliver a high-touch customer experience when face-to-face interactions aren’t possible will be a catalyst for accelerated digital transformation initiatives. Embracing a digital-first approach to the way you communicate with your customers will build a solid foundation of much-needed trust and loyalty and will help companies survive this unexpected challenge.

We’ve pulled together a quick guide that helps clarify how a modern approach to customer communications will help ease the impact of COVID-19 for companies looking to embrace change.

Click here to download the full tip sheet, 5 Ways Your Company Can Respond to COVID-19 Through SMARTER Conversations.

4 Steps to Prepare for a Pain-Free Legacy CCM Migration

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By: Chris Murphy, VP Product Marketing at Smart Communications

Adapting to the always-connected customer has become a catalyst for digital transformation – especially now as we adjust to the new norms brought forth by COVID-19. When it comes to customer communications management software (CCM), more organizations are finding that their legacy print system models and applications are turning into roadblocks and preventing agility. These fragmented systems are unable to communicate efficiently across business units and company divisions. Nor can they easily integrate with marketing, eCommerce, and CRM systems to coordinate data and messaging, which leads to a disjointed customer experience.

The good news is, you don’t have to become victim to an outdated legacy system. Here are four key steps to follow to prepare for a seamless CCM migration and ensure you are well-equipped to digitally transform your customer communications.

1. Understand the goal of the CCM migration

Gaining consensus on the why of the migration of your CCM platform is a crucial, but sometimes overlooked part of obtaining organizational buy-in and the successful fruition of any digital transformation project. Is the impetus of considering a new customer communications management strategy driven by compliance reasons, core system modernization, to reduce risk, to centralize communications across lines of business, to reduce costs, to instill more agility into communications strategy, to better empower business users, or maybe to provide an overall better customer experience? While all these may be realized benefits of moving to a modern CCM solution, the primary driving reason will help to dictate not only the core buying and evaluation group that you’ll need to work with but also the key performance indicators and success metrics that you’ll use to quantify the success of the project.

2. Determine which deployment option is best

As more organizations begin to adopt and develop a cloud-first strategy, it’s likely that your organization has already discussed the option of leveraging an enterprise application in the cloud. Before jumping head-first into a migration, it’s important to ensure everyone has a basic understanding of not only the options available but also the benefits of each approach in order to determine on the best approach for your company.

Software as a Service (SaaS): A method of software delivery in which software is licensed and then accessed online via a subscription, rather than being purchased for installation.
Platform as a Service (PaaS): A cloud computing model in which a provider delivers hardware and software (typically those needed for application development). The provider hosts the hardware and software on its own infrastructure, rather than requiring users to install in-house.
Cloud: Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet. These services are offered as either public or private cloud. With public clouds, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure are owned and operated by a third-party service provider and users share those resources with other organizations or “tenants”. With a private cloud, resources are exclusively used by one organization either via an on-site data center, or a hosted data center. Either way, the services, and infrastructure are on a private network with hardware and software dedicated solely to one organization.
Hybrid Cloud: A combination of on-premise and public/private cloud, each performing distinct functions, with orchestration between the platforms.
Managed Service: A deployment model in which a third party manages a customer’s IT infrastructure and/ or end-user systems remotely, requiring hosting, management, and staffing costs.

3. Assess your digital readiness

This might be your most important step in the process because it will show you exactly how ready your organization is to make the leap to a more modern, cloud-based service. As part of any CCM migration, it’s important to consider whether or not to add digital channel production to your existing print operations. First, you’ll want to evaluate your print operations to see which document types can most easily be digitized. Begin by measuring print volume by department, categorizing types of printed collateral, and identifying types of customers receiving print documents. Start creating a content inventory list that covers basic metrics surrounding the total number of communication documents and templates you have, the total number or percentage of reusable content, volumes by document, and which department owns the content. It’s also important to start thinking about the complexity of the documents – are they easily converted to digital channels or are they very complex – these may up end up being prioritized later in the migration process. This process allows you to trace and quantify your current reliance on printed collateral while recognizing any knowledge gaps that exist so you can perform a CCM migration efficiently and effectively.

4. Know your existing cost model

Cost is always one of the biggest issues when it comes to justifying a migration strategy business case. When starting the cost evaluation process, most businesses realize they know a lot less about their full cost model than they thought they did. Depending on how many communication documents, forms, and templates need to migrate, and how they’re currently being generated, it can be confusing to put a figure on it. If you don’t have a comprehensive view of the current cost model, it can be hard to make a migration strategy business case look positive to key stakeholders. While some of us are lucky to have a corporate decision that’s driving migration out to the cloud, having a clear picture of your all-in costs (don’t forget on-premise maintenance and operational costs, print and mail delivery costs, etc.) will only benefit you in the long run by setting realistic expectations upfront. Working with a vendor to establish a solid ROI calculation or looking at similar total cost of ownership (TCO) studies can also be an invaluable input into any evaluation decision criteria.

____

Let’s face it, change is hard. But, remember that your customers’ lives are changing, so to stay ahead of the game, your organization must be willing to change too. Are you ready for a more simplified, pain-free legacy migration? Discover how our Migration Studio reduces the cost, time, and complexity inherent with CCM software migrations.

3 Ways to Make Customer Conversations SMARTER in 2020

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Ayla

By James Brown, CEO of Smart Communications

A company’s success or failure is directly related to the experience they provide to their customers and central to exceptional experiences is the quality of communications they are delivering to them. Given that 62 percent of consumers will leave a company that isn’t delivering on their communications expectations, organizations that don’t have a customer-centric strategy in place risk losing customers to those that do. To inspire companies to make conversations SMARTER in 2020, we’ve identified three ways that will help deepen customer relationships while improving the overall customer communications experience.

Shift Focus from Communications to Conversations

Modern consumers no longer want to be communicated at, they want to have a conversation with the company they are doing business with – and we can thank the evolution of technology for that! To help put this into perspective in today’s modern age, a communication can be defined as a message that is developed and delivered. It’s often a static, one-way output, such as a printed billing statement or policy document. A conversation is a two-way interaction that is highly personalized and can be delivered across multiple channels, specifically digital. Having the technical capability to deliver customer conversations will enable companies to focus on learning more about their customers by using data to inform and develop more relevant conversations in the future.

Leverage Modern Tools and Data to Personalize Communications

The shift toward more engaging conversations is certainly a journey, but a great place to start is to deliver more personalized communications – and there are plenty of modern tools available to make this possible. According to Viswanath Maddali, vice president of client services at ValueMomentum, having tools in place that can help measure document history, points of interaction and support document tracking are extremely valuable when it comes to better understanding your customers. Having improved insight into the document journey is the first step toward understanding the historical interactions a customer has had with your company. Furthermore, being able to capture data from points of interaction can be used to improve and tailor communications with an individual customer down the road. Document tracking tools help companies determine whether the customer is actually opening and engaging with the communications sent across different channels. Modern customer communications management (CCM) platforms can help companies that are stuck in the static, one-way communication stage. They are increasingly evolving to enable digital workflows, provide flexibility and scale to support instant communication through a variety of new channels.

Use Artificial Intelligence to Improve Organizational Agility

As more companies begin to understand the impact and value data can have on their business, it’s an extremely exciting time to be in the data and analytics space. Looking specifically at the various capabilities that fall within the artificial intelligence (AI) umbrella, whether its refining processes, utilizing real-time data to drive personalization, or leveraging AI-powered insights, each one individually brings great insight to the organization. And we’re already seeing a significant number of companies beginning to incorporate AI into their overall business strategy. According to Forrester Research, 53 percent of global data and analytics decision-makers say they have implemented, are in the process of implementing, or are expanding or upgrading their implementation of some form of AI. Those that do embrace AI in 2020 will be one step closer to building frictionless automated processes within their organization, bringing them one step closer to having SMARTER customer conversations that can be delivered across multiple channels.

What’s the Next Step?

In 2019 there was a tremendous focus on migrating to the cloud, but in 2020 it’s clear that the focus is all about optimizing the customer experience. From a customer communications perspective, this means evolving your current communications strategy to focus meaningful, dynamic two-way conversations. Moving to the cloud is an essential component of a successful digital evolution, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg!

Want more inspiration from industry experts on ways they’ve been able to make conversations SMARTer? Download our whitepaper, Resolve to Make Customer Conversations SMARTER in 2020.

Or, you can also attend our live webinar, Pro Tips for Making Customer Conversations SMARTER in 2020, for a chance to ask questions in real-time!

The Results Are In, Customer Demands are Changing and Businesses Need to Quickly Adapt

Posted on December 18, 2020 by Ayla

By: Leigh Segall, CMO at Smart Communications

In 2020 businesses across the globe faced a host of challenges that that will continue to have an impact for months, if not years, to come. COVID-19 greatly disrupted life as we once knew it. Beyond the unprecedented threat to our health and safety, we faced an unexpected economic downturn, shifts to remote work, business shutdowns, and more. Additionally, the global pandemic impacted the way businesses interact with consumers, catalyzed digital transformation efforts, and forced communication-heavy industries to reassess and reprioritize their current strategies.

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 40% of consumers in the U.S. have changed their communications preference from direct mail to digital.

With more consumers now relying on digital-first interactions, are businesses actually prepared to deliver? To gain a better understanding of how these new set of challenges, changing expectations, and accelerated digital transformation have impacted consumer preferences and corporate priorities, we commissioned Harris Interactive to survey both consumers and business leaders within financial, insurance or private healthcare companies across the U.S. and UK. We’re excited to reveal the latest findings in our new benchmark study, Customer Conversations in 2020.

Check out the infographic below for more key findings:

SmartCOMM

SmartIQ

SmartHUB

SmartPath

SmartDX

Insurance

Financial Services

Healthcare Payers

Healthcare Providers

Government

Utility

Resource Center

Customer Resources

Events

News

About us

Partners

Analysts

SmartCOMM

SmartIQ

SmartHUB

SmartPath

SmartDX

Insurance

Financial Services

Healthcare Payers

Healthcare Providers

Government

Utility

Resource Center

Customer Resources

Events

News

About us

Partners

Analysts

Tackle customer service volumes with digital channels

Start engaging proactively with your policy holders

Think big, start small, scale fast

About the Author

1. Understand the goal of the CCM migration

2. Determine which deployment option is best

3. Assess your digital readiness

4. Know your existing cost model