According to research, customer satisfaction and experience are the top priorities of customer service leaders. However, with consumer expectations at an all-time high, managers say they need more hours in the day to address these matters. Poor organization and a whirlwind of complex tools translate into inconsistency in customer care and growing frustration at both ends of customer relationships.

Enter customer communications management (CCM) and tools for handling customer conversations across channels. Leveraging its capabilities ensures brand consistency, fast issue resolution, time savings and happy customers.

Let's dive deeper into why your company needs a solid customer communication management solution and how to make the best of it once you have one.

What is customer communication management (CCM)?

CCM, short for customer communication management, encompasses everything related to creating, improving, sending, storing and accessing client conversations.

If you've been running a company for some time now, you probably know that these interactions can take place pretty much anywhere – from email and SMS texts to websites and social media. You're likely also familiar with how frustrating it is to juggle all those channel threads effectively. The good news is that CCM solutions aim to unify all those communications, making it easier to stay on top of all conversations while improving your brand voice and reputation.

Why is customer communication management important?

Here's why you need inbound and outbound communications management, in a nutshell:

• Improved customer experience: CCM solutions let businesses tailor the customer communication strategy to individual preferences and behaviors. This promotes customer loyalty by making them feel understood and valued. Automations ensure clients receive timely confirmations, reminders and notifications about upcoming maintenance schedules or issues. You can also easily enrich the customer experience with interactive elements that improve engagement and satisfaction.
• Consistency across channels: When you handle all your inbound and outbound customer communications from one place, it's much easier to focus on consistent messaging, reinforcing your brand identity. CCM solutions can pull your updated company information from an integrated system, improving customer relationships by minimizing errors and making you look more reliable.
• Competitive advantage: Providing consistently superior service makes customers more likely to recommend your services. A smart CCM system can keep clients more engaged with personalized communications and offers, differentiating you from less proactive and responsive competitors. Plus, most such tools analyze how customers interact with your company. These invaluable deep insights into customer behavior, preferences and trends are the best way to anticipate needs and grow your business accordingly.
• Higher efficiency: Reduced manual work means minimizing errors and freeing up your staff's working hours for more creative tasks. When you automate repetitive customer issue-solving, you're better prepared to handle large ticket volumes, whether at peak periods or as you scale up.
• Cost savings: Before you ask – no, good CCM tools aren't free, but they help you make more money than you spend. We mentioned that implementing CCM software saves time which, in business, is also saving money. You're essentially minimizing the (often costly) error risk, missed conversations (which can lead to customer loss) and operational time. Plus, your team can devote more of their time to high-value activities.
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Digital customer communication management: 7 best practices

Use customer data to personalize communication

You're likely already sitting on a data goldmine – your customers' contact details and past interactions. According to McKinsey & Company, using them for personalized communications "can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5-15% and increase marketing ROI by 10-30%."

Technology like CRM and CCM tools, website analytics or social media statistics can help you leverage data points about your customer's preferences and behavior to provide communication and content most relevant to your audience. The information you can use includes:

• Demographics
• Contact information
• Purchase history
• Browsing behavior
• Engagement levels
• Previous interactions and feedback
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You can specify customer segments based on demographic factors or purchase behaviors, going off what you gathered. Use direct communication, including names and specifics, that make customers feel valued and individual. However, you can even go beyond that and use things like:

• Product recommendations based on browsing history or past purchases
• Abandoned cart reminders
• Reorder notifications for products that require periodic replenishment
• Discounts and promotions relevant to interests
• Exclusive deals for birthdays, anniversaries etc., as loyalty rewards
• Triggered communication based on actions or milestones (welcomes, thank-you's, follow-ups, re-engagement etc.)
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CCM solutions with reporting functionalities show you how customers respond to your messaging. This gives even more valuable insights for your customer service team to adjust the tone or content, doubling down on what drives the most engagement.

Adopt an omnichannel approach

There are so many communication channels it's hard to wrap your head around them. These include:

• WhatsApp
• Instagram
• Google Business Reviews
• Facebook
• Messenger
• Apple Messages for Business
• Google Business Messages
• Viber
• Web Chat
• Email
• SMS
• Phone calls
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With questions and feedback pouring in from different sources, it's nearly impossible not to overlook something – and that causes frustration or even missing out on valuable leads.

Luckily, you can connect the various channels you're juggling into one central location. Choose a tool that's easy to use from the get-go, making data migration easy. Check out our guide on the strategies for adopting an omnichannel customer support system.

An omnichannel approach facilitates one clear communication strategy and insight into all conversations across sources. This also minimizes the tendency to get trapped in departmental silos, a frequent scenario for companies where different teams handle web pages, email campaigns and social media posts.

Make use of conversational AI

It's no surprise that AI is gaining momentum and popularity, as it can outperform human agents in many aspects. Its conversational capabilities, speech analysis and machine learning capacities provide smart, streamlined, human-like interactions, all while saving your customer service team time. Our recent study showed that AI bots improve conversion rates, ticket resolution time and resolution success rates.

AI tools can assist in:

• Initial greetings
• FAQs
• Transactional confirmations
• Troubleshooting
• Finding and fixing customer pain points
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Such technology can analyze customer data to deliver personalized communication and nurture leads through the sales funnel. It's not only faster than a human, but also available 24/7. Another advantage is that you set it up once and can count on consistent tone, style and accurate information. AI learns from past interactions, growing more effective with every use.

Create smooth bot/human handoffs

That being said, AI can't handle everything. The main situation types that require human intervention include complex, sensitive or high-value interactions. Establish trigger points for handoffs – these can include:

• Frustration signals
• Keywords indicating complex issues
• An interaction number limit without the bot reaching a resolution
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You can have AI create a conversation summary with all the key points touched upon until the handoff point. This saves time, making the transition smoother and more pleasant for both – the customer and service staff. They shouldn't have to repeat any information.

People are more informed than ever and expect honest treatment. Consider notifying customers when they're being transferred to a human agent with a message like: "I’m transferring you to a customer service representative who can better assist you with this issue."

Make it easy for your clients and leads to request a human agent at any point. Include visible options like a "Talk to a human" button in the chat. Use intelligent, skill-based routing to transfer the conversation to the most appropriate staff member best equipped to handle the situation. Assign priority levels to issue types so the most pressing matters get handled smoothly.

Draft automated responses

90% of customers require an immediate response (below 10 minutes) to their queries. Automation (paired with AI and integration of multiple communication channels) lets you achieve that result. You can't expect it from overworked service representatives handling data entry, finding relevant information and writing relevant, timely follow-ups from scratch.

Take the time to set up a standardized approach to handling all your customer conversations. Map out the typical customer journey and create a winning strategic communication workflow. Here are some things to include:

• Define your brand voice
• Establish your objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Decide what tone would suit your customers best
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Set up templates for personalized communications, especially topics that come up often. This will save you time in the long run. We also recommend creating a self-serve knowledge base for your customers – 70% of consumers use it at some point in their customer journey.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again – an omnichannel approach to CCM is gold. Be proactive by combining automatic in-app notifications, transactional emails, SMS messaging and post-purchase surveys to make customers feel taken care of.

Categorize conversations

We touched upon segmentation and analytics briefly, now let's explain how to do it. First, define conversation categories which could be things like:

• General inquiries
• Technical support
• Billing and payment
• Order status
• Feedback and complaints
• Sales and promotions
• Account management
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Some CCM solutions include automated tagging capabilities that use advanced machine learning and natural language processing to sort conversations based on keywords, context and priority.

This is necessary for increasing customer service productivity by identifying the nature of inquiries more quickly and providing more accurate responses while reducing waiting times. It also helps in the smart allocation of issues to the right departments.

Additionally, it's worth analyzing the volumes of each category. For example, a prevailing number of technical queries may mean you need to redesign your product to make it more intuitive.

Choose the best CCM tool

One way to easily tie it all together is with a CCM solution that includes features for everything we mentioned above. It should be easy to use, cloud-based, with a low learning curve and integration capabilities that let you connect it to all your communication channels and other tools for CRM or analytics. When dealing with large volumes of personal information, you might want to look into GDPR compliance and other data protection laws.

We don't mean to brag, but Glassix is the customer communications management solution that has it all. Our customers' results speak for themselves:

• -28% operational costs
• 12x faster response time
• 33% higher customer satisfaction score
• -23% average issue resolution time
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Let us explain how we make these numbers possible.

How can Glassix help with your customer communication management?

Glassix is the top-rated customer support and messaging platform. Our AI-powered inbox for unified communication helps you drive customer engagement and satisfaction with highly personalized communications wherever your customers are. Use it to streamline communication workflows and deploy smart chatbots anywhere you need with just one click.

Here's a list of the main features you get with the Glassix digital customer communication management system:

• Complete, unified, omnichannel inbox: Glassix is a truly omnichannel software solution for customer service; it gives you access to one centralized hub consolidating messaging from 15+ sources, including WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, social media, email and even SMS, without losing any data in the conversation history. You can even switch between sources with a single click in the unified view.
• Conversational AI platform: Our advanced Chat GPT-4 integration gives your customers a more human-like interaction while saving you time.
• Auto-suggested replies: Your agents can monitor chatbot conversations in real time and take over whenever necessary (or vice versa, with the smooth human-to-bot handoff feature for handling repetitive queries). Glassix gives suggestions even in human interactions, helping you deliver fast and relevant information.
• Automatic tagging: Our engine categorizes and groups customer conversations, facilitating better organization and prioritization.
• Conversation routing engine: Glassix lets you dynamically assign conversations to the best-qualified agents with customizable routing rules.
• Drag-and-drop chatbot flow builder: The intuitive, visual, no-code interface lets you easily set up automated responses and interactions, ready for quick deployment.
• One-click conversation summaries: Generate overviews of customer communications for a quick recap, enabling valuable follow-ups on customer issues.
• Real-time reporting and business insights: You get a customizable dashboard with up-to-date information and report scheduling, all in the familiar Excel interface. This lets you stay on top of customer journey insights and uncover trends before they unfold.
• Integrations: Connect Glassix to your CRM, e-commerce, sales, social media or analytics platform for deeper customer insights. You can also build any app you need inside our tool or embed it within other software solutions.
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We created a platform that goes beyond the needs of business users. Tech-savvy teams can customize and build within Glassix to make their own solutions on top of our software. This unique feature gives you the creative freedom to take your customer communication management to the next level, with pricing that doesn't punish you for growing your message volumes.

Needless to say, Glassix is GDPR and SOC 2 compliant, providing you with a relentlessly secure service.

Ready to transform your customer communication management?

One thing's clear – the right customer communication management technology makes fostering customer relationships easier. From conversation automation to advanced personalization, modern CCM solutions make everything faster, more accurate and cost-effective.

Glassix is the customer service communication management tool, standing out with the highest ratings and user satisfaction levels. It's one of the few truly omnichannel solutions that lets you freely switch between channels and access conversation history across all sources. Our suite of AI-powered functionalities empowers teams to elevate their customer support and outrun competition.

See for yourself – get started with a 30-day free trial.

FAQs

What is the difference between CRM and CCM?

CRM is customer relationship management, whereas CCM is customer communication management. The difference is that CRM manages the entire customer lifecycle, whereas CCM mainly focuses on managing outbound customer communication. They both aim to improve relationships, retain customers and drive sales growth.

What are CCM tools?

CCM solutions help companies create personalized communications, deliver messaging and manage customer interactions across channels. Their primary aim is to ensure that conversations are consistent, timely and relevant. How many types of CCM are there? There are four main types of CCM technologies: Automated Document Factory Customer Communications Business Automation Omni-Channel Orchestration Some experts differentiate a fifth – Multi-channel distribution

What is CCM automation?

CCM automation uses the technology available to streamline customer communications management. The goal is to make this process as efficient, consistent and effective as possible. It's possible with modern CCM software like Glassix and AI implementation.