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Top 5 Trends in Customer Communications

With the promise of increased customer loyalty and wallet share, many companies seek to offer their customers a superior experience by combining the right content and channels at the right time. However, due to seemingly ever-changing customer preferences, attitudes, needs and behaviors, turning this vision into a reality can be a struggle.

To help our clients meet their goals and gain a competitive advantage, we hosted a recent webinar, “What’s Next in Customer Communications?”, with guest speaker Matt Swain from Keypoint Intelligence-InfoTrends. Matt is responsible for driving global research and consulting initiatives in the customer communications market.   

Matt shared research from the 2016 Annual State of the Transactional Communications Market Survey and revealed insights into the future of customer communications, including the top five trends that impact all industries. 

Top 5 trends in customer communications:

  1. Enterprise focus on improving the customer experience
  2. Disruption caused by technology and millennials
  3. Progress toward “frictionless” bill payments
  4. Chasing the omni-channel nirvana
  5. Accelerated shift to communications outsourcing 

In light of the top trend – improving the customer experience – companies are focused on enhancing their customer communications, specifically their essential communications, such as bills, statements, explanation of benefits, regulatory letters, etc. For example, some companies are adding color to their printed statements to improve the experience while others are applying sophisticated marketing techniques to their online bills, leveraging data and analytics. 

These previously overlooked touchpoints are creating opportunities for companies to communicate more effectively with customers. Considering customers spend more time reviewing essential communications than any other type of communication, there is a real opportunity for companies to leverage this existing asset.

Find out why 43% of companies say customer experience is their number one priority for their essential communications in this 3-minute video.

Companies can learn a lot about their customers based on how they engage with essential communications. For example, what are they opening? What are they clicking? What do they not care about? This information makes the next communication even more impactful – for both you and your customers.

Essential communications can also incorporate specific calls to action to influence behavior, including encouraging customers to go paperless, providing information proactively to reduce the number of calls into the call center and accelerating the speed of payments.

Your essential communications may be the only – and most powerful – touch point you have with your customers. How are you leveraging these communications to improve the customer experience?

Learn more about the top 5 trends by clicking here for the full webinar recording.