The needs of the modern-day customer are evolving, and to create a fulfilling customer journey and cultivate customer loyalty, the way in which companies interact with them needs to evolve as well.

The growth in the customer communications industry this past year has been incremental. 2023 saw significant CCM developments focused on fostering an engaging customer experience (CX) by bringing every touchpoint of the customer journey under a microscope. Efforts to prioritize both personalization and data security in every customer interaction has been the driving force for allowing businesses to acquire new customers, retain existing customers, and scale with a growing customer base.

So, what’s next? What do companies need to know about CCM in 2024?

While customers are obviously the crucial lynchpin for driving business growth and revenue generation, your employees are also crucial to the development of your organizational processes. It has become clear that going forward the right CCM strategy for your company will be one that includes optimizing your employee experience (EX) to cultivate a lucrative and long-lasting CX. The CCM technologies you use to bolster your CX efforts also play a role in bringing efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and accuracy to your workforce.

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Here are some CCM trends that we predict are poised to take the spotlight in 2024 -

1. Evolving omnichannel CCM technologies – Companies have been quick to adopt omnichannel capabilities in an effort to offer hassle-free communications to customers. In 2024, the CCM technologies that enable bi-directional communication will give companies a competitive edge. Customers don’t want to waste their time and energy relaying the same feedback, inquiry, or problem to different people, bouncing from one place to another depending on which department can help them. Using CCM technologies that enable easy inter-department collaboration to handle customer complaints can bring time and cost efficiency into the process of interacting with customers. This ensures that regardless of the chosen channel of communication, you can share consistent communications with customers and make it possible for your employees to work as a cohesive workforce to quickly, accurately, and efficiently resolve customer issues.
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   Focus on: CCM technologies that use data analytics.
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2. Personalization in CCM – Customer demands have surpassed ‘personalization’ and expanded into ‘hyper-personalization’. Today, this is accentuated with the added requirement of making hyper-personalized communication scalable as well. The advancement in generative artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and automation will help address this need in 2024. AI helps by creating targeted communication using insights from data analytics and can also help businesses identify where in the customer journey a churn may be occurring. Personalized recommendations and offers can then be shared with customers to retain customers or steer them back to your brand. While many CCM software platforms leverage these technologies to help you gather data, the key to using this data judiciously can be found in your workforce. Helping your employees build their skills and training them to use these developing technologies will not only boost their individual growth but will also help them be better equipped to align with a pivotal objective of scaling your business – delivering personalized, engaging, and relevant information to your customers.
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   Focus on: CCM technologies that use Generative AI, automation, ML, data analytics.
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3. CCM integration with various business tools – The ability of your CCM system to integrate with various CRM, database tools, post-composition tools, document management systems (DMS), marketing tools, and business intelligence and analytics tools is imperative to share consistent messaging with customers. Many emerging CCM technologies in 2024 are poised to offer seamless integration to facilitate data collection from various touchpoints in the customer journey. This will be important to bolster internal communications and collaboration between employees from various departments like marketing or customer support to provide a consistent customer experience across their interaction with a brand.
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   Focus on: CCM technologies that use data analytics, and data synchronization.
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4. Low-code and No-code CCM – More and more organizations are relying on Low-code or No-code technologies across departments to cater to various operational requirements. Time is probably one of the most valuable assets to businesses and customers alike. Low-code CCM software allows businesses to simplify the process of creating applications with the ability to easily customize their tools for their unique business requirements. Since low-code CCM technologies will help your employees develop updates more quickly, it will translate to a quicker turnaround for addressing customer queries, which is paramount for building customer loyalty in the long run.
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   Focus on: CCM technologies that provide options for customization and simplification.
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5. Data privacy and security – Customers will continue to prioritize their privacy and security when sharing their personal information with businesses. The trust associated with a brand becomes important when trying to retain customers, which is why data security will remain invaluable in 2024. Leveraging the AI, analytics, and ML capabilities of CCM software to identify data breaches or fraudulent patterns will allow businesses to pinpoint pressure points in the customer journey and eliminate potential data leaks in real time. Companies should also use these enhanced CCM technologies to relay transparency to customers, informing them about how exactly their data is being used, and for what purpose. This transparency will help customers see a brand as trustworthy, reliable, and responsible, encouraging them to stay loyal to it.
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   Focus on: CCM technologies that use data analytics, AI, and ML.

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While CCM technologies so far have been solely focused on CX, the projected developments in 2024 speak to a more layered approach to optimizing CX. Instead of focusing solely on the final communication, CCM technologies are now enabling businesses to focus on every process that leads up to the last line of communication. To summarize, setting yourself up for success in 2024 will involve using the capabilities of your CCM platform to optimize every operation, create a collaborative workforce, and deliver a consistent CX every time.