Personalization is the core of what we do in CCM, and we do this on a scale that still requires specialized software that cannot be replaced by marketing or office editing tools. The number of personal data fields in a single communication and generated in such a short amount of time is table stakes for CCM — that we sometimes forget to pause and reflect on just how incredible it is. However, personalization can be taken for granted, as it's such a core of our business. It can be easy to miss new opportunities to expand personalization and start conversational customer experiences.
We typically think of personalization as the content that goes into a communication, which may be designed for optimal engagement of specific delivery channels. As we gather more and more information about what an individual's behavior might be revolving around a single communication, an opportunity is presented to rethink how personalization can take the recipient's experience to the next level and begin conversations. As a result, we are improving customer satisfaction (C-SAT), providing a more engaging experience that evolves into a conversation and nurtures the customer towards behavior that leads to the desired outcome.
Unlocking the Power of Personalization: 5 Layers of Maturity
1. Communication Preferences: How the communication is delivered is important to providing a personalized experience. It's not as simple as providing print versus electronic as an option. It's understanding what channels are preferred by what type of communications. This could be the type or purpose of the communication, e.g., statement, letters, notices, reminders, etc. But it could also be topical such as transactional, marketing, tax documents, etc. Advancing preferences could even include language preferences or frequency of communications. For example, credit card bills are important to receive monthly, but investment account materials may not be reviewed in depth monthly. So, a preference example may be to receive a printed statement quarterly or biannually, while receiving monthly statements electronically.
2. Combined Communications: Combined or consolidated communications are an opportunity to show customers that you recognize their loyalty to your business. If someone has more than one product, e.g., checking, savings, credit card and a loan, they prefer to do business with one financial institution. By aggregating the communications from those four accounts into one can provide a much better customer experience than receiving four individual communications. It reduces the cost of mailing out those communications if their preference is print and encourages electronic delivery as they can keep their inbox a bit cleaner. It also provides a foundation for taking personalization even further by enabling an understanding of common combinations of account ownership which allows for conversational messaging that shows customers you understand their relationship with your organization.
3. White Space Management: White space management is the ugly duckling of CCM. We all know about it, we've seen a few great examples, but scaling to full production on a regular basis is challenging. This is because data lives everywhere! It's siloed and incomplete. Without a 360-degree view of the customer, which can be analyzed for patterns and trends (opportunity for aI!), it is difficult to truly personalize white space. Instead, it is often another variable pulled in when there happens to be space and is somewhat generic. The more you know about an individual you are communicating with, the greater the opportunity to create impactful personalization.
4. Targeting with Variations: Targeting is another area that is table stakes for some CCM use cases, but often overlooked for the true value it can provide in personalizing communication messaging and experience. Commonly, there may be communication variations that capture state or country specific legal text, language translations, variable images used in the communication or other small areas of information that vary based on a specific input data. Variations can be called for reasons beyond what may be in the input data file, such as having a different variation for a communication that is being sent for the second or third time, identifying a new customer who is receiving their first communication, emphasizing a customer who may not be in a good status with the organization, or alerting to outstanding activities. This requires knowing more about the history of events with the individual or could be called based on an input data attribute, but the idea is to call a variation of that communication which is more specific to the individual.
5. Orchestrating within the context of the journey: In CCM, we tend to focus on specific communication touch points which are a single moment within a larger journey or series of touchpoints. This is natural as transactional communications have specific requirements for how quickly they need to be generated and delivered to comply with regulations. In CCM, a statement and three bill pay reminders are four separate communications. To the recipient, they are all related and part of a larger conversation. Beyond that, there are events that could occur that can provide insight and context that when considered as part of the next communication touchpoint, can inform CCM of the most relevant communication to deliver next. For example, if we know a customer has paid their bill before the second reminder is scheduled to be sent, we can take advantage of the touchpoint to send a different communication, reducing noise for the recipient (better experience), leveraging the opportunity to present a more relevant message that meets another business objective and reducing cost of sending unnecessary communications.
This is where journey management can provide an opportunity to understand what communications are being sent and what the current success of those communications are by creating conversations in context with related touchpoints as well as connecting other expected events such as website or contact center events. It also enables the ability to pull in additional information from other business systems (such as bill pay systems) that can help drive communication personalization such as those mentioned above or expanding further into segmentation or A/B/multivariate testing that can improve business outcomes and success rates. Creating the foundational journey provides the insight needed to enhance and optimize personalized communications and experiences over time.
Personalization is far more than the content and messaging within a communication. It’s catering to preferences, adjusting messaging and communication variations to specific audiences, and it’s leveraging related touchpoints to orchestrate communications in context with other touchpoints. To truly take personalization to a new level requires reevaluating your data strategy — which is a conversation for another time. Journey management can provide the context needed to turn static communications into an engaging conversation, personalized to the individual.
Stephanie Pieruccini is a Senior Manager of Product for OpenText CCM. In this role she is responsible for CCM Orchestration for OpenText Exstream as well as the StreamServe and Exstream platform solutions. Her experience comes from a strong knowledge of communication and production management from creation through delivery acquired from covering the print, marketing and CCM markets as an analyst and consultant with InfoTrends as well as serving as the channel development manager for CCM and digital transformation solutions at Neopost USA (Now Quadient).
