What Is Customer Communication Management? Explore CCM

Communication is the key that most of us never find.

Effective customer communication management goes a long way in determining various aspects of a business enterprise, from striking an initial chord with prospects, moving them across different journeys in the purchase process, and retaining them as repeat and loyal customers. 

The rise of digital communication replaced tardy, traditional communication methods and made customer communication the wonder it is today. But with the sudden increase in communication channels, chaos has reigned as quickly as it began to fade.

Organizations struggle to keep all of their inbound and outbound communications intact due to the lack of an appropriate framework or platform to localize conversations from multiple channels, creating a need for customer communications management (CCM) software.

Customer communications management is a pioneer in customer service that helps businesses connect, interact, and engage with customers to improve their overall experience. Today, most successful companies leverage the power of CCM to assess customer needs and behavior and use a data-driven approach for informed decision-making.

Benefits of customer communication management

CCM is a powerhouse of essential information needed to manage customer interactions. A well-designed customer communication management strategy enables companies to use CCM tools to get real-time insights and comprehensive views on their customers through smart analysis of recorded conversations. 

Below are some of the added benefits of using CCM software.

Personalize and automate communications

CCM platforms allow business users to personalize and automate customer interactions, helping them optimize company-wide communication systems and processes. Users can pull useful data from a CCM solution’s core system and use pre-defined templates to design a personalized CCM strategy that works for them and their customers. 

Customer communication management software also helps you monitor all exchanges on your preferred communication channels, find flaws by detecting specific communication patterns, and will even recommend ways to fix any issues. 

With CCM platforms, you can set up new templates, auto-responders, and other similar features to automate messaging. These solutions integrate customer data with conditional logic and use popular architectural styles like RESTful APIs to automate communications.

“The reality is that in today’s hyper-connected and hyper-competitive world, the key to winning people over lies in getting personal.”

Harper Lieblich
VP of Product of Deem, Inc.

Track and streamline customer engagements

You can’t streamline customer engagements unless you know how to track them. Miscommunication is a major deal-killer when using several communication channels simultaneously. It lowers employee morale, and in turn, reduces productivity and affects business efficiency. Customers simply want someone to communicate with them actively and respond promptly. 

CCM solutions come to the rescue by reducing the lead time and tracking all communications between customers and different departments in your organization, ensuring no conversation goes unnoticed. This ultimately streamlines the delivery of all communications and ensures that every engagement is taken into account. Happy employees produce happy customers and vice versa. 

Build customer relationships and improve customer experience

How businesses implement their customer communication management strategies has a direct impact on customer experience. The fundamental factor in any communication strategy is building good customer relationships, and the nature of these relationships determines the experience you deliver. 

A well-developed CCM strategy enables you to predict changing customer needs and expectations. The consumer landscape is constantly evolving and CCM prepares you for the unknown by giving you powerful insights into every aspect of customer communications, including:

• Personalized experiences
• Real-time content creation, management, and delivery
• Automated messaging
• Multi and cross-channel communications
• Interactive communications
• 24/7 customer service

A CCM strategy keeps the customer at the center. It helps businesses focus on delivering the right communication at the right time through the right channels. This, in turn, helps maximize conversations and improve customer loyalty, creating a seamless customer experience.

With the right CCM software and strategies, companies can bank on improved retention rates, reduced customer acquisition costs, and improved conversions - all due to increased customer satisfaction.

Strengthen digital transformation

With the advent of digital communication channels, many industries had to learn to adapt to the information age, also known as the digital age. Businesses now need to go where their customers are and communicate with them through their preferred methods of communication, which are more or less digital.

Most of this digital transformation was spearheaded by customer communications management. Industries such as banking and finance use digital channels for all customer communications, including managing customer accounts, providing customer service, and offering new plans or solutions. These industries benefit the most from CCM tools. 

Organizations with complex IT frameworks also use CCM tools to centralize customer communications on a single user interface (UI) and use data-driven insights to personalize cross-channel digital experiences.

Improve operational efficiency

The customer communication management platform provides many helpful resources for assessing your business needs and improving your processes.

All hopes are lost if you don’t ultimately improve internally, but companies often fail to recognize their internal communication flaws. This leads to misunderstandings and disrupted workflows, making systems slow and inefficient.

With CCM tools, you can automate processes to reduce the manual workload of your IT teams. Part of your content creation and distribution can also be automated to relieve marketers of manual creation and distribution stress. Effective communication helps align marketing, sales, customer service, and more.

Simply put, CCM improves cross-team interactions and provides a consolidated framework for various touchpoints. This lowers operating costs, promotes smooth communication, reduces inconsistencies and risks, and improves overall operational efficiency.

Customer communications management (CCM) vs. customer relationship management (CRM)

CCM and CRM are often confused because they both focus on customer interactions. However, the two have some inherent differences. CRM software, for example, has been around for a long time. CCM, on the other hand, is a relatively new concept.

Let’s look at some primary differences between CCM and CRM.

Customer communications management trends

Customer communication management solutions foster a smooth transition from miscommunication to great communication. This is accomplished through various capabilities that make CCM a viable option for all your communication needs. Let’s take a closer look at four top customer communications management trends.

1. Cloud-based CCM

Cloud-based CCM solutions are a great improvement compared to on-premise solutions, like legacy IT systems (outdated computing software, still in use), commonly used by banking and financial institutions. Cloud technology prevents the formation of data silos by integrating data on one platform. This ensures more data transparency throughout the organization. In addition, all uploaded data is backed up in real time, so you can restore lost or archived information.

Cloud-based CCM is a frontrunner in the digital transformation of customer communications. One of its best features is predictive analysis, which provides real-time insights from data sets and helps identify new business opportunities and ways to meet customer needs.

2. Content revision and delivery

CCM automation and personalization play an important role in helping companies create and deliver their content on demand. Integrated tools such as Exstream (from OpenText) help revise content, requiring little to no technical effort. 

First, CCM offers you a collection of predefined templates for personalized messaging (invoices, statements, or contracts) and with some advanced functionalities, helps you update and revise this content for reuse. Content authorship helps companies save the time and resources associated with belated manual content management.

3. Content analytics

Analyzing user behavior and trends isn’t an easy task. But with CCM solutions, understanding how your users or customers respond to your content is just as simple as it could be. 

CCM reporting tools analyze trends and patterns in customer interactions to generate valuable analytical insights. Customization becomes a lot easier when you know what is already working for you and your customers. Content analytics allow you to personalize your brand’s voice, helping you build customer relationships and improve the customer experience.

4. Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) 

Conversational AI is at the heart of CCM technology, aiding highly intelligent features such as intelligent virtual assistants (IVA) that provide human-like interactions. Speech and text recognition, intent development, and language translation are all products of AI-based CCM functionalities facilitating personalized and automated communications.

Top 5 customer communication management software

The entire concept of CCM is based on improving and advancing communications. CCM platforms make up the majority of customer communications solutions today. Regardless of size, any business has its fair share of scattered communication to contend with. Organizations can easily lean on suitable CCM software to help them with a standardized communication strategy in the form of a custom interface.

To be included in the customer communications management software list, a product must:

• Provide comprehensive records of every customer interaction and track inbound and outbound communications
• Unify contact records from multiple communications channels and allow the assignment of customer contact-related tasks to employees,
• Integrate with the company’s systems of record and engagement

*Below are the five leading CCM software solutions from G2's Fall 2024 Grid Report. Some reviews may be edited for clarity.

1. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk simplifies customer support across channels like email, chat, and social media. It includes features such as ticket management, automation, and reporting, helping teams deliver fast and effective service. With AI-powered tools, Zoho Desk enhances customer interactions and boosts service efficiency.

What users like best:

“Zoho Desk offers a clean, intuitive interface that makes navigation simple for both agents and customers. The dashboard provides a comprehensive view of ongoing tickets, performance metrics, and team workload. Customization options allow users to tailor the interface to their specific needs, making it user-friendly for teams of all sizes.”

- Zoho Desk Review, Ashwin Y.

What users dislike:

“Configuration takes a while. Although the solution is well prepared for exchanging information via API, configuring flow for users/departments is not the easiest. Online tutorials are helpful. The biggest work is required in translation, there is a lot to improve here so that users from non-English speaking countries can have full satisfaction”

- Zoho Desk Review, Antonina C.

2. Freshdesk

Freshdesk, developed by Freshworks, is a cloud-based customer service platform that enables businesses to manage customer communications across multiple channels. It offers self-service tools like knowledge bases, forums, and chatbots to support customer assistance. With features designed for scalability, Freshdesk caters to businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.

What users like best:

“We have been using Freshdesk for over two years; it is the main tool the Customer Solutions team uses every day. It has proven to be highly customizable and easy to integrate with the different applications we use in the company. Various automations are easy to create, even for non-technical personnel, and have helped my team become more efficient. Additionally, their customer service is very helpful and fast, making issue resolution effortless.”

- Freshdesk Review, Miglė R.

What users dislike:

“Reporting customization can be somewhat limited. The default reports are helpful, but creating highly tailored reports requires either advanced technical know-how or upgrading to more expensive tiers. Additionally, response time when using the platform can sometimes lag, especially when dealing with a large volume of tickets or when generating detailed reports. The mobile app also lacks some of the desktop version’s advanced functionalities, which can limit productivity for on-the-go support agents.”

- Freshdesk Review, David C.

3. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud streamlines support operations by centralizing inquiries across channels. With features such as case management, omni-channel routing, knowledge management, and analytics, it enhances productivity and customer satisfaction. Service Cloud supports automation, self-service, field service, and integrates seamlessly with Salesforce and third-party systems. Its mobile support enables service on the go, making it scalable and suitable for various industries seeking faster, personalized customer service.

What users like best:

“What I like best about Salesforce Service Cloud is its comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance customer support and service efficiency. The platform’s integration of AI-driven features, such as chatbots and automated workflows, streamlines case management and improves response times. Additionally, its centralized system provides a 360-degree view of customer interactions, allowing support teams to deliver personalized and consistent service. The flexibility for customization and integration with other Salesforce products further enhances its effectiveness in meeting diverse business needs.”

- Salesforce Service Cloud Review, Lili C.

What users dislike:

“It can be overwhelming to set up and configure, especially for advanced features like automation and AI. The user interface, though customizable, can feel cluttered and unintuitive at times. Additionally, the pricing structure can become expensive as you scale and add more features.”

- Salesforce Service Cloud Review, Jason H.

4. Front

Front is a pioneer when it comes to personalized and automated communication. It offers scalable, bespoke solutions that combine something as simple as an email platform with advanced CRM capabilities. 

What users like best:

“Front is super easy to use and allows teams to work together! We can keep track much easier and best of all, I can have several accounts connected so I can keep track of everything. The sequences are super useful to send notifications to customers and to capture even new leads. It is very easy to automate. The design is clean, modern and the fact that it has integrations with JIRA and many other apps makes everything thousand times easier. My clients are happy with how quickly we respond to their requests, and within the same email, we can discuss the next step to take. Everything has been streamlined.”

- Front Review, Paola M.

What users dislike:

“I find it hard to navigate through old emails that have been archived. Sometimes I need to check my archived emails to check on a quote that I sent a client. I don't particularly appreciate how people on my team like to hide their meeting titles. I would sometimes like to see if anyone on my team has met or spoke to a client already.”

- Front Review, Joey P.

5. Podium

With its interaction management platform, Podium leverages conversational intelligence to centralize messaging from various customer touch points.

Podium is covering solid ground in the customer communication management system space and redefining how customers interact with local businesses. It offers a wealth of functionalities, from collecting valuable reviews, text activation of websites with web chat, collecting payments via SMS, gathering private feedback, and making interacting with customers as easy as possible.

What users like best:

“As everyone knows, most customers will only seek out your business to leave a review if they had a negative experience. Customers talk, and angry customers speak loud. With Podium, all of our customers with a valid mobile number receive a link to leave us a review. We have a split where some are reviews and some are NPS. We also have a webchat on our website where we can have customers message in with questions.”

- Podium Review, Jennifer W.

What users dislike:

“I have only had one minor issue with Podium. Sometimes, as a service company, customers will want to send us a photo of what is going wrong in their home. I don't believe that Podium is equipped (yet) to receive those photos. Attachments are often lost. It isn't a huge deal, but I'm looking forward to that improvement.”

- Podium Review, Amelia S.

A robust CCM strategy is the only way in

Regardless of how you choose to communicate with your customers, creating a strategy in advance will always work in your favor. While CCM tools give you the right technology and show you the way you should be heading, it's up to you to decide how to use that technology to deliver the customer experience you want.

Communication technology can be vulnerable to infiltration. Use work communications surveillance and accountability to monitor unusual activities and safeguard against any threats.

This article was originally published in 2023. It has been updated with new information.