Do you know this feeling: you get in early in the morning to get some work done before your meetings start, but you are instantly overwhelmed by problems the minute you get into your office? From ‘IT tells me this document change will take 80 days, while we need it next week’ or ‘Our customers feel frustrated for not getting their bills by email’ to ‘We need to change the logo on this document, but we cannot find the template’.
Instead of starting to explain the benefits of having a customer communications platform to tackle these issues, I decided to turn the question around: what happens if you don’t have a central CCM platform? Let’s have a look at a day in the life without a flexible customer communications management platform.
But be careful: this might sound too familiar …
8:00 am
You get in early to get some work done before your meetings start. Your enterprise has had a good year with several major acquisitions and continued growth. But the different teams, however, have had to deal with a lot of frustration and disappointment. Today is no exception.
9:00 am
The day starts with the legal department facing a deadline and needing a paragraph in an important document changed. Because the template is only accessible by IT and can only be changed by IT, an urgent request to them to make the changes will be required. The IT manager will need to pull people from their regular IT duties, which are important to the smooth running of the company, and have them deal with document changes.
10:00 am
Unfortunately, the billing department has a change request in ahead of legal, so legal may or may not get the changes completed in time. On top of that, the legal department needs the changes to be in several different languages. Since there is no automated template deployment, each change will need to be deployed manually, further endangering the deadline.
11:00 am
One of the departments needs a new communications channel ‘now’, which will have to be manually set up. There are multiple communications coming from different departments that need to be bundled together. Multiple systems and data located in different places means increased staff and higher costs for training. And, with no central oversight, the hodge-podge of systems means there isn’t a consistent look or feel to documents, which is confusing to the clients – which leads to poor CX.
12:00 am
You desperately need a break!
1:00 pm
The customer reps are having a bad day. They have been asking for a 360-degree view of all communications relevant to a specific customer, so they have a clear picture of past and present communications. The lack of a central repository has meant some reps didn’t know what had been done previously for customers. The customers are feeling that nobody in the business knows what the others are doing.  They are getting very frustrated!
2:00 pm
Your business department is about to send out some business correspondence. Unfortunately, because of the difficulty in making changes, there is little personalization and no context. Also, since print is your standard, everyone gets printed documents whether they prefer email or digital delivery. Your customers are upset that they don’t have a choice in communication channels. This inflexibility will lead to poor CX, and a potential loss of clients. Your competition that has shown the agility to embrace the digital age is not at all sympathetic to your plight.
3:00 pm
The weekly afternoon staff meeting is dreaded. Your staff feels that the hard work they have done in managing the challenges they face will be overlooked. The focus will be on the loss of customers due to poor CX – when in many cases it hasn’t been their fault. They simply don’t have the resources necessary to be flexible and to adapt to customer needs.
5:00 pm
You go home, stressed out and with a giant headache …
8:00 pm
After dinner you start working on all the things you should have done today, but couldn’t, since you had to help the different departments with their communication challenges. You cannot take this any longer … . Something needs to happen!
Does this ‘day in the life’ sound familiar? Have you ever wondered how your day would look like when your employees would have the platform they require to manage these challenges? Then stay tuned for our next blog post that will explain the difference a day with the right platform makes.
If you can’t wait for the sequel, you can download our e-book.
Do you know this feeling: you get in early in the morning to get some work done before your meetings start, but you are instantly overwhelmed by problems the minute you get into your office? From ‘IT tells me this document change will take 80 days, while we need it next week’ or ‘Our customers feel frustrated for not getting their bills by email’ to ‘We need to change the logo on this document, but we cannot find the template’.
Instead of starting to explain the benefits of having a customer communications platform to tackle these issues, I decided to turn the question around: what happens if you don’t have a central CCM platform? Let’s have a look at a day in the life without a flexible customer communications management platform.
But be careful: this might sound too familiar …
8:00 am
You get in early to get some work done before your meetings start. Your enterprise has had a good year with several major acquisitions and continued growth. But the different teams, however, have had to deal with a lot of frustration and disappointment. Today is no exception.
9:00 am
The day starts with the legal department facing a deadline and needing a paragraph in an important document changed. Because the template is only accessible by IT and can only be changed by IT, an urgent request to them to make the changes will be required. The IT manager will need to pull people from their regular IT duties, which are important to the smooth running of the company, and have them deal with document changes.
10:00 am
Unfortunately, the billing department has a change request in ahead of legal, so legal may or may not get the changes completed in time. On top of that, the legal department needs the changes to be in several different languages. Since there is no automated template deployment, each change will need to be deployed manually, further endangering the deadline.
11:00 am
One of the departments needs a new communications channel ‘now’, which will have to be manually set up. There are multiple communications coming from different departments that need to be bundled together. Multiple systems and data located in different places means increased staff and higher costs for training. And, with no central oversight, the hodge-podge of systems means there isn’t a consistent look or feel to documents, which is confusing to the clients – which leads to poor CX.
12:00 am
You desperately need a break!
1:00 pm
The customer reps are having a bad day. They have been asking for a 360-degree view of all communications relevant to a specific customer, so they have a clear picture of past and present communications. The lack of a central repository has meant some reps didn’t know what had been done previously for customers. The customers are feeling that nobody in the business knows what the others are doing.  They are getting very frustrated!
2:00 pm
Your business department is about to send out some business correspondence. Unfortunately, because of the difficulty in making changes, there is little personalization and no context. Also, since print is your standard, everyone gets printed documents whether they prefer email or digital delivery. Your customers are upset that they don’t have a choice in communication channels. This inflexibility will lead to poor CX, and a potential loss of clients. Your competition that has shown the agility to embrace the digital age is not at all sympathetic to your plight.
3:00 pm
The weekly afternoon staff meeting is dreaded. Your staff feels that the hard work they have done in managing the challenges they face will be overlooked. The focus will be on the loss of customers due to poor CX – when in many cases it hasn’t been their fault. They simply don’t have the resources necessary to be flexible and to adapt to customer needs.
5:00 pm
You go home, stressed out and with a giant headache …
8:00 pm
After dinner you start working on all the things you should have done today, but couldn’t, since you had to help the different departments with their communication challenges. You cannot take this any longer … . Something needs to happen!
Does this ‘day in the life’ sound familiar? Have you ever wondered how your day would look like when your employees would have the platform they require to manage these challenges? Then stay tuned for our next blog post that will explain the difference a day with the right platform makes.
If you can’t wait for the sequel, you can download our e-book.