User:ScottMulkey/Customer communications management

Customer Communications Management (CCM) is software or a suite of software enabling companies to create, manage, and deliver customer communications across a wide range of distribution channels. Originally, customer communications referred to printed documents, archived digital documents, and email. Organizations' digital transformation of customer communications expanded communication distribution to include SMS, in-app notifications, responsive design mobile experiences, messages over common social media platforms, and microsites to offer a personalized customer experience(CX).

Concept
Customer Communications Management (CCM) software is an integral tool that empowers organizations with a modernized approach to information exchange and communication delivery, enhancing their engagement with customers and various stakeholders. It optimizes and automates the design, personalization, delivery orchestration, and insights tracking of communications, such as letters, statements, notices, bills, and direct mail marketing. These communications are personalized to the individual recipient, utilizing the appropriate messaging content for the channel per the delivery channel (print, email, SMS, and mobile).

When a customer interacts with an organization, the CCM software ensures that messages crafted consider comprehensive data—spanning the customer's profile, records management, demographic insights, previous online interactions, and specific delivery preferences. CCM business processes integrated with customer experience management (CXM) harness vast data, making CCM/CXM systems critical tools to inform and engage with customers.

History
Before the term CCM was used, this technology was referred to as Variable Data Printing (VDP) or Variable Data Publishing. The term "Trans Promo", short for "Trans Promotional", was in use as the term "VDP" gave way to "CCM" in industry-generated content.

Initial CCM concepts focused on the utilization of company system generated transactional documents. These documents such as bank statements, statements of account, invoices, and other customer transactional documents were viewed as ideal customer touchpoints to promote company products to customers. Transactional documents are opened and read by more than 90% of consumers. In competitive markets, the average consumer encounters numerous advertisements, e-mails, direct mail, and solicitations daily. Employing personalized communication strategies can result in repeat buying customers.

Marketing demands influenced the evolution of CCM technologies. This led to enhancements in design, testing, analytic integration, and customer journey mapping capabilities, coinciding with the growing role of marketers in the technology procurement process.

The scope of CCM platforms has rapidly grown beyond transactional and marketing communications management and data analysis. Many contemporary CCM platforms offer "automatic generation of sales proposals, employment contracts, loan documents, service level agreements, product descriptions and pricing, and other transactional or legal documents where re-usable content can be applied to generate accurate, consistent and personalized documents for a range of business applications". This shift into management flexibility becomes more evident as companies develop CCM platforms and adaptable to evolving technologies available to businesses. This can be observed with businesses' introduction of digital-first initatives into their standard scope of work.

Components
Customer communications management technologies support creating, personalizing, delivering, and orchestrating customer communications. CCM platforms usually include or integrate with the following components:


 * 1) Data Extraction, Transform & Load Software
 * 2) Data Management, Analysis and Location Intelligence Software
 * 3) Enterprise Content Management Systems
 * 4) Customer Relationship Management Systems
 * 5) Records Management Systems
 * 6) Postal Address Verification Compliance Software
 * 7) Document Composition software
 * 8) Print Stream Transformation Software
 * 9) Digital Presentation and Deliver Software
 * 10) Payment Gateway service
 * 11) Print Management Software
 * 12) High-Volume Production Printers
 * 13) Automated intelligent inserting machines
 * 14) Email & Mobile messaging Distribution Platforms
 * 15) Social Media Distribution Platforms
 * 16) Document Production Reporting Software
 * 17) Customer Portal Technology
 * 18) Customer Experience Management Systems
 * 19) Omnichannel Customer Journey Orchestration

All CCM technologies feature design interfaces that primarily use a visual layout software to define the structure of the communication. These design interfaces create a basic visual structure of a communication that is later populated by a production engine with data, variably created data, static content elements, rules-driven content elements, externally referenced content and other elements to create a finished customer communication.

There are varying degrees of sophistication that CCM design interfaces handle, depending on the business needs. Some design environments are simple cloud-based interfaces that create communications for quick and easy marketing communications. There are more comprehensive interfaces that can support complex applications like insurance policy generation that require the skills and expertise of many business experts.

Most CCM technologies offer data extraction capabilities that allow marketers and businesses to combine data from multiple systems across their business to perform customer analysis before composing communications. This allows marketers to evaluate the marketing mix and position individual products to the customer in respect of relevance to the customer or the results of purchase propensity model by applying rules on content elements within the design.

The process results in the creation of a data model, data acquisition and decision rules. These enable a document composition engine to follow its own set of document application rules, constructing individual documents on the basis of data items contained within an individual's data record. The Document Composition engine usually produces either a print stream or, XML data.

Post-processing can be utilized to prepare a print job for production and distribution. This may include tasks such as the application of barcodes to deliver individual mail piece instructions to the inserters and to vary these in terms of the actual inserter being used. For example, one manufacturer's inserter may require different barcode instructions to complete the same task than another.

Print Management software controls the routing and distribution of print jobs to either a single production printer or a fleet of production printers. Print management software also provides a mechanism for assured delivery (ensuring that all pages get printed) through communication and feedback from print devices. Analysis of resultant data provides insight useful for Document Production Managers.

In competitive markets with minimal service differentiation, the relevance of communication becomes crucial. Personalized communications improve customer retention and acquisition. Documents that add value to the customer relationship are a major factor in improving customer retention and acquisition. Using a modernized Customer Communications Management technologies can support organizations' digital-first omnichannel customer experience (CX) strategy goals.