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5 Major Trends Impacting the Financial Services Industry

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Ayla

The COVID-19 health crisis has forced organizations to pivot to new ways of working. Companies and government agencies are fighting to maintain business continuity while helping their customers, employees and other stakeholders cope with the stress of a health crisis. For banks and financial services institutions, the pandemic has had a major impact on both consumer and commercial banking.

In the past 12 months, banks have had to shift customer-facing processes to digital – years ahead of schedule – while also moving staff to remote work environments and dealing with increased support call volumes. According to Deloitte, “the future showed up early” in the banking and investment management sectors and there is an “inextricable link between recovering from COVID-19’s impact and transforming operations to power success in the years ahead.”

Let’s dive into five major trends that will continue to impact the financial services industry in the months to come and discuss how organizations can set themselves up for success.

1. Customers will increasingly prefer to self serve on digital channels with higher expectations for 24/7 speed and simplicity.

Prior to the pandemic, customers were already becoming increasingly interested in a digital-first approach. According to IDC, 40% of in-branch appointments will be initiated on digital platforms and then fulfilled by specialists by 2022 and by 2023, 75% of all consumer and small business loans will be originated through AI-enabled and automated processes.

The pandemic only accelerated this, driving businesses to shift budgets toward investing in technology that improves or enables customer self-service through digital and mobile channels. Customer movement toward mobile-first experiences will likely become more commonplace, and it will be crucial to bring more engaging experiences, such as video chat, within the confines of mobile. Contactless financial transactions are here to stay.

At the same time, all of this digital activity has put a spotlight on fraud and data management. Financial services firms will continue to accelerate investment in technology to automate fraud protection around areas like identity verification and biometrics, as well as other digital solutions to improve internal efficiencies and reduce the need for employees to handle paper or continue manual work.

2. Fintech competitors will continue to disrupt.

Banks have been facing disruption from new fintech competitors for several years and this will continue. Several challenger financial institutions are entering the market as mobile-only banking providers. Apple, for example, has partnered with Goldman Sachs on a credit card offering, while Google has partnered with Citigroup to offer checking accounts. These trends will drive banks to explore and launch “born-digital” products that are increasingly autonomous and embedded in digital ecosystems. Many fintechs and challenger banks are attracting consumers with new account features, such as paycheck management.

3. Conversational banking and real-time engagement will be competitive differentiators.

Banking leaders will continue to focus on driving positive emotions and showing empathy through digital communications, however this this will be driven by robots, not humans. In 2021, banks will continue investing in the idea of “conversational banking,” using chatbots, SMS messaging and mobile apps to enable real-time engagement. According to Celent, 89% of firms are increasing budget investment in mobile and online banking.

We can anticipate that banks will need to prioritize mobile, focusing on alerts and notifications, secure messaging, card and data management and conversation services to assist customers. Furthermore, banks are looking to use incoming information, coupled with known data, to dynamically generate “next best offers” or other recommendations to engage and deepen client relationships.

4. Customers facing financial hardships will be top-of-mind.

In 2021, banks will still be dealing with defaults and lower deposits because of economic hardships created by the COVID-19 crisis. Businesses and individuals facing financial difficulties need to know how to work with their banks and lenders to negotiate loans and loan forgiveness, and banks that focus on loss mitigation without communicating empathy risk losing those customers.

At the same time, financial institutions are looking to minimize losses. In 2021, many banks will be working to identify customers that are at a higher risk of financial vulnerability, even before they have reached out to the bank, to help these individuals stay solvent and manage their expenses during an uncertain time.

In the UK, federal regulators are asking banks and insurers to use data and analytics, along with automated processes, to identify and respond appropriately to “vulnerable” customers, which includes those undergoing financial hardship. The Financial Conduct Authority wants firms to understand the needs of vulnerable customers in its target market and design products, services and communications to meet those needs.

5. Data will be the linchpin to providing a seamless, consistent customer experience.

All of these efforts rely on centralizing data, a challenge many institutions face as they cobble together “best-of-breed” systems to support various lines of business and channels. These various systems often have their own mechanism for producing client communications, which leads to inconsistent messaging, compliance challenges, and internal inefficiencies.

Although several customer channels will remain collection points for customer interactions, banks looking to improve customer engagement will need to invest in ways to aggregate and manage that data in common resource points. This will enable customer experience leaders across the business to analyze behavior and then build orchestrated journeys with relevant content– whenever and wherever they want to manage their money.

Interested in learning more? Smart Communications recently collected insights from industry thought leaders to uncover major trends that will impact how businesses communicate with their customers in 2021. Check out the full eBook today!

4 Ways Forms Automation Can Enhance the Healthcare Member Experience

Posted on March 27, 2023October 19, 2026 by Dani Duffy

By: John Zimmerer, VP of Healthcare Marketing at Smart Communications

It’s said that repetition is the key to mastery. With this in mind, anyone who has visited a doctor’s office or filed a claim with their health insurer should be an expert at filling out paperwork. Given all the advances elsewhere in healthcare, it sounds silly, right? Perhaps, though, not as silly as the fact that people are still expected to complete the same paperwork online and in-person. This certainly isn’t a great way to meet the expectation of helping consumers be seen and known as individuals. There is, however, an opportunity for insurers to become experts at creating an exceptional healthcare member experience.

In the case of manual processes and paper forms, the repetitive nature is more of a headache than anything else—for both payers and members alike. This approach has proven to be unsustainable and unsuccessful for meeting members’ needs and enhancing their trust in health insurers. Simply put, member expectations have exceeded the capabilities provided by static forms and one-way communications. Health insurers must rethink how they engage with members and adopt solutions that enable interactive, two-way conversations.

When it comes to optimizing the healthcare member experience and building loyalty, unfortunately it’s time for health insurers to play catch up. To dive into the topic a bit more, we commissioned Forrester to conduct research into the current state of member experience. The resulting report, Disjointed Experiences Cost Insurers Members and Money: The Bleak Reality of Member Experience with US Health Insurers, highlights the opportunities available for health insurers to make improvements to each stage in a member’s journey, such as collecting member information. Something to keep in mind: when we refer to the member journey, this is the typical pathway members take with an insurer—engaging with touchpoints along the way—to achieve a particular goal.

Fortunately, there are technology resources available today that can take the member experience to a new level nearly immediately. SmartIQ, for example, gives health insurers a competitive advantage and the ability to quickly implement or extend a digital-first strategy. Using a forms automation solution helps to digitize, optimize and modernize the forms process across the healthcare member experience.

This article dives into the tangible benefits of digital forms and specifically highlights how health insurers can:

Enhance the healthcare member experience by making meaningful, incremental improvements
Drive down call volume and improve the member experience with claim-related forms
Transform the manual, paper-based processes to digital, intuitive experiences
Optimize the processes for member-submitted claims and adjudication

1. Use Low-Code Solutions to Eliminate Manual Forms

In healthcare, forms are everywhere and at every stage of the member lifecycle. While forms are just one stage of a member’s journey, they’re often the most important. They can provide a starting point for two-way, interactive conversations—giving insurers the ability to gain deeper insight into their members’ needs and expectations and respond in a manner that’s personalized and meaningful.

The process for gathering the necessary member data isn’t always easy or efficient—especially since paper forms lack the interactivity that drives rich, in-depth engagement and the ability for payers to meet members wherever they are. Research even showed that nearly 60% of consumers abandon a form if the process is too difficult. Even worse, manual processes create a transactional relationship between member and payer which isn’t ideal for an industry as intimate as health insurance.

A low-code forms automation solution helps health insurers enhance member engagement by paving the way for a better end-to-end experience. It removes the additional hoops that consumers must jump through when filing or appealing claims. Eliminating manual forms in favor of digital solutions creates a less burdensome member experience and improves operational efficiency for the payer. With digital processes in place, payers can focus on building member loyalty and trust through empathetic conversations at every interaction.

A person’s health and financial security are both intensely subjective and personal topics. And, depending on an individual’s situation, there’s no shortage of emotions when members interact with payers. That’s why it’s key to create easier ways for members to submit information in critical journeys like submitting claims and filing appeals. This will reduce the level of stress and anxiety during these engagements.

RELATED READING | ‘Eliminate Healthcare Forms and Boost Member Satisfaction with Cloud Technology’

2. Improve the Healthcare Member Experience with SMARTER Conversations

The key to improving member engagement is creating more seamless, efficient interactions. Static or fillable PDFs and web forms don’t allow payers to nurture interactive conversations that provide the deeper insights they need to meet members’ needs.

As previously mentioned, the health insurance industry is lagging in digital transformation—a fact that’s creating friction in attracting new members and keeping them loyal. Improvement starts with identifying and measuring key member journeys, with the goal of prioritizing changes. Through this audit, organizations can identify processes and functions that may benefit from automation, specifically looking for opportunities to make incremental improvements. These are often manual tasks, such as responding and following up on claims-related interactions. Automating these processes can enhance both the member and employee experiences.

The opportunity to improve the healthcare member experience is perhaps most visible within the claims process. Members submit claims for a variety of reasons. One common type of claim is a request for reimbursement for covered items purchased over the counter. Requests for reimbursement for COVID-19 test kits are a great example of how insurers should modify existing processes to comply with new and changing mandates. Using cloud technology to tackle these types of reimbursement requests will result in faster settlement times and ultimately, happier members and employees.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE | ‘Optimize Digital Forms for COVID-19 Claims’

3. Enable Intelligent Conversations for Claims Appeals

Despite a health insurer’s best efforts, there are occasionally issues with how claims are adjudicated. Sometimes, the issue is related to the timing of when claims are received versus the chronological order of dates of service. When something is amiss, a member will want to appeal the initial determination.

Unfortunately, there are several problems with the current state of claims appeals. When questions arise, members are often asked to contact the call center and are then instructed to submit a generic appeal form to request a redetermination. This form is an important step along the claims redetermination pathway.

But what happens when agents are bogged down or lack the training necessary to help members solve even this basic problem? Furthermore, often completing the necessary forms are highly manual efforts for both payer and member and unfortunately do not include any pre-populated, known information based on the member’s information or specific claim.

This immediately leads to member dissatisfaction, lack of trust and inability for members to self-service a claims appeal. Even though Forrester has found speaking on the phone was the most reliable channel for members, that same research shows that 51% were dissatisfied with their experience with the call center.

After contacting the call center, members may have a difficult time simply finding an appeal form. Once they do find the correct form, there’s an additional headache of filling out and submitting the form. This method forces a member to print and mail or fax the form (along with supporting documents) to the insurance company and wait for a response. It’s inconvenient for both the payer and member as it adds additional time to get to a resolution.

There are many other pitfalls to this approach, such as:

Members skipping a required field or forgetting an attachment
Issues with imaging and processing the form, which leads to incomplete or inaccurate information being entered and processed on the business side
Members accidentally sending the form to the wrong address or the form being lost in transit
Incomplete forms, which leads to delays and increases frustration for member and operational expenses for the payer

Alternatively, and ideally, the appeal form should be an intelligent interview providing a guided member experience. A link to the interview can be embedded directly into the explanation of benefits. That way, all the data related to a specific claim can be pre-populated, allowing the member to focus on the reason for requesting a redetermination. The member can easily download a copy of the form and a copy can be attached to a case for review by an Appeals and Grievances member. With this approach, insurers can effectively communicate via the member’s channel of choice and maintain all communications seamlessly.

4. Automate the Healthcare Forms Process with Cloud Technology

The need and desire to automate processes continues to spread across most enterprises. This evolution has been integral to the success of workforces. In industries like healthcare, however, disjointed systems continue to create siloed approaches to even the simplest processes.

Cloud technology has made easier work of implementing automated solutions, as well as refining digitized business processes. Considering the healthcare forms process, some benefits of automating with cloud technology are:

Improved healthcare member experience

When automated, the healthcare member experience is transformed from a ‘hunt and hope’ approach to a personalized, ‘how may we help you?’ conversation. The payer already has access to the data in their systems of record without the need for the member to re-enter previously provided information. Interactions are member-led throughout the entire process and broken down into bite-sized chunks that are easily consumable. Since files, images or receipts can easily be attached, there’s no need to print, fax or mail anything. An e-signature process delivers digital data to all stakeholders. This results in improved CAHPS/HEDIS (STAR ratings), CX Index and NPS scores. And, most importantly, a reduction in burden on the member.

Increased efficiency throughout the claims process

Insurers can use the same technology to reimagine member-submitted claims. By moving business logic up front and limiting the amount of data entry required through integration with systems of record, fewer claim forms are rejected and reprocessed. Starting and staying digital means payers can eliminate scanning and using OCR software on physical forms. Ultimately, this reduces processing times and improves financial performance across the organization.

Lower regulatory risk

Using a truly digital forms solution, more member-submitted claims can be auto-adjudicated. Member-submitted claims can easily be paid within regulated timeframes, typically 30 days from receipt, reducing the risk of escalated appeals or grievances. This also eliminates fees, fines or penalties, as well as a negative reputation or public relations issues.

Conclusion

As health insurers identify ways to enhance the member experience, it all must start by understanding members as individuals – meeting them where they are and providing interactions that are tailored and relevant. Digitizing form-based processes, for example, can meaningfully move the needle on the end-to-end member experience. Give members a chance to rebuild trust in the healthcare industry by deploying sophisticated cloud technology to meet them at any time or place.

Forms automation solutions like SmartIQ provide near-term benefits in a long-term digital transformation journey—something that is desperately needed to remove all barriers to better member conversations. This will optimize the member experience and help employees on the insurers’ claims teams foster exceptional interactions at every touchpoint across the entire member experience.

It’s safe to say that automated solutions powered by cloud technology are critical to creating memorable experiences that boost member engagement and foster a level of care that insurers can be proud to offer their consumers.

Now that’s a process worth repeating.

To discover how low-code solutions can help health insurers boost member engagement, access our on-demand webinar to see SmartIQ in action. Or, request a demo for more information about how payers can benefit from the SmartIQ solution.

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!

3 Ways to Build Trust With a Customer Communications Management Strategy

Posted on March 27, 2023October 19, 2026 by Smart Communications Team

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 Ways Insurers Can Improve Communications and the Customer Experience

Posted on March 27, 2023October 19, 2026 by Smart Communications Team

By: Ruth Fisk, VP Insurance Marketing at Smart Communications

As every insurance carrier knows, improving communications with customers is vital to a greater claims experience. Communication templates are critical to managing the myriad of correspondence that policyholders and claimants receive each day. The challenge? Keeping track of thousands at once and needing IT support to make any changes. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the complexities of ad hoc correspondence, “the significant number of one-off pieces of correspondence that may be created in claims operations on any given day.”

It’s time to take a step back and remember that insurance isn’t a template generation business. It’s a people business. Being there for customers during some of their most challenging moments is the reason insurers exist. Communications play a key role in making sure those potentially devastating experiences are as positive as possible. So, for insurers finding themselves overwhelmed with managing thousands of communication templates in custom software applications, we have good news: there’s a SMARTER way.

With the help of Smart Communications’ customer Chris Plunk, Director of Application Development for Claims IT at Farmers Insurance, we explore how to improve three critical areas of document template management for insurers:

Tip 1: Fewer, More Dynamic Communication Templates Simplify Management

The best place to start when it comes to organizing your communication template strategy is to whip existing templates into shape. Just like cleaning and organizing a home, the first step is to discard items no longer being used, to focus the larger efforts on the most relevant tools. Get rid of old templates that have run their course or were created for specific situations that no longer apply.

Also consider your most dynamic templates. The idea is to have fewer, harder working templates. This is particularly powerful when using a more scalable cloud-based customer communications platform. It’s important to focus on communication templates that do the heavy lifting in a variety of situations. This offers more opportunity for personalization and an effective way to streamline management in the insurance industry.

“Prior to implementing SmartCOMM, we had thousands of communication templates that we maintained in our custom application. With SmartCOMM, we’ve been able to reduce the number of templates by more than 50%.” – Chris Plunk, Director of Application Development for Claims IT, Farmers Insurance

Tip 2: Implement a Template Management Strategy that Creates Consistent Customer Experiences and Personalization at Scale

From onboarding to claims management, insurance carriers know how important it is for policyholders and claimants to receive consistent messages that align with their company’s brand promise. Insurers also know that impersonal, mass communications don’t carry the same weight anymore. Customers want personalized messages that speak to their unique situations. Static templates that are disconnected from evolving customer data and manually updated one by one simply don’t cut it for modern insurers who want to deliver consistent and personal communications at scale.

That’s why Farmers chose SmartCOMM, which gave them the power to transform their communication templates into dynamic vehicles that remain on-brand and in sync with customers’ specific situations.

“We need to make sure that we’re getting the right information – worded in the right way – in all of our communications, and having these templates in place through this application really helped us achieve that.” – Chris Plunk, Director of Application Development for Claims IT, Farmers Insurance

Tip 3: Faster Communication Template Updates Yield More Response

In insurance, customer communication speed is everything. When policyholders need to file a claim, they need to do it immediately and expect a fast response on the other end. Today, it is important to think of insurance communications as real-time conversations. This makes the ability to update templates efficiently vital. In this new era, speed wins every time. By leveraging a cloud-based communications management solution for templates, insurers can cut down on template update time and IT burdens and ensure that their customers get the right messages more quickly.

“By using SmartCOMM, we’ve been able to reduce [template update] cycle time significantly, and actually push the ability to make changes to these communication templates from the IT department back into the business. What used to take weeks can now be accomplished in a few days.” – Chris Plunk, Director of Application Development for Claims IT, Farmers Insurance

3 Ways Financial Services Companies Can Keep Pace with Ever-Changing Customer Expectations

Posted on March 27, 2023October 19, 2026 by Smart Communications Team

By Neil Greathead, CCO of Smart Communications

We’re all aware that the balance of power has shifted from companies to customers. Customers don’t want to be communicated to – they want to be communicated with and have a two-way dialogue with companies. When it comes to the current quality of communications within the financial services industry, our recent benchmark study revealed only 33 percent of customers surveyed feel that the companies they do business with always communicate through their preferred methods.

With easier access to what competitors are offering, maintaining customer loyalty is more challenging than ever before. According to PWC, one in three customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience. Customer demands are at an all-time high and still growing! Every communication sent, every contract, every email, every account statement, text message or push notification is all a part of the larger, ongoing conversation with your customer.

Ultimately, every business will reach a point where customer communications are at risk of breaking down due to growing complexities. With more channels, more customers, more touchpoints, more interactions, and more disruptions, now is the time for businesses to take the proper steps in order to provide the exceptional communication experiences that today’s customers expect.

Here are three ways companies within the financial services industry can proactively scale customer communications and keep up with ever-changing customer expectations.

Embrace Digital Transformation

As stated by industry expert and keynote speaker Greg Verdino, “Digital transformation closes the gap between what digital customers already expect and what analog businesses actually deliver.” To succeed in today’s digitally connected world, companies must embrace digital transformation. Yet with 75 percent of CIOs stating their enterprises will fail to meet all their digital objectives in 2019, we realize this is no easy feat. Whether companies are being held back by conflicting priorities, budget restrictions legacy systems, or simply the fear of the unknown or uncertainty over where to start, there’s still an underlying pressure to bolster the customer experience.

The good news is, while it might not be easy, it will be worth it. The promised benefits of digital transformation remain huge for companies – especially those within the financial services industry. How do we know? We’ve witnessed these successes firsthand! For example, after migrating to our cloud-based customer communications management (CCM) solution Smart Communications helped one multinational US investment bank successfully condense their template change process from 160 hours to 16 hours. We’ve also seen a leading financial services company receive a total cost-benefit of $16.7 million in just three years, achieving an ROI of 260 percent. Saved time, resources, and an increased ROI are only a few examples of how digital transformation ultimately enables businesses to focus more on the customer experience.

Automate Processes to Deliver Personalized, Scalable Conversations

As your customer base grows, personalization becomes more challenging. To be successful, enterprises must deliver highly personalized communications at tremendous scale. Modern CCM technology can make this possible by improving internal efficiencies and automating processes. Cloud-based platforms can go a long way in making this vision a reality by making it easier for different groups within an organization to collaborate—thus breaking down departmental silos. They are also able to more easily integrate with other pieces of technology in an enterprise’s ecosystem, which ultimately leads to a more comprehensive and holistic view of the customer which makes providing a more consistent and personalized customer experience (CX) throughout the entire lifecycle much more attainable.

Our platform alone has facilitated more than 50 billion conversations between our users and their customers to date. And we’re communicating to more than 125 million credit card users on an ongoing basis – scaling the conversations related to more than $2 trillion in annual spend!

Introduce New Channels to Retain Customers

While print is not going away entirely, now is the time for a strong shift toward digital – and enterprises must be prepared to deliver. Our benchmark study found that while email is the preferred communication channel for customers in both the US and UK, 66 percent of business leaders admit that less than 40 percent of their communications are being distributed via email. Clearly, there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

To meet customers’ expectations of recognizing their individual preferences – while also handling the many ways your customers now interact with your brand, a CCM solution must be poised to deliver interactive, on-demand, and batch communications – and to do so via multiple delivery channels. Companies that get this right, stand to benefit substantially. According to research conducted by the Aberdeen Group, companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement retain on average 89 percent of their customers, compared to 33 percent for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement.

Looking for more customer communications inspiration? Watch our webinar, Timely, Relevant, Meaningful: Building Powerful Customer Communications in Financial Services, and gain expert insight into how financial services companies can effectively scale their customer communications to succeed in today’s high expectation environment.

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

Posted on December 12, 2022October 19, 2026 by Sally Schulte

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.

The New Rules of Digital Loan Origination: Fast, Easy and Scalable

Posted on August 23, 2022October 19, 2026 by Dani Duffy

Loan origination is a competitive battleground, where only the swift and digitally strong survive. From auto, home and student loans to business financing, lenders have worked for years to automate and optimize as many aspects of origination as possible on the journey to the “straight through processing” promised land. And while much progress has been made for consumer loans, the pandemic has put a harsh spotlight on places where paper or manual processes still remain. Add to that the need for banks to quickly support special government loan programs like the U.S. Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), or U.K. Recovery Loan Scheme, and the digital gaps became even clearer.

Digital Gaps Cause Challenges for Complex Loans

To be sure, the complexity and custom nature of business loans makes them more challenging than consumer loans to digitize. Like investment advisors, commercial loan officers often build client relationships that last decades. When it comes to financing multifaceted business deals, customers often want the high-touch reassurance that their loan is being personally handled by a trusted advisor.

So how do lenders maintain these relationships now in a digital-first world? And how do they take advantage of digital innovations, so advisors can spend less time on paperwork, and the business can scale to manage a higher volume of loans?

In a recent article on why commercial banks struggle to digitize account opening, the author cites a telling statistic: “[56%] of commercial banking executives say digital account opening is the No. 1 technology issue for business customers over the next five years, according to a recent study by Phoenix-based Catalyst Consulting Group.” To overcome these challenges, leading lenders have uncovered ways to digitize the creation of complex loan agreements and streamline e-signature from multiple parties. These digital upgrades have made the difference between growth and stagnation in a volatile macroeconomic environment.

The New Rules of Digital Loan Origination

Today, lending is all about being fast, easy and scalable to manage changing market conditions. If your digital lending operations follow these rules, you’ll have all you need to win. Easier said than done, right? Let’s break each rule down a bit further.

Fast: Before the pandemic, it was acceptable that lending of all kinds took a certain amount of time. Now, the expectations are that all loan types are processed at lightning speed. Lenders who get this are handily beating those who do not. Shifting digital loan origination is the path to victory here.
Easy: Going hand-in-hand with speed is simplicity. People no longer have the patience for complex, paper applications or in-person signing sessions. They know that there are easier ways to get things done now – putting the pressure on lenders to align with those new expectations, regardless of loan type and complexity.
Scalable: It’s not great processing one loan manually, rekeying information and mailing signed copies back and forth. But doing it hundreds or thousands of times threatens to overwhelm operations and grind everything to a halt. By automating as much of the digital lending journey as possible, lenders can free up internal resources while providing much better customer experiences.

RELATED READING | Discover 6 Ways to Change the Conversation in Lending to improve borrower engagement and decrease risk.

A Digital Lending Masterclass: The Bancorp

One great example of a leader in this space is The Bancorp, a specialized lender and asset manager. Jeffrey Hazelwood, Managing Director of Institutional Banking, believed that reimagining loan origination was a critical part of creating a differentiated client experience. Hazelwood recently explained why they chose Smart Communications to help them do just that, leveraging SmartIQ^TMand our partnership with DocuSign to support an entirely new digital loan documentation system. At every level, the business focused on creating a solution that was fast, easy and scalable — and the results are pretty incredible.

The company now has around 100 documentary artifacts that can be arranged in up to 350 combinations, to assemble personalized loan document packages automatically in minutes. And because it’s all done digitally, that means no more series of in-person meetings to physically sign multiple packages of documents. Loan parties can review and digitally sign in just a few minutes in one meeting. This also means no more waiting for documents to travel through the mail – they’re available to everyone instantly.

This new solution is fast – really fast. It only takes clients 5 to 7 minutes to complete the application. And that includes identity verification through documentation upload and e-signing. Not only has this resulted in great speed for The Bancorp, but also much greater accuracy: Not In Good Order (NIGO) error rates have dropped to almost zero.

Improved operations? Check. Improved customer experience? Check. But how do these great things translate into business results? Well, nothing short of amazing. As a result of their improved digital loan origination processes, for this business line, The Bancorp is ahead of plans to double market share, quadruple assets and revenue and increase profit tenfold.

Want to learn more about how The Bancorp achieved this wild success through a partnership with Smart Communications? Watch the video below featuring Jeff Hazelwood, Managing Director of Institutional Banking Solution Manager at The Bancorp.

Enterprises That Benefit Most From Customer Communications Management Software

Posted on August 12, 2022October 19, 2026 by Chris Murphy

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

Enterprises around the world are navigating a digital landscape and customer expectations that are changing faster than ever, leading many organizations to rethink how they interact with customers—especially companies within highly regulated industries like financial services, healthcare and insurance, as well as the public sector. As these enterprises engage with customers at critical moments in their lives, it’s imperative that one-way, transactional communications be replaced with two-way, interactive conversations that offer a seamless customer experience. This is where cloud-native customer communications management (CCM) software can help.

An unfortunate truth is that outdated, legacy CCM systems do not provide the necessary agility to meet customers’ growing expectations. Companies that implement pure cloud CCM will be more capable of achieving the unmatched levels of innovation, agility and scalability that today’s customers require.

In this post, we’ll explore how making the shift from legacy, manual systems to a cloud-based CCM solution can help enterprises remain agile, competitive and compliant, as well as some of the main challenges that can be solved with CCM.

Why is Cloud CCM a Necessity for Highly Regulated Industries?

Early adopters of cloud-based CCM are already noticing the benefits of making an investment in sophisticated cloud software. In fact, the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Communications Management Applications 2022 stated that organizations cited a 26% improvement in customer satisfaction as a result of embracing digital transformation. Enterprises need the right systems to help them decrease friction while still gathering the details and information required to help customers achieve their goals and remain satisfied.

As noted earlier in the post, highly regulated industries often interact with people at their most vulnerable or critical moments: a car accident, a first-time home buying experience or claims appeal after a major health issue. Navigating these life milestones is difficult enough, for both the customer and the company’s employees. With less time spent on paper heavy, manual tasks, employees have more room to be empathetic and focus on providing an exceptional customer experience.

When every customer interaction is high-stakes, enterprises within the insurance, financial services and healthcare industries require solutions that provide deeper visibility into every customer touch point, increased efficiency and the ability to deliver omnichannel communications – all of which is only achievable with a cloud-first approach.

How Cloud-based CCM Solutions Enhance Business Efficiency

In our fast-paced world, efficiency continues to be a main driver for businesses. The way we work and live has shifted exponentially over the last several years, making the customers of today more digitally savvy than ever. People have become accustomed to working out of their homes with systems and tools they once never used. Now, businesses are playing catch up and they need future-ready ways to help them remain efficient at scale. Rather than taking a reactive approach to these changes, proactive enterprises understand the cost savings and agility that come from cloud-based CCM solutions. Some of those include:

Greater Visibility into Delivering Compliant Communications. When considering the need for compliance and the ever-changing regulations, visibility into the language being used across forms and other external communications can make or break a brand, like manually searching for and replacing dozens of instances where language may be outdated or replaced for any number of reasons. This could be due to compliance regulations that dictate the way a contract is formatted. However, a sophisticated CCM solution that leverages the power of the cloud can search an entire library of communications for fragments (including sentences, logos or pre-made E-signatures) and replace it with the correct content. Minute details, like font sizing or color, can also be updated easily as per regulatory standards, such as a Terms and Conditions section in a document.
Reducing Administrative Burden on the IT Department. Another big benefit of utilizing cloud technology is for IT departments. Unlike legacy, on-premise tools, a cloud-based customer communications management solution reduces the burden on IT and frees up resources/budget that allows for more innovative initiatives. Without the added weight of managing or updating software and systems, IT teams can spend more time taking a strategic approach to the products or services a company offers.
Increased Control and Ownership for Business Users. The business user has more control and ownership of the software and can enjoy seamless updates (managed by the vendor) and flexibility that isn’t possible with on-premise tools. This is especially important when considering the hybrid or fully remote working situations across large workforces. With cloud software, customer service representatives have the needed flexibility to provide a great customer experience from anywhere in the world—without sacrificing customer safety or risking non-compliance.

The above benefits certainly extend to highly regulated industries like financial services, insurance and healthcare. In the rest of this post, we’ll examine some additional benefits of CCM for each of those industries.

Customer Communications Management Benefits for Healthcare

The healthcare industry, for good reason, has some of the toughest regulations and compliance-related expectations. To remain compliant and agile, while also focusing on patient satisfaction, requires health insurers to rethink the systems and solutions they use to manage the end-to-end customer experience. In addition to those top priorities, key findings from a recent Forrester report highlighted these main challenges facing health insurers:

Health insurance members prefer offline channels for customer service due to unsatisfactory digital experiences
51% of customers are dissatisfied with phone interactions
Insurers find it challenging to provide a seamless, personalized digital experience
Insurers’ top priorities indicate a focus on acquisition rather than improving current members’ experience

The above challenges can be solved by investing in a customer communications management solution that leverages the power of the cloud and provides health insurers with a strategic approach to improving customer experience—from acquisition through servicing—and ultimately improving retention. Consolidating CCM use cases onto a single enterprise-wide platform also improves operating efficiency and increases speed to market.

Helping members be seen and known as individuals will take a concerted effort to do away with manual processes and tools that only offer a one-way transaction. Health insurers need to reimagine how they engage with members and adopt digital solutions that enable interactive, two-way conversations.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE | ‘Connecting the Healthcare Claims Experience’

Customer Communications Management Benefits for Insurance Providers

Not only are customer needs very similar in both the healthcare and insurance industries, the compliance and regulatory requirements are, too. Protecting customer data and reducing errors is critical when thinking of the total customer journey. In addition to these drivers, the following are also top priorities for companies in the insurance industry:

Reducing cycle time and NIGO rates for claims to increase customer satisfaction and associated renewals
Reducing dependency on IT to create new reports, reduce template maintenance and number of templates
Eliminating disparate systems to provide for a more cohesive approach to managing customer conversations

Unfortunately, insurance companies that are hanging onto legacy technology might also be hindering speed-to-market innovation, limiting digital-first strategies and inhibiting the ability to respond to rapidly evolving product and customer preferences. To overcome these challenges and meet strategic priorities across the industry, insurers must invest in CCM solutions that help them foster two-way, interactive customer communications with agility and efficiency.

Manual, analog systems might be the expectation for insurers, but their customers are digitally savvy and have adjusted their expectations based on how they do business with companies that have already digitized and automated core business functions. To become a truly customer-centric organization while also remaining competitive, insurers must accelerate their innovation by adopting pure cloud, digital platforms that work seamlessly with policy, claims, billing systems and other enterprise software tools. This approach will allow for personalization and omnichannel delivery across the entire insurance lifecycle.

KEEP READING | ‘Becoming a Digital First Claims Organization’

Customer Communications Management Benefits for Financial Services Institutions

Banks and financial institutions have always competed for loyalty and wallet share based on delivering the best customer experience (CX), which has only become more difficult as new digital channels of engagement pop up every day. According to a March 2022 report from Celent, 58% of banks say “it is more challenging to win and retain customers than 12 months ago.” Competition from fintechs and non-bank lenders means banks need to step up their digital game.

CCM software solutions enable banks to engage customers with personalized, relevant communications in real time across a growing number of channels and engagement points, from getting a loan to onboarding investments to statements and customer service transactions. CCM platforms built for enterprise scalability enable banks to manage and deliver millions of documents or digital messages every day, including marketing offers, product information, compliance disclosures, renewal notifications, delinquency notices, just to name a few.

Meeting customers where they are while delivering the right messaging across all channels is just one way banks and other financial institutions can not only cut down on customer frustration, but also reduce compliance risks by managing communication templates. Banks can achieve massive cost savings by reducing paper and postage costs for ongoing communications. According to Forrester, one bank saved $16.7 million in overall costs by modernizing its CCM platform and shifting to digital communications.

Solving these challenges is at the forefront of the mind for many leaders in the financial services industry, as well as how to:

Support digital-first, two-way conversations that encompass the entire customer lifecycle, beyond sales
Provide customers with seamless transitions between in-person and virtual communications without friction
Remain compliant and protective of customer data while still providing flexibility throughout the various touchpoints

Financial institutions and banks are beginning to operate with a new customer experience paradigm. The old standard of reactive, one-way interactions is no longer accepted by a digitally equipped consumer base. Instead, banks and financial institutions have begun the process of adopting systems that can meet these increasing customer demands and allow remote or hybrid workers to account for gaps, no matter where they’re working from.

This digitalization goes beyond delivering documents or signing contracts; two historic use cases of early CCM tools. Customers can now be empowered to create their own journey, so to speak, when provided with digital-first, interactive conversations across the various engagement mechanisms that exist (e.g. website, chatbots, apps, in-person, phone). These capabilities support a customer-centric approach that is enabling financial services institutions to win customers and grow deposits.

READ THE REPORT | ‘IDC Industry Spotlight: Empathy at Scale at the Pace of Digital in Financial Services’

Why Smart Communications

Interactions across the insurance, financial services and healthcare industries are often stressful and/or high-stakes. This means it’s even more important than ever to deliver a customer experience that accounts for these factors. In fact, recent benchmark data from Smart Communications revealed that communications are important to 81% of consumers’ overall experience with a company—a high percentage when considering the various factors included in the end-to-end customer experience.

As one of the only CCM providers in the space that is fully committed to a cloud-first approach, Smart Communications has enabled many enterprises with the ability to shift from one-way, transactional communications to two-way, interactive conversations. This is one reason why we’ve been recently recognized on the Aspire Leaderboard for the strength of our solutions, strategic vision and global reach. In addition, Aragon, IDC, Gartner and other analysts have named us as a leader in our industry.

When considering the unique and specific needs in highly regulated industries, Smart Communications takes compliance and data safety seriously. We’re certified compliant by an independent third party and maintain HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, SOC 1 and SOC 2 certifications. This makes it possible for enterprises to provide contextual, compliant communications across the various channels their customers prefer.

Smart Communications is uniquely positioned to help enterprises in highly regulated industries realize a better way to manage customer communications. To learn more about how our pure cloud-native CCM software helps enterprises better serve their customers and remain strategic, check out the Aspire Leaderboard for Customer Communications Management.

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

Posted on July 29, 2022October 19, 2026 by Smart Communications Team

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

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1. Use Low-Code Solutions to Eliminate Manual Forms

2. Improve the Healthcare Member Experience with SMARTER Conversations

3. Enable Intelligent Conversations for Claims Appeals

4. Automate the Healthcare Forms Process with Cloud Technology

Improved healthcare member experience

Increased efficiency throughout the claims process

Lower regulatory risk

Conclusion

To discover how low-code solutions can help health insurers boost member engagement, access our on-demand webinar to see SmartIQ in action. Or, request a demo for more information about how payers can benefit from the SmartIQ solution.

Mitigate Risks for Data Breaches and Errors

Save Time and Money with Forms Automation

Forms Automation Can Enhance Enterprise Customer Communications

Purpose-Built for Today’s Enterprise Needs

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

Digital Gaps Cause Challenges for Complex Loans

The New Rules of Digital Loan Origination

A Digital Lending Masterclass: The Bancorp

Why is Cloud CCM a Necessity for Highly Regulated Industries?

How Cloud-based CCM Solutions Enhance Business Efficiency

Customer Communications Management Benefits for Healthcare

Customer Communications Management Benefits for Insurance Providers

Customer Communications Management Benefits for Financial Services Institutions

Why Smart Communications

A Dynamic CCM-CXM Assessment Tool that Delivers Deep Insight

Follow These Steps to Get Started

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?