Reaching customers where they live

By Doug Cox, Director of North America Enterprise Business, GMC Software Technology

Significant changes in the financial services industry over the past few years are bringing increased regulatory scrutiny, new compliance policies, and heightened public skepticism. At the same time, a sharp decline in customer confidence and altered consumer behaviors have made it increasingly difficult for financial services firms to acquire and retain high-value clients. In this difficult environment, businesses are seeking cost-effective strategies that yield an immediate impact on customer acquisition and satisfaction, reduce corporate risk, boost operational efficiency, and promise uncontested returns on investment.

For financial services firms, accelerated recovery and success depend upon customer acquisition, satisfaction, and loyalty. Consequently, every consumer contact presents an opportunity to regain customer trust, reach new markets, and differentiate the firm from its competition.

The ability to successfully implement a multichannel marketing communication strategy will most likely be the single biggest challenge-and opportunity-for every financial institution over the next few years. Positioning for success in this new market environment revolves around having access to the information clients want-and being able to deliver via the channel they prefer-morning, noon, or night via print, electronic, the web, and mobile devices. Today's most successful enterprises have a carefully planned customer communications management strategy that answers these requirements. Most importantly, they have chosen the robust technology required to make it happen. At GMC Software Technology, we offer a Customer Communications Management (CCM) solution that delivers all of these capabilities to financial services firms.

Seeking the right solutions

Leveraging the power of multichannel campaigns requires having the ability to determine the communication preferences of each client and the solutions in place to deliver compelling content through that channel. Whether the recipient likes paper (mail), electronic (e-mail, Internet), mobile devices, or a combination of these channels, being able to meet delivery preferences is quickly becoming an expectation rather than an option.

One of the first decisions to be made is whether this can be done in-house or outsourced to a third-party service provider. Many financial organizations already use third-party service providers to print and mail statements and other customer communications.  If you choose to outsource, it is critically important to closely evaluate your vendor partner's capabilities to ensure they can meet client communication needs in the areas of agility, flexibility, and control. With statements being the central communication vehicle between a financial firm and its clients, employing "agile billing"-the ability to maintain flexibility and control of documents while enjoying the cost benefits of outsourcing physical printing and fulfillment-is simply good business. GMC's CCM solution is designed to enable this ability, providing financial services enterprises with the agility and control that they need while supporting all of the requirements for securely and efficiently outsourcing your print/mail fulfillment. 

Meaningful communications are the lifeline between financial firms and their constituents, and it's wise to consider this a core capability of business. There are software solutions available that address a multichannel, personalized communication strategy and are user-friendly enough to provide the flexibility needed to allow business users to create interactive, point-of-need, personalized documents for their clients in-house, while ensuring that costs are controlled through centralized production and fulfillment. It pays to do research because not every solution offers all of the functionality  you may need to achieve your specific communication objectives.

Providing more effective and efficient communications

Just as important as communicating through multiple channels is ensuring the delivery of easy-to-understand statements and other communications when doing so. Tailoring communications to specific preferences offers the dual benefit of building trust and reducing customer service calls. For example, if an individual has a profile that suggests they may be interested in converting to a new retirement plan, the communication solution should have the ability to personalize their next statement with information highlighting the retirement options available to them. Having the technology in place to access the data an organization already has about its clients can put their needs front and center with every communication sent to them.

Overcoming associated challenges

As with any customer communication management initiatives, there are challenges when integrating multichannel communication options with current architecture. Here are the four most common:

1.     Obtaining quality data

Data is often stored in disjointed silos across the enterprise and it can be a challenge to obtain and consolidate useful data about each client. Be sure the communication solution you choose can tap into the broad range of data sources that drive your business, and that the solution makes it easy to merge and consolidate this data.  GMC's solution provides the ability to tap into all of these resources across the enterprise, and present them to users in a unified way.

2.     Integrating all delivery channels

While adding the capability to deliver to all of the emerging communication channels is an important first step, the next consideration is ensuring the ability to coordinate and integrate communications across all of these channels.  For instance, the ability for the next statement run to take advantage of feedback obtained through an e-channel (like email) is a critical aspect of a successful multichannel framework.  GMC solutions have deep and powerful capability in this area, allowing enterprises to integrate and coordinate output across all channels.

3.     Designing for multiple channels

The content delivered to a client on their printed statement may be in a completely different format and layout than the content delivered to that same member via a different channel. Because of this, another critical success factor for a multichannel communication solution is creating flexible content that automatically changes to match the delivery channel. Without this kind of flexibility, designing for multiple channels can become a painful and complex process.  GMC's content management capabilities allow users to create and manage cross-channel content in a way is intuitive and easy to use.

4.     Efficiently managing multiple channels

Managing content, logic, users and roles, interfaces, and change control practices for a multichannel solution can seem like a daunting task. Another key step is providing an integrated framework that can leverage critical data across the entire solution. For instance, user roles and permissions should be honored anywhere in the framework. Additionally, the ability to manage content-independent of the documents and channels that receive them-is crucial. Be sure the solution used has these management capabilities, or your organization may be overwhelmed with process and content complexities.  At GMC, we put a strong emphasis on the user interfaces for content management, roles and workflow - ensuring that multi-channel content management is fundamental to the user experience.

Organizational commitment, accountability, and having the right technology in place for managing the client base across all media channels is essential to overcoming these challenges and succeeding when it comes to customer communication management. Multichannel communications are not the wave of the future for financial firms. Your clients are already in control today and their expectations as to how you communicate with them are on the rise. Implementing a well-thought-out customer communication strategy can help ensure retention by getting important information to clients more quickly-and with a personal touch via the channel they prefer. 

About

Doug Cox is the Director of North America Enterprise Business for GMC Software Technology, a provider of document output for customer communication management. GMC Software Technology offers a seamless, easy-to-use, and powerful solution that enables business users to reduce the complexity and costs of customer communication management across business silos. The company's secure, scalable, and reliable solution produces personalized and regulatory compliant communications that can be delivered to members via the channel of choice. He can be reached at d.cox@gmc.net.