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3 Ways to Build Trust With a Customer Communications Management Strategy

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By James Brown, CEO of Smart Communications

Did you see the following quote in my recent blog, How GDPR Affects the Customer Communications Experience?

“Fostering trust through pull tactics to facilitate opt-ins will prove to be the most effective tactic for scaling customer communications post-GDPR.”

A key phrase in this quote is “fostering trust.” Building trust among customers is a significant goal for companies today, and so is avoiding any factor that could erode it. Trust has always been an important driver of the relationship between a company and its key stakeholders: customers, employees, investors, business partners, and others. But, earning and preserving this trust has become a precarious effort.

What Affects Consumer Trust?

A myriad of events can undermine consumer trust in a company or brand, whether from outside threats like data breaches and hacking or by the company’s own actions. In the age of big data, consumers are even more on edge. Recent studies have shown how trust factors into the customer experience and drives decisions about whether to engage with a brand or pull back from it.

88% of consumers agree the extent of their willingness to share personal information depends on how much they trust a given company. (PwC, 2017)
87% of consumers will take their business elsewhere if they don’t trust how a company handles their data. (PwC)
77% of consumers say company privacy policies are too difficult to understand. (PwC)
78% of U.S. consumers are likely to share personal information when they retain control over how a brand communicates with them (Janrain, 2017)

Three Ways to Build Trust With CCM

“Any interaction is a chance to build trust, to sustain it, or dilute it.” — Tom Champion, Forrester senior analyst, on the podcast The Decline Of Consumer Trust And What To Do About It.

Your company’s customer communications strategy can play a significant role in that effort. Is it doing everything possible to build and enhance trust in your brand and the people behind it? The trust-building process goes hand in hand with both customer acquisition and retention. The digital agency Wunderman calls this “Wantedness,” or “the degree to which a brand proves their commitment to earning a customer’s business across every touchpoint and throughout the entire path to purchase.”

Marketing, advertising and PR have traditionally been tasked with trust-building and improving the customer experience. However, today’s customers no longer solely depend on those mass-communications to get information and form opinions about a brand.

As Forrester’s CMO Victor Milligan says in the podcast, “Trust really is an operational competency. It’s not a brand message.”

Today, companies must dig deeper and examine every interaction, including those from departments not previously a part of the customer communications conversation. That’s why a CCM strategy centered on positive customer experiences through trust-building can strengthen both customer relationships and retention. These three CCM strategies will build trust and win over skeptical customers:

1. Let Customers Control Communications.

Now that we are living in a multichannel digital age, companies are discovering that consumers are more in control of how they want to communicate with your brand.

Phone? Direct mail? Website? Email? Text? Chatbot? Or a combination? Letting customers match the channel to the need gives them the control they seek. It also increases your timeliness of message response, which is another trust factor.

2. Be Transparent.

“Trust” isn’t the only “T” word in the CCM lexicon. Transparency means that you are giving your customers as much information as you can, using a language they can understand, while complying with regulations and compliance issues.

If your brand represents transparency and authenticity but communicates in legalese and bureaucratic language, that disconnect can result in a big trust gap and damage the overall customer experience.

Transparency uses “plain language.” CIGNA created a downloadable guide explaining how and why the company simplified the language it uses to communicate with customers and employees about insurance coverage. It includes a “Words We Use” list that replaces common industry terms, like “formulary” and “network savings,” with their plain-language equivalents.

Supply-chain transparency is becoming a common trust-building method for companies that import materials or finished products. For example, Whole Foods uses a verification system to assure customers that products labeled as non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) are labeled correctly. Delivering more transparent communications gives your customers more reasons to trust you and might send fewer customers to your call centers seeking more information.

3. Be Consistent Across all Customer Communication Channels.

This one might be the hardest to achieve if you rely on a legacy, CCM platform, especially an on-premises system that can’t be updated from a central operator.

The look and tone of your communications are major trust drivers, whether on paper, websites, in emails or texts, or in automated or voice conversations. Messages that don’t match up with your current brand can make customers distrust you. This is especially crucial in email communications, specifically for brands susceptible to spamming, phishing and malware. But, even paper communications using outdated logos and design will erode trust.

Solving Modern-Day Trust Issues With CCM

Just having a CCM strategy isn’t enough to earn or rebuild customer trust. Today’s time-pressed, easily distracted customers want answers quickly via the channels they prefer and in the formats that they expect. An integrated, multichannel CCM platform provides a seamless experience in which communications are timely and relevant and reflect the customer’s previous interactions with your company. Trust us on this!

We invite you to download a free copy of Smart Communications’ recent report, “The State of Meaningful Conversations: Consumer Perspectives on What they Expect, What They’re Currently Receiving and Why it Matters.” You’ll get up-to-the-minute statistics and an analysis that you can use right away to guide your own customer communications strategy.

3 Reasons to Rethink How You Collect Customer Information

Posted on March 27, 2023 by SmartComm

By: Neal Keene, Field CTO at Smart Communications

According to a recent Forbes article , in 2021 we can expect the customer experience to become increasingly conversational. But what does this really mean for your business, and how can you ensure you’re set up to succeed?

From acquisition to onboarding and servicing, businesses must ensure the end-to-end customer experience is better than ever – and that begins with how information is collected. Customers need to provide information throughout their lifecycle with a business, which often means asking them to fill out a form. Unfortunately, this touchpoint is oftentimes neglected, creating impersonal, friction-filled and frustrating customer experiences.

Let’s discuss three ways enterprises can optimize their forms processes, ultimately reducing abandonment rates while simultaneously building brand loyalty and creating a more conversational experience.

1. Legacy tools like paper-based or PDF forms are off-putting.
All too often, businesses ask customers to either download, print and scan paperwork, or enter already known information into an online form. And if forms aren’t web or mobile friendly, customers may avoid engaging altogether – 50% of consumers prefer online forms versus a paper-based process and 35% want forms to be easy to access on mobile.

2. Nearly 60% of customers will abandon a form if the process is too difficult.
The majority of consumers – nearly 60% — recently indicated they would be likely to abandon an interaction if a company has an inefficient process for collecting information. However, in the same report, we uncovered that adaptive forms – where companies gradually collect data at strategically timed intervals – are the least common means of collecting customer information. Most organizations are still using a combination of paper (about 50%) or static, online forms (nearly 60%).

3. The future of customer conversations is digital-first.
Companies need to understand customers on an individual level to uncover new ways to meet their needs and provide additional value. If interactions are still paper-based and static, enterprises risk creating a significant gap between what customers expect and what is being delivered. Cloud-based solutions that provide intelligent, conversational user experiences allow businesses to gradually collect data at strategically timed intervals, and only ask customers relevant questions that consider previous answers with the ability to start and stop the form without losing information.

As businesses rethink customer engagement, it’s time to shift away from one-way, transactional communications to meaningful, two-way customer conversations. And, investing in forms transformation is a key step in optimizing the end-to-end customer experience.

Beyond collecting information and checking boxes, redefining how information is gathered means businesses can respond quickly and via preferred channels – a critical component of every stage within the customer lifecycle. Smart forms modernize the collection and use of customer information, empower customers to initiate conversations with businesses and remove friction from critical interactions.

Enterprises must engage their customers in dynamic, two-way conversations, which means they must more effectively collect customer information and then use that information to respond appropriately, quickly and via preferred channels – something that remains critical throughout every stage of the customer lifecycle.

To learn how Smart Communications can power your business’ forms transformation, check out SmartIQ^TM.

Work SMARTER, Not Harder: Enhancing CCM Efforts with Forms Automation

Posted on December 12, 2022 by SmartComm

By: Sally Schulte, Product Marketing Director at Smart Communications

Consumers today expect to do just about everything digitally — from filing an insurance claim and managing personal finances to making medical appointments. That’s why the move to digital-first customer interactions was happening even before the global pandemic, which threw digital transformation initiatives, like forms automation, into overdrive. In fact, a March 2022 IDC survey found that 71% of business are implementing a digital-first strategy due to the pandemic’s lasting impacts.

As a result of this widespread digitization, enterprises must rethink customer engagement. The days of companies only offering one way for customers to communicate with them, usually involving paper, are long gone. Today, customers expect more. They want to be able to initiate interactions with a business, start and stop at their convenience and even switch between channels and devices without having to start over. That means enterprises need to make interactions two-way, digital and conversational.

To meet customer expectations, many organizations have already adopted customer communications management (CCM) platforms. But one category of customer “communications” that companies often overlook, and under-optimize, is the form processes required to interact with them. Adding a forms automation solution enhances CCM efforts and fully optimizes the end-to-end customer experience (CX) by turning static, one-way processes into dynamic digital conversations.

Investing in a smart forms automation solution can make a huge difference to CX. Digitizing forms-based processes is not just converting paper forms to fillable PDFs and putting them on a website. True form process automation creates interactive, personalized experiences that consider known information, such as the customer’s personal details, medical history, insurance policy information and more. The digital journey should accommodate the end user’s timeline and device preference, letting them start on one device, leave, and pick up right where they left off on another.

Most importantly, a strong forms automation solution ensures that enterprises collect the most accurate data from every interaction. When paired with a cloud based CCM solution, this allows businesses to deliver the most tailored, personalized interactions in real time. Let’s look at some of the ways web forms automation and forms management software can benefit CCM efforts and the business at large.

Mitigate Risks for Data Breaches and Errors

Many industries have long relied on paper forms for key operational processes — things like loan applications, insurance claims documentation and reimbursement for medical expenses. But paper forms bring inherent risks that can be avoided with digitization. Paper forms that are mailed in or scanned and attached to an email are much less secure than digital forms – running the risk of unauthorized access that exposes PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and can result in hefty fines and damage a company’s reputation. Paper forms, or electronic forms that are stored in a database or on a hard drive, can easily become compromised, lost or breached by hackers. And when completing forms manually, even minor clerical errors can significantly slow down customer service processes or, worse, prevent a needed service from being provided to a customer.

Automated enterprise forms management helps businesses mitigate these risks. The data from digital forms can be easily transferred, stored and managed by existing core systems – aligning with any corporate data strategy. Choosing a cloud-first solution provides the added benefit of scale, reducing ongoing dependencies on internal IT resources. Process automation, including pre-population of forms with personal information pulled from existing core systems, minimizes the risk of errors, accelerating resolution and improving the overall customer experience.

Regarding risk, it’s also important to discuss compliance regulations. With digital form content, business owned form processes can be quickly and easily updated with content that is impacted by changes to local or federal regulations—securing compliance. And overall efforts related to risk mitigation closely align with broader CCM initiatives by making sure businesses have the data they need to optimize CX, such as customer preferences. Partnering with a vendor that offers both CCM and forms automation software makes it possible to stay one step ahead, especially when regulations vary by region. Again, it’s about working SMARTER — not harder.

Save Time and Money with Forms Automation

It’s a simple fact that manual processes can be slow and time-consuming, and can be especially cumbersome when it comes to gathering and acting on customer data. With remote and hybrid work here to stay, digital forms increase workplace efficiency by eliminating the need for employees to re-key information from paper forms or, worse, take data entered in one system and have to manually enter it into another. A fully integrated, cloud-based solution means that team members across departments and locations are all working from the same information — no need to worry about someone making a decision based on outdated information by mistake.

Automating forms-based processes is a win-win for both customers and business users. Transforming things like intake questionnaires, claims filing or loan applications into intuitive, guided digital experiences is faster, easier and much more secure. And it improves the employee experience because they’re not spending hours on the repeat tasks associated with manual, paper-based processes. Business users can get new projects to market faster and maintain existing projects quickly and easily. With the added flexibility forms automation provides, enterprises can reallocate and reduce the need for IT resources. Increased efficiency can even lower the cost of overtime, additional employees and other expenses related to manual forms management.

Forms Automation Can Enhance Enterprise Customer Communications

The goal for enterprises today is to deliver digital, omnichannel communications at scale. Customers want to be able to get things done on their own time and their own terms. By combining a cloud-first CCM solution with a sophisticated forms automation solution, enterprises can empower customers to self-serve — when, where and how they prefer. Incorporating data from core systems in real time allows enterprises to deliver communications on the customer’s preferred channel quickly and efficiently. Plus, taking an adaptive interview approach lets businesses confirm previously known information while also collecting new data.

This type of dynamic, two-way interaction leads to more personalized conversations that can be tailored to individual customer needs, making their lives easier. At the same time, it enables businesses to make data actionable and scalable, enhance communications and support faster resolution and decision making.

Purpose-Built for Today’s Enterprise Needs

At Smart Communications, we understand the importance of automating everything from basic tasks to sophisticated and complex processes. Our integrated solutions, including SmartIQ forms automation and SmartCOMM customer communications management, work together and connect to existing systems to deliver intuitive customer experiences and dynamic communications. By bringing data together, enterprises can gain a complete, contextual view of customers and remove friction with a single, powerful CX ecosystem.

Get in touch today to find out how SmartIQ enables enterprises to improve forms-based processes and empower interactive, two-way conversations.

Smart Communications Gets Active: How Corporate Culture Plays a Role in Employee Wellbeing

Posted on September 8, 2022 by SmartComm

By: Jo Sweet, Global HR Director at Smart Communications

Over the last few years, business leaders and HR teams have become more curious and conscious about the many factors that contribute to a positive employee experience. In seeking out how to create better employee engagement and retention programs, leaders have recognized just how important these two factors are to the company’s overall success. What’s more is that research shows that retention and engagement can both be strengthened by fostering a workplace culture that allows for flexibility, wellbeing (both mental and physical) and work/life balance.

At Smart Communications, we believe it’s important to foster a culture that encourages employee wellbeing. We love that so many of our employees around the globe prioritize their health and wellness, and are happy to highlight five individuals who embody these attributes in this post.

Three Peaks Challenge: Andreas Neocleous, Corporate Project Manager

1. What is the Three Peaks Challenge?

The UK National Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing the three highest peaks of Scotland, England and Wales. Although achievable within 24 hours, realistically, it’s very rarely accomplished due to the distances between the mountains and the necessary driving involved. People normally attempt this challenge for personal achievement and to raise much-needed funds for charities. It is also a great event to catch up with friends and colleagues or to meet new people. I was also joined by our CEO, James Brown, as well as many other members of the Smart Communications family, including: Abbi Pollock, Amir Shurrab, Charlie Kassel, Chris Childs, Carlos Mendez, Graeme Wright, Richard Ward, Waseem Malik, Zaahid Bharmal, Yuri Kogun, and Byron Harper.

2. What motivated you to take part in it?

I first heard about the National Three Peaks Challenge more than 30 years ago when I was participating in a different challenge, the Three Peaks of Yorkshire. Though competing in the national challenge has been on my bucket list ever since, I didn’t have an opportunity to attempt it until 2009. This event helped us raise funds for Hospitallers, a relief organization that provides aid to Ukrainian paramedics.

3. How has working at Smart Communications impacted your work/life balance?

When I joined Smart Communications in Oct. 2006, I was able to cycle to the office every day. The on-site shower facilities allowed me to have a workout on the way to the office, and then again on the way back home. I found cycling a much better way to exercise than going to the gym. Since the pandemic, I’ve rediscovered running, so I’ve replaced the commuting time with running instead of cycling.

Bike Ride for Breast Cancer Research: Mel Burns, Senior Director of Global Demand Generation

1. What was this event and what motivated you to take part in it?

Women V Cancer, Ride the Night London is a charity ride to raise vital funds for three important charities at a time when they need it most; Breast Cancer Now, Ovarian Cancer Action and Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust. Riders began at 10:30 pm and needed to complete the 100-kilometer (6 miles) route by 7:00 am the next morning. The route followed a ‘palace to palace’ circular ride, starting at Windsor, riding through London (passing Buckingham Palace) and returning to Windsor. If you fancy the route for yourself, you can view it here.

So many people have been touched or impacted by these devastating diseases, and personally losing my maternal grandmother to breast cancer drove me to this challenge. This event really resonated due to the potential impact and funds we could raise. I’ve also really enjoyed cycling and have been taking it more seriously at club level since lockdown.

2. How has working at Smart Communications impacted your work/life balance?

Since my role has a global scope across a vast number of time zones, I enjoy the flexibility of being able to connect with colleagues with the occasional late or early morning call. In turn, I give myself time once a week to get a ride in, or to engage in my other passion, Pilates. Having this flexibility works well for me since I ensure I carve out time to balance the needs of my role (being flexible and accommodating to time-zone differences) with the importance of personal time.

3. As a leader in the business, how do you/will you encourage your team to engage in healthy habits?

To me, having a healthy work/life balance and adopting healthy habits are imperative for success, performance and a person’s mind and wellbeing. I try to lead by example, encouraging and supporting my team to enjoy their own activities. We also have a rule that when you’re on vacation or taking PTO, it’s a digital detox from work. We do this because we believe that a healthy mind is more motivated and recharged to succeed professionally. This is something I feel we’ve all benefited from learning during the pandemic.

Peloton Club: Mary Featherstone, Director of Global Campaigns and Content

1. Tell me about the Peloton Club

The Peloton Club at Smart Communications started about two years ago and consists of team members from around the globe, from nearly every department, including marketing, sales, product, customer success and more.

We meet every Monday at 9 a.m. PT/noon ET/ 5 p.m. BST in a pre-determined class to compete, have fun and get in a little workout

We have an internal Teams channel where we decide on upcoming rides and share fun workouts we’ve done on our own, thoughts on Peloton news and more. Our tag is #CCMInnovators and we welcome anyone to join us!

2. What about Peloton motivates you to exercise/challenge yourself to meet new exercise goals?

I was fortunate enough to have purchased my Peloton in Dec. 2019 – just a few months before exercising from home would be the norm! It’s probably one of the best purchase decisions I’ve ever made.

Two of my favorite things about Peloton:

They focus on being strong and feeling good instead of anything appearance related.
The content is always new and fresh! It’s impossible to get bored.

For me, it’s fun to compete against myself and always push myself to achieve something new and I am able to do that with Peloton.

3. How has working at Smart Communications impacted your work/life balance?

One of my favorite parts about working at Smart Communications is the room we have to prioritize health, family and more. I joined the company in July 2020 when most of the world was still locked down, so Peloton Club became a way for me to “meet” and connect with colleagues from other areas of the business. I recently celebrated my 600th ride and several colleagues joined me for the milestone class – I love the camaraderie and support!

Whether it’s Peloton Club or another athletic endeavor, prioritizing healthy lifestyles is encouraged at Smart Communications – and that’s a sentiment that starts at the top. There have been many days where I step away from my desk to either get in a Peloton workout or take a walk outside and come back feeling more creative and inspired to work.

7-Day Bike Tour Through Italy: Karen Oakland, VP Financial Services Marketing

1. What brought you to Italy for this bike ride?

I originally got into distance cycling by training for some charity rides and have completed sponsored rides for local MS, breast cancer and AIDS organizations. However, this one was purely for fun. I find bike trips to be a great way to tour a new place.

Northern Italy and the lake district have always been on my bucket list. I started looking at possible group bike tours and found this 7-day trip hosted by Vermont Bicycle Tours (VBT). We rode about 25-35 miles per day – fueled by a lot of amazing Italian food and wine!

2. How did this trip impact you as a person and in your role at Smart Communications?

First, I was grateful for the opportunity to add a holiday onto a business trip to support some key Smart Communications events in London, and happy to have the chance to travel internationally again after the past few years.

Second, it’s always amazing to experience a different culture firsthand and get out of one’s bubble.

Third, it’s been an incredibly busy year at work, especially with events coming back, so it was just nice to get away and have a rest and be offline.

3. How has working at Smart Communications impacted your work/life balance?

Working from home enables that balance. Some days, I’m on phone calls at 7 am or before, so morning workouts are often difficult. But I enjoy the flexibility of being able to take a break when needed in the afternoon. I also appreciate that I’m able to adapt my schedule to both personal and company needs, without a lot of challenges.

Corporate Step Challenge: Jo Sweet, Global HR Director

1. What is the corporate step challenge?

We launched a mileage challenge to kickstart the year with our first global wellbeing initiative. The goal was for us to collectively walk, cycle, run or swim around the world (24,901 miles!). We used an app that could sync with employees’ fitness devices or phones, highlighting the top contributors for those who are competitive. It was also to encourage employees to step away from their laptops each day and focus on fitness, health and/or mindfulness.

2. When thinking of employee culture/wellness, what are the three priorities for your HR team in 2023?

Work/Life Balance. We will continue to focus on work/life balance as we evolve our hybrid approach to working, which allows employees the flexibility to work from home and encourages those employees near an office to make the most of their in-person interactions using the offices as a hub for creativity, collaboration and socializing.
Communication. Better communication leads to better employee wellbeing. We need to ensure business leaders can identify what their employees need/want and have regular check-ins to see how their team members are feeling and that employees are able to raise any concerns they are facing inside and outside of the workplace. Ensuring employees are communicated with, listened to and appropriate action taken is critical to business success.
Wellbeing. We will continue to add more of the health and wellbeing events we have highlighted in this article for employees to be able to participate to encourage time to focus on their health and wellbeing. But of course, it’s not just about exercise; we also provide all employees with access to an Employee Assistance Program to ensure they can reach out to professional counsellors to support any issues they may be facing and allows for some free face to face counseling sessions throughout the year.

Smart Communications Encourages a Work/Life Balance

We believe that people are most productive and do their best work when they feel renewed, both in mind and body. For some, that begins with exercise, time out of the “office” and/or having the time to make charitable contributions to causes that are close to their hearts. According to one source, having a healthy work/life balance has been shown to:

Improve motivation, focus and concentration
Create better teamwork and communication
Reduce stress levels and improve overall health

When it comes to exercise and mental wellbeing, having time to step away and disconnect from work is imperative. Whether an individual is working from home, in an office or a combination of both, companies that allow their employees to make time for healthy habits will elicit the above benefits and so much more.

Like what you read about the work/life balance and overall corporate culture at Smart Communications? Check out our open roles and consider joining the team!

How to Access and Use the 2022 Aspire CCM-CXM Leaderboard

Posted on July 29, 2022 by SmartComm

By: Chris Murphy, VP of Product Marketing, Smart Communications

Analysts agree that there’s been a major shift to the cloud in the customer communications management (CCM) space – driven by customers’ increasing preference for digital, plus unprecedented levels of innovation in the technology space. As the first CCM provider to fully embrace and harness the benefits of cloud technology, we’re pretty excited (not to mention proud) that the market is following our lead. But this strategic sea-change makes it all the more critical for companies looking to invest in new technology to find resources they can trust to help them make an informed decision. And when it comes to trusted resources in the CCM marketplace, the Aspire CCM-CXM Leaderboard provides in-depth analysis and advice for leading enterprises to make the most informed decisions about their technology investments.

Customer experience (CX) expert, Kaspar Roos, and his global team of market research analysts are highly respected in the CCM and CX industries. Since 2015, the firm has been providing highly specialized independent insights, evaluation and advice to empower enterprises, software providers and business advisories to better understand this evolving market. In fact, Aspire established the Leaderboard to help capture this evolution—and to help businesses understand how various CCM-CXM providers compare on a range of capabilities and strategic direction.

A Dynamic CCM-CXM Assessment Tool that Delivers Deep Insight

The Leaderboard’s interactive capabilities make it easy to visualize where various CCM vendors rank in the market. Users have the added ability to customize that ranking based on a range of factors including business model, CCM maturity, strategic focus, cloud maturity and more. Results can be further filtered based on specific categories and use cases, such as industry, target market and company size, for fine-tuned analysis.

The 2022 Leaderboard has been updated to reflect the changing market. Whereas previous Leaderboards ranked vendors on a single grid, this year’s tool allows users to select from several different grids depending on their organizational needs. In this post, we’ll focus on two of the grids where CCM is the primary focus: AnyPrem and Vendor-hosted SaaS.

At Smart Communications, we believe there is no one-size fits all approach. However, we’ve helped countless customers over the years to evolve from a more traditional, on-premise or hosted model to fully realize and harness the myriad of benefits of a vendor-hosted SaaS CCM solution.

“Cloud is a strong differentiator for Smart Communications. The company was one of the first in the industry to move toward SaaS and it has embraced a cloud-native, DevOps way of working since the mid-2010s” – Aspire Leaderboard 2022

Follow These Steps to Get Started

While the 2022 Aspire CCM-CXM Leaderboard is designed to remove complexity and provide clear analysis to support CCM-CXM decision-making, it does require a few more steps to access than your average static analyst report. Here are some tips to help you navigate the updated Leaderboard and find the optimal CCM solution for your organization.

Step 1: Do Your Homework

The ability to customize this tool is what really sets it apart, so start by getting very clear about what you need. Review any information you’ve already collected in a request for information (RFI). Evaluate all the possible criteria, prioritize feature sets and make sure you have a clear strategic vision so you can look for vendors whose trajectory aligns.

If you’re not sure where to start, ask yourself:

What are our key use cases?
Which departments will benefit from this investment?
What technology will help us focus on what we do best?
What does our existing tech ecosystem look like?
What core systems are we looking to extend the value of?

With customer expectations changing daily and the digital landscape continuing to expand, cloud is decidedly the way of the future. By adopting a pure cloud solution, companies can deliver seamless customer experiences with dynamic, two-way conversations—at unmatched speed and scale.

What to Look for in an Enterprise CCM Solution

Every organization has unique challenges and goals, and the best solution will align most closely to those needs. However, the things we know are important to end customers today when it comes to communications are often only achievable with cloud—including channel preference, relevance, frequency and timing. A pure cloud CCM solution provides the ability to manage the complexity of omnichannel communications, a holistic view of the customer, rapid response times and seamless integration with core systems, among other capabilities.

Security is always top of mind, particularly for highly-regulated industries such as insurance, financial services and healthcare. Look for a solution with enterprise-grade security and privacy standards such as role-based access, granular permissions and standard certifications. If you’re replacing a home-grown or legacy communications application, it’s also important to choose a vendor that offers migration support to maintain both communications and brand continuity.

The Aspire Leaderboard (and our very own Cloud Buyer’s Guide) include questions you should ask potential vendors. The bottom line is this: legacy on-premise CCM solutions simply cannot meet the moment for enterprises or their customers.

Step 2: Create Your Aspire profile

Now that you know what you’re looking for, you can set up your Aspire profile using our complimentary link. Start by registering to gain access to the Aspire Portal by entering some basic information and choosing a password.

Next, you’ll get an email from Aspire to activate your registration. From there, you can login to the portal and set up your profile. Simply follow the on-screen steps and fill in the requested information about your organization and role. While this takes a couple of minutes, it helps to personalize the experience so you can get the insights you need to make the best investment for your company.

Step 3: Choose Your Own Adventure

Now comes the fun part. Once you’ve completed your profile, you can access the Leaderboard and customize your view. Look for the Segmentation Grid drop-down menu in the top right corner.

For example, if your organization is focused on a cloud-first, SaaS approach, start by selecting Vendor-hosted SaaS CCM from the drop-down menu. This evaluation looks at vendors, like Smart Communications, who have developed cloud-native software offered “as a service,” either using their own data center or by relying on public infrastructure such as Azure or AWS.

One advantage of choosing a SaaS vendor is that they’re responsible for data security, making things like certification, regulatory compliance and privacy-by-design even more essential. In addition, SaaS solutions typically support continuous deployment, also known as evergreen IT, and use agile or DevOps software development methodologies. This makes it easier for companies to spend more time focused on what really matters—engaging meaningfully with customers—and less time on software (and hardware) maintenance.

For organizations looking to deploy a CCM solution that’s either on-premise or in a hosted, public, virtual private or hybrid cloud configuration due to security requirements, choose AnyPrem CCM Software assessment from the drop-down menu.

Many of the vendors in this grid “have reworked and repackaged their legacy CCM solutions for containerized, serverless environments.” Smart Communications appears in this grid, however, because we have adapted our cloud solution to work in a hybrid fashion – keeping all customer data within an organization’s domain – while still being able to benefit from all that a cloud solution offers. We recognize that customers are all on a cloud journey—and we have multiple options depending on where you are on that journey, and a pathway to get you to the next phase when you’re ready.

“All in all, Smart Communications has had a very good 2021 and continues to align its development with the direction of the market.” – Aspire Leaderboard 2022

As an established thought leader in customer communications, Aspire has identified an additional emerging category that they’re calling Communications Experience Management or Communications Experience Platforms (CXM/CXP). This is another assessment to consider.

According to Aspire, these vendors have combined CCM software with other CX systems—for example, business intelligence dashboards, customer data platforms, marketing automation, journey visualization and orchestration, and multi-variate testing. The CXP grid assesses both technology vendors and service providers who offer these capabilities as part of a single cloud (SaaS or AnyPrem) or hosted managed services platform.

Step 4: Customize. Prioritize. Assess. Repeat.

The best approach for your organization depends entirely on your unique requirements, strategic priorities and cloud maturity. While we’re proud to have paved the way for the shift to cloud in CCM—and that Aspire is recognizing this evolution—the beauty of the Leaderboard is that it dynamically responds to what matters to you.

As a trusted industry advisor, Aspire has analyzed and segmented the capabilities, strategy and market presence of multiple vendors to help you make the best possible decision. You can keep fine-tuning the assessment based on different use cases, priorities and strategies, and then save your filtered view for each grid you create. You can even create customized URLs to share with colleagues and reference as you continue to research technology options. The Leaderboard also includes customer quotes and vendor content, so be sure to check out the vendor profiles as well.

The Power of Dynamic, Specialized Insights for Informed Decisions

Investing in a new technology solution or platform is a big decision—and a challenging one. That’s why we’re excited to share this dynamic tool with organizations at any stage of the CCM journey to help you make an informed decision and achieve your strategic goals.

At Smart Communications, we pride ourselves on delivering business value and innovation to enterprise organizations across industries and borders, so you can have SMARTER two-way conversations with your customers. As the only company enabling enterprises to deliver personalized, omnichannel conversations across the entire customer experience, we believe we are uniquely positioned to help you engage more meaningfully, embrace the digital-first world and achieve your strategic goals. And, we’re thrilled that the most trusted advisor in our industry agrees.

“Smart Communications is an excellent fit for enterprises in the market for a modern and high-quality cloud-based CCM solution, especially for complex interactive use cases in addition to batch.”– Aspire Leaderboard 2022

Ready to Start Assessing?

What’s New in Customer Communications Management (CCM)

Posted on July 26, 2022 by SmartComm

By: Chris Murphy, VP of Product Marketing, Smart Communications

An ever-changing digital landscape, increasingly high customer expectations and more are forcing enterprises around the world to rethink how they interact with customers. In highly regulated industries like insurance, financial services and healthcare – where customer interactions can be stressful and/or high-stakes – the experience enterprises deliver at every touch point is more important than ever. In fact, recent benchmark data from Smart Communications revealed that communications are important to 81% of consumers’ overall experience with a company.

So, what does all of this mean for businesses?

It means that as the market has changed and evolved, so too have the requirements and capabilities that business leaders are seeking in their customer communications technology solutions. And, with an increased focus on the end-to-end customer experience, the strategic importance of communications strategy is rising. As a result, enterprises are seeking modern, cloud-based CCM solutions that provide flexibility while increasing productivity, speed, scale and efficiency.

Recent analysis from IDC and Aspire reflect these changing market conditions – outlining where the customer communications landscape is now, and more importantly, where it’s heading. In this post, we dive into our biggest takeaways from these new reports, highlighting:

How (and why) the CCM vendor landscape is evolving
What enterprises should look for in a modern CCM solution
Why Smart Communications is a CCM leader

RELATED READING | Enjoy complimentary access to the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Customer Communications Management Applications 2022 and the Aspire Leaderboard for Customer Communications Management.

The CCM Marketplace is Evolving to a CX-centric Approach … and It’s Supported by Cloud

Marci Maddox, Research Vice President, Digital Experience Strategies at IDC, shared “In 2020, the focus was on establishing remote work, setting up systems in the cloud, and retaining customers. As companies moved into a more stable environment in 2021, the focus on the customer experience began to take hold and customer satisfaction was the most frequently cited top priority driving customer experience initiatives.”

So, with an increasing number of enterprises prioritizing customer experience as a strategic priority, taking a digital-first, cloud-based approach is the only way to meet customer demands both today and in the future. Cloud-based CCM solutions allow for:

Integrations
A complete view of the customer
Speed and efficiency
Omnichannel communications
Business user control
Optimized customer experiences

What’s more, early adopters of digital transformation are already seeing the benefits. The latest IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Customer Communications Management indicated that “organizations cited a 26% improvement in customer satisfaction as a result of embracing digital transformation.”

“Cloud is a strong differentiator for Smart Communications. The company was one of the first in the industry to move toward SaaS and it has embraced a cloud-native, DevOps way of working since the mid-2010s” – Aspire Leaderboard 2022

What Enterprises Should Look for in a CCM Solution

Just like with any technology investment, the best CCM solution depends on an enterprise’s unique challenges and goals. However, we know what is important to customers – and what frustrates them – when they are interacting with a business. For example, recent research revealed customers’ biggest sources of frustration with communications:

Information being provided through the inappropriate channel (61%)
Irrelevant messages (58%)
Frequency of contact being too high (54%)
Poor timing (48%)
Lack of personalization (41%)
Frequency of contact being too low (36%)

Channel preference, message relevancy, frequency and timing are only achievable with cloud-based technology. Simply put, legacy, on-premise tools cannot meet the demands of today’s customers.

It’s key for enterprises to keep in mind that customers are comparing every interaction they have with a brand to their last best digital experience. Whether that’s with their bank or an Uber Eats delivery, the businesses that choose to take an outdated approach to customer communications will unfortunately be left behind.

INTERACTIVE GUIDE: Looking for a checklist for must-have CCM Software Features & Capabilities? Check out The Ultimate Guide to CCM Software.

Smart Communications is a Leader in Cloud-based CCM

Unlike other providers in the space, Smart Communications has been fully committed to a cloud-first CCM approach for years. We have enabled countless enterprises to shift from delivering one-way, transactional communications, to two-way, interactive conversations. Mature cloud offerings like the Conversation Cloud^TM offer innovative technology solutions and facilitate personalized, omnichannel interactions.

For these reasons and more, Smart Communications has been named a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Customer Communications Management Applications 2022 and Aspire’s SaaS Cloud Customer Communications Management Leaderboard.

It’s clear that the future is cloud-based technology, and we are thrilled to once again be named a market leader best equipped to enable enterprises to meet their customer experience goals via a sophisticated CCM solution. In the Aspire leaderboard in particular, vendor-hosted SaaS is viewed as a pivotal strategy due to the benefits that it provides relative to other types of deployment (i.e., scalability, security, agility, business continuity and more).

Additional benefits of Smart Communications, according to the analysts, include:

Cloud leadership
Fast time-to-value
Robust partner ecosystem
Increasing focus on AI and Machine Learning
Emphasis on the customer experience

As business leaders are challenged with creating exceptional, end-to-end customer experiences having the right CCM solution in place enables businesses to meet the customer needs of today while also laying the foundation for a successful future.

SmartCOMM^TM, part of the Smart Communications Conversation Cloud, is a cloud-based CCM solution that enables enterprises to deliver personalized interactions throughout the entire customer experience – enabling enterprises to create and deliver personalized, contextual and compliant communications across customers’ preferred channels and at scale. Businesses who partner with Smart Communications for CCM realize tremendous benefits, including improved business user efficiency, enhanced customer experiences, reduced costs and more.

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To view the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Cloud Customer Communications Management Applications 2022, click here.

To view the Aspire Leaderboard for Customer Communications Management, click here.

More resources include:

The Powerful Combination of eSignature and Digital Forms Takes Customer Experience to a New Level

Posted on July 15, 2022 by SmartComm

Guest Contributor: Dilani Silva, Product Marketing Manager at OneSpan

The time for companies to prioritize end-to-end digital transformation is upon us. From personalizing every interaction a customer has with a company to creating rich, interactive conversations, enterprises must take the necessary steps to make this a reality. The overall goal should be to enhance the existing customer experience through the use of data, analytics and systems that make it possible to use the information gathered to tailor experiences fit for each individual.

That’s because over the last few years, consumers have become accustomed to the ease of use and convenience of digital CX superpowers like Amazon, Uber, Netflix and more. What’s more is customers have more control than ever and are taking charge of how they interact with companies. Customers expect tailored experiences from every company they do business with, creating a huge opportunity for enterprises across insurance, financial services and healthcare to optimize their processes.

One area that is ripe for transformation is the e-signature experience. Many businesses believe e-signature alone is creating an amazing CX (although it is much more efficient than wet signatures, direct mail and/or faxes!), but there is room for improvement. Through forms automation and integrating the data collected via response-based interviews with e-signature solutions, the e-signing process becomes much more personalized – and fast.

In this post, we dive into how digital, interview-style forms combined with sophisticated e-signature solutions are a powerful combination and why together, they take the customer experience to a new level.

RELATED READING | ‘5 End-to-End Customer Experience Trends’

Personalize Customer Conversations with Data and Automation

The opportunity is here for companies to leverage cloud-based technology to successfully deliver highly personalized and consistent conversations. This means that interactions must be two-way and well-coordinated across channels, devices and lifecycle stages. Working proactively is also important as enterprises prepare for new channels and challenges still to come. However, it requires an approach that reduces or removes the need for PDFs and static, paper-based forms. It requires a total transformation that helps companies digitize their forms-based processes across the business.

One of the ways companies can start this transformation and put a proactive approach into practice is by using systems and software solutions that enhance the end-to-end customer experience and continuously scale to meet customers’ increasing needs. This includes leveraging software solutions—like e-signature and forms automation solutions—to facilitate valuable, two-way customer conversations, versus the outdated method of transactional, one-way communications.

Put into practice, combining modern e-signature solutions with intuitive, interview-style forms optimizes agreement signing processes and workflows for customers in the insurance, financial services and healthcare industries. For example:

Using the available customer data to further customize conversations and experiences with the customer is a big driver in increasing brand loyalty and trust. The e-signature integration (offered through the partnership between OneSpan and Smart Communications) gives companies the ability to help fill in gaps by adding onto other core systems that may not have the same functionality or capabilities.

A few ways this enhances the end-to-end customer experience:

It pulls in data from core systems, allowing records to be pre-filled by the customer, further personalizing data for the company and using it to enhance the customer experience
It allows internal and external contributors to add, review and approve information, which increases efficiency
It removes the need for paper signing with integrated e-signature tools, accelerating agreement completion time and eliminating manual data entry/scanning

Automating some of the more tedious, manual tasks that are necessary day-to-day will save time, money and most importantly will allow employees to focus on providing a next-level customer experience.

The Power of Partnerships: Bringing E-Signature and Interactive Forms Together

On their own, the SmartIQ solution and OneSpan Sign electronic signature software are powerful systems. SmartIQ helps digitize manual processes as well as connect legacy and modern software systems to automate the communication between them.

OneSpan Sign brings automation to workflows with electronic signatures in an effort to improve customer experience, strengthen compliance and eliminate costs related to paper-based processes. With very similar goals, it made great sense to integrate these two systems, bringing immense benefit to the companies we both serve. Some of those benefits can help:

Drive up completion rates when creating a unique customer experience with mobile-ready forms and white-labeling capabilities
Increase productivity and efficiency by eliminating manual data entry and processing errors
Build secure and compliant customer digital journeys that meet industry-standard security requirements and ensure that data is safe at all times

The integration also transforms content-centric workflows in order to achieve notable ROI, including:

Frictionless digital experiences that improve CX and lead to higher application completions
Decreased errors, NIGO rates and spend by reducing paper, printing and mailing costs
Strongest audit trail in the industry to help demonstrate compliance

Ultimately, the partnership helps enterprise organizations optimize agreement signing processes, with security and compliance in mind. This is particularly important for regulated industries such as insurance, financial services and healthcare.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE | ‘Smart Communications and OneSpan Partner to Expand Value of Customer Conversations with Electronic Signature Integration‘

Learn more about the partnership with OneSpan and how the e-signature integration allows Smart Communications to expand the value of customer conversations and enhance the customer experience across multiple industries.

New Research Reveals Which Digital Customer Experience Trends to Watch

Posted on May 3, 2022 by SmartComm

By: Leigh Segall, Chief Strategy Officer at Smart Communications

As customer expectations change faster than ever, it may feel difficult to pin down which key digital customer experience trends should be priorities for businesses. Even in this continuously shifting environment, it’s possible to identify the major forces shaping the customer experience (CX) and establish plans and processes to meet these ever-increasing expectations.

To better understand customers’ changing preferences, Smart Communications recently surveyed business leaders and consumers from around the globe. As we dug into their thinking about communications practices in the financial services, insurance and healthcare industries, interesting patterns began to emerge. In this post, we highlight a few of the key findings, plus how Smart Communications can help enterprises tackle these digital customer experience trends head-on.

Trend #1: Businesses Will Try to Close the Communications Satisfaction Gap

Communications are at the heart of a great digital customer experience. So much so that how enterprises communicate with their customers can determine their level of satisfaction with a business overall. Aside from offering effective products and services, there are few areas of business more essential than customer satisfaction.

The challenge is that across the financial services, insurance and healthcare industries, there’s a disconnect between how well businesses think they communicate versus how customers feel about it. That gap — up to a 20-percentage points difference — represents a big opportunity to rethink customer engagement.

By ensuring communications are timely, personalized and digital-first, businesses can ensure the end-to-end customer experience builds trust and loyalty.

How Smart Communications Can Help

By investing in a technology platform that empowers interactive, two-way conversations, businesses can ensure an exceptional experience across channels and devices. Businesses who operate across geographies and multiple brands can benefit from the Conversation Cloud: the only scalable, pure cloud customer communications management platform. It’s specifically designed to take away the pain of template management while enhancing the ability to collect information, all while making it easy for customers to initiate conversations, regardless of channel.

Trend #2: Businesses Will Take Customer Channel Preferences More Seriously to Avoid Negative Impacts to the Digital Customer Experience

Today, customers are increasingly willing to speak up and share exactly how they want businesses to interact with them. And for enterprises, it’s more important than ever to ensure customers’ preferences are taken into account.

According to our research, 61% of consumers said that information being provided through an inappropriate channel was a major source of frustration. And yet unfortunately, our research suggests that on average, only around half of communications are distributed to customers based on the channel they prefer.

A key digital customer experience trend moving forward will be revamping communications efforts to ensure greater alignment with customer wants and needs. Enterprises must adopt interactive, omnichannel conversations to succeed.

How Smart Communications Can Help

It’s one thing to know how customers want to be communicated with – and quite another to deliver on that – especially as the complexity of communications grows just as new channels continue to proliferate. It’s important to partner with a technology provider with the right solutions and real-world expertise to deliver on the “right channel, right place, right time” promise. Our experience working with the world’s most sophisticated businesses across financial services, insurance and healthcare gives us the necessary resources to provide amazing digital customer experiences via orchestrated, omnichannel interactions at scale.

Trend #3: Businesses Will Continue Migrating to the Cloud

Customer expectations around digital are greater than ever. And while interactions across healthcare, insurance and financial services are very different from impulse buying on Amazon, consumers are comparing every interaction to their last best digital experience.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to have the infrastructure in place, allowing enterprises to compete with companies that deliver incredible digital experiences day-in and day-out. Unfortunately, legacy systems simply aren’t built this way and struggle to keep up with the pace of change.

While not a new trend, leading firms will continue their migration to the cloud. Our research shows that on average, 57% of business’ core systems will be cloud-based within the next 12 months.

How Smart Communications Can Help

We get it – the idea of moving systems that serve as the foundation of your business can be scary but it doesn’t have to be. The benefit of partnering with Smart Communications is that you can quickly go “pure cloud” for your customer conversations – or ease into it over time by starting with our powerful integrations that connect with your legacy systems. The world is moving to cloud – there’s no doubt about that. But, you can control how it happens in your business with tools like Migration Studio. The important thing is to remain focused on the customer – and Smart Communications is the leader in enabling incredible end-to-end customer experiences.

What’s Next?

When change is the only constant, it’s nearly impossible to predict what might come next. But, investing in the customer will always pay dividends. We hope that knowing these digital customer experience trends will help your business achieve greater success today and in the days and months that follow. To learn more about each trend, and how you can prepare for it, download the full report, The State of Customer Conversations.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel Experiences: Who is at the Center of Your Universe?

Posted on March 1, 2022 by SmartComm

By: Chris Murphy, VP Product Marketing at Smart Communications

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published a crazy theory he had been working on for over 30 years. He proposed that the Sun was the center of the universe. Why was this considered crazy? Because the prevailing wisdom of the day was that it was the Earth, not the Sun, that everything revolved around. And while that difference may not seem massive to us today, at the time, the “Copernican Revolution” propelled scientific thinking forward, influencing thinkers from Galileo to Isaac Newton.

At this point, it’s fair to ask – what does this have to do with omnichannel vs. multichannel customer experiences? As the title of this post suggests, it’s really all about deciding at a strategic level: who is at the center of your universe? You, or your customer?

This post will examine the key differences between omnichannel and multichannel customer conversations, revealing the best strategy for leading enterprises going forward. And if you find this discussion interesting, you’ll want to review our ebook, The Omnichannel Advantage, which provides even more insights.

Because every customer interaction is an opportunity to shape their overall experience, there is more pressure on enterprises than ever to orchestrate interactive, two-way conversations. As we review omnichannel vs. multichannel experiences below, you will uncover the benefits of omnichannel conversations and why this approach delivers more engaging, personalized customer interactions.

Multichannel Approach: Your Business at the Center

Just as with thinking that everything revolved around the Earth, a multichannel customer communications strategy starts with a somewhat business-first (opposed to customer-first) approach. In most instances, a business has something it wants or needs to communicate out to customers, whether that’s marketing messages, transactional notifications or responses to individual customer queries.

It’s pretty simple and straightforward. Messages are distributed out by the company, and customers separately reach out with questions. Unfortunately, both are one-way streets and the customer is caught watching from the sidelines. This approach also assumes that customers fall neatly into a single channel – whether that’s “email customers” or “print customers.” Unfortunately, that’s not the reality we live in. Today’s customer moves between channels throughout their journey with a company and expects interactions to carry over seamlessly from one channel to the next.

In a multichannel approach, there are disadvantages that affect some of the most important aspects of the customer experience. When the business is at the center, communications often are missing personalization, mostly because the business may lack the data and technology infrastructure needed to execute on individualized interactions.

Ultimately – and perhaps most importantly – a multichannel communications strategy severely limits how and where a customer can interact with a business. This approach makes it very difficult for customers to initiate conversations from their preferred channels because the business is at the center.

Omnichannel Approach: The Customer is the Center

An omnichannel customer communications strategy represents a paradigm shift as big as the one Copernicus set forth. While every business claims the customer is the center of all they do, the ones who organize their entire communications processes and infrastructure around the customer prove that they mean it.

With an omnichannel approach, every touchpoint leads to a carefully curated experience. Every interaction has the potential to be a two-way conversation, and each touchpoint builds off the previous one. Omnichannel conversations provide the right information at the right time in ways that are easy to understand and act upon.

And while there are still many channels in an omnichannel approach, they’re all connected, scalable and centrally managed – and customers can move effortlessly from one channel to another. In a word, communications are orchestrated across all these channels.

In a multichannel approach, the goal is often to simply add more channels. In reality, however, it’s much more important to deliver a quality and connected experience across channels. So, it’s about how well the channels work together, not necessarily how many there are. With a powerful customer conversations platform, enterprises ensure consistent, compliant communications across brands and geographies on whichever channel the customer prefers.

And when it comes to personalization, omnichannel communications outshine multichannel here yet again. Because the customer is in the center, everything is designed around them. With the right technology partner, it’s easy to collect information from the customer in an engaging way that can then be used to shape the rest of their communications experience. When they express a channel preference for specific communication types, it’s easy to put that into practice. If it changes, it’s easy to update. Omnichannel conversations offer the possibility for truly personalized interactions that are contextually based on every other step they’ve taken – across channels and devices.

It’s important to keep in mind that as a customer moves from channel to channel, context is key. Understanding the context of specific interactions is important and further emphasizes the importance of personalization. Getting context right lends itself to ensuring a company is choosing the right content – the right tone, the right language, the right sentiment – to deliver an amazing customer experience.

An omnichannel approach also helps strike the balance between managing customer support across time zones and allowing for self-service options. As chatbots and other interactive technologies become more sophisticated, a strong technology foundation will be more important than ever to ensure customer needs and expectations are met.

Dive Deeper

It’s clear that omnichannel conversations are the path forward for leading companies, but getting it right requires the proper technology. For a more in-depth look at omnichannel vs. multichannel experiences, strategies and information on how Smart Communications can help, we invite you to download our ebook, The Omnichannel Advantage.

The New Rules of Digital Transformation Strategy

Posted on August 26, 2021 by SmartComm

By: Neil Greathead, Chief Customer Officer at Smart Communications

Digital transformation strategies have been hot topics for quite some time, and most businesses have been making steady progress to achieve their digital goals. That is until the pandemic struck. Suddenly, plans became accelerated, and many businesses discovered just how much progress could be made in a short period of time with sustained focus and effort. As customer expectations continue to rise, enterprises around the world need to double down on these strategic digital efforts to ensure the end-to-end experience is better than ever.

In this post, we share exclusive insights into the new rules of digital transformation strategy, with help from Leroy McCarty, VP of Operations at Forrest T. Jones & Company, a leading Smart Communications customer. Forrest T. Jones leverages both SmartCOMM^TM and SmartIQ^TM as the foundation for its organization-wide digital modernization journey – exceeding customer expectations at every step of their journey.

Rule 1: You must define a long-term vision rooted in meeting customer needs and expectations.

Creating and executing on a digital transformation strategy is a journey, and without a clear destination in mind, it’s easy to get off track. Take the time to clearly define what the digital future looks like for your organization, based on your customers’ needs and expectations.

“We had a vision for the future, for the modernization of really everything we did, and digitization was a key part of that strategy…we made sure that we were aligned with expectations of the customer for the journey that they expected to take.” – Leroy McCarty, Forrest T. Jones & Company

This requires listening carefully and keeping an open mind, as their feedback might be different from what you expect. You can also leverage industry research, like Smart Communications’ benchmark study, which makes it clear that:

86% of consumers prefer digital technology over other forms of communications
57% of consumers will abandon an interaction if a company has an inefficient process for collecting information
63% of businesses think they are delivering excellent or very good communications, but only 51% of consumers agree

Rule 2: You must break down internal silos to create a truly customer-centered organization.

With your digital strategy in place, you can now focus on the “how”: what do you need to do to achieve that vision in the timeframe you’ve set for yourself? As you get to work, it’s important to think holistically. You need both your back-end and front-end processes and touchpoints in between working in harmony with each other to achieve your goals. The objective here is synergy: whatever technology you decide to implement for back-end data processing and integration handling should work seamlessly with a front-end experience that customers will love.

“Smart Communications has come in to help us with our digital strategy and to respond to the new expectations of the market, giving us the front-end and back-end to our entire lifecycle of an application.” – Leroy McCarty, Forrest T. Jones & Company

The best part? You don’t have to choose multiple vendors to follow this rule. It’s actually better if you don’t, because the simpler your digital transformation strategy is, the more likely you are to achieve it. That’s why organizations like Forrest T. Jones choose Smart Communications for both their cloud-based Customer Communications Management (CCM) and dynamic digital forms technologies. This one-two punch streamlines your approach and empowers you to achieve your vision faster.

Rule 3: Your digital transformation strategy must enable better omnichannel experiences at scale.

Consumers these days are practically swimming in a sea of digital devices. And whether it’s related to financial services, healthcare, insurance or other critical industries, consumers want to get things done from whatever device they happen to be holding at the time. Practical concerns like making sure customers only have to enter their information once (or even better, have forms pre-filled with the information you already have) are where the digital transformation rubber meets the road.

“Where SmartIQ has helped us tremendously is allowing us to take anything that we need to get from a customer and put it in front of them wherever they are, whatever time of day, whatever device they’re on, and help them do business with us.” – Leroy McCarty, Forrest T. Jones & Company

The challenge to getting this right is not just with one interaction in one place (say, your website) at one time, but everywhere a customer chooses to interact with you. Plus, customers should be able to initiate a digital interaction on one device, and pick up where they left off on another. Next-generation digital forms offer significant advantages over paper-based or static forms, creating an omnichannel experience that is personalized, collaborative and automated. Technologies like SmartIQ provide customers with fantastic experiences on the front-end while requiring minimal IT resources on the back-end – a win-win for everyone.

The Time for Digital Transformation is Now

Transformation can be daunting because there’s no time to waste in creating the best digital customer experience. Fortunately, as organizations like Forrest T. Jones & Company have learned, the right partner can make all the difference.

“We were fortunate in that we had a pretty clear vision for what we thought the future was going to hold, and so we aligned ourselves with Smart Communications to be able to deliver on that vision.” – Leroy McCarty, Forrest T. Jones & Company

To learn more about how Forrest T. Jones & Company use Smart Communications to transform their customer conversations, check out the video below.

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Forms Automation Can Enhance Enterprise Customer Communications

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Bike Ride for Breast Cancer Research: Mel Burns, Senior Director of Global Demand Generation

Peloton Club: Mary Featherstone, Director of Global Campaigns and Content

7-Day Bike Tour Through Italy: Karen Oakland, VP Financial Services Marketing

Corporate Step Challenge: Jo Sweet, Global HR Director

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Like what you read about the work/life balance and overall corporate culture at Smart Communications? Check out our open roles and consider joining the team!

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Step 1: Do Your Homework

What to Look for in an Enterprise CCM Solution

Step 2: Create Your Aspire profile

Step 3: Choose Your Own Adventure

Step 4: Customize. Prioritize. Assess. Repeat.

The Power of Dynamic, Specialized Insights for Informed Decisions

Ready to Start Assessing?

The CCM Marketplace is Evolving to a CX-centric Approach … and It’s Supported by Cloud

What Enterprises Should Look for in a CCM Solution

Smart Communications is a Leader in Cloud-based CCM

Personalize Customer Conversations with Data and Automation

The Power of Partnerships: Bringing E-Signature and Interactive Forms Together

Trend #1: Businesses Will Try to Close the Communications Satisfaction Gap

How Smart Communications Can Help

Trend #2: Businesses Will Take Customer Channel Preferences More Seriously to Avoid Negative Impacts to the Digital Customer Experience

How Smart Communications Can Help

Trend #3: Businesses Will Continue Migrating to the Cloud

How Smart Communications Can Help

What’s Next?