November 23, 2022

Customer Communications in BPM & its impact on the bottomline of Businesses

Efficient and automated business processes are the cornerstone of a successful business. Many Fortune 500 companies use enterprise-grade software such as Pega BPM, Appian BPM suite, Decisions BPM, etc., to fulfil their business process automation needs. These BPM software solutions streamline the complex business processes of companies through various automated business workflows involving multiple internal stakeholder teams.

Businesses can also measure the outcome of these workflows to assess the effectiveness of their business processes, all in one place. A business process management (BPM) software used by companies to manage their business processes also offers customer communication management (CCM) modules that can handle basic forms of customer communications.

Companies use these out-of-the-box customer communication modules because any business process leads to changes in the business’ offerings, and communications would be needed to be sent out in the market so that customers can understand these changes and adopt them.

Over time, as businesses measure the impact of good customer communications on their revenue, they tend to rely on the same modules added to the BPM software for customer communications. However, that is when they realise that there are some shortcomings in these modules that either limit their customer communication scope or diverts them towards further investments to keep these modules relevant to the market’s changing needs.

LIMITATIONS OF OUT-OF-THE-BOX CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION MODULES

These out-of-the-box customer communications modules have limited capabilities, which ultimately add to the overhead costs for businesses and negatively impact their bottom line.

These are some of the pain points in the out-of-the-box customer communications module in BPM software:

1. NO FLEXIBILITY

Out-of-the-box customer communication modules are built for basic usage. Any customizations on the content design and layout template require technical skills (such as knowledge of HTML/CSS) to reflect the changes into the final communication pieces.

As a result of this, these modules usually warrant the need for specialised technical resources. Moreover, beyond a certain level, they will also require the intervention of designers who can work on the changes in different designing tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

Moreover, the communications are dependent on the business owners because information cannot be decentralised and made shareable across teams through these modules. Hence, putting together a piece of content takes multiple iterations involving multiple people. This results in additional costs for businesses, as they’d have to invest in specifically skilled resources to fulfil the content creation, design, and formatting needs. In addition, the delay caused due to multiple iterations can hurt businesses, especially during scenarios when they need to reach out to their customers quickly. Such as a customer support incident or a seasonal sale event where large volumes of customer communications need to be well-timed and sent out.

2. LACKS BUSINESS-CRITICAL LOCALISATION FEATURES

Localisation is becoming increasingly significant in customer communications for businesses aiming to interact with customers across the globe.

Since English is not the language of preference for a large section of online customers, localised and personalised content is the key to customer engagement and retention success. Unfortunately, out-of-the-box customer communication modules in BPM software do not support localisation as it requires sophisticated technologies that can handle contextual data and tweak linguistic features of a content piece correctly.

Localisation also requires robust data privacy features, which few software solutions can support.

These are some primary reasons why most BPM software providers charge a lump sum of around 20% of their product cost for enabling different languages and localising content.

3. LIMITED SUPPORT FOR COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

Most BPM software support communication channels such as email, which has been traditionally available in the industry. For newer communication channels such as social media, push notifications, automated voice calls, AI chatbots, etc., these out-of-the-box customer communication modules require further integration with third-party tools that can integrate these channels into the existing BPM setup.

These tools are available from the marketplaces of BPM software and require additional monthly expenses. Furthermore, over time, dependency on such third-party tools increases, drastically increasing the monthly expense for businesses. This is because these third-party tools upgrade their systems to keep up with the evolving foundational technologies behind any communication channel, which might result in additional technical and infrastructural support.

4. HIGH SWITCHING/UPGRADE COSTS

Generally, BPM software providers ship upgrades frequently, once every few months. They add enhancements to existing features and also add new features altogether. During these upgrades, it gets tricky to lift and shift the content library of the out-of-the-box customer communication module to the upgraded environment.

It might require businesses to build their content library from scratch if they don’t adequately manage the migration process and end up having incidents such as data loss, data mismatch, delay in migration, etc. Moreover, in large sums, it could result in additional costs to maintain the customer communication module amidst a changing BPM ecosystem.

HOW DOES PERFECT DOC STUDIO SOLVE THESE BUSINESS PAIN POINTS?

These challenges demand a need for a single platform that can tightly integrate with any BPM software and unlock opportunities for superlative customer communication management in the most cost-effective way.

Perfect Doc Studio solves these challenges by providing the following:

1. FLEXIBILITY AROUND CONTENT CREATION

Perfect Doc Studio is built to be used in a business-friendly fashion so that any non-technical user who excels in customer communications can work on their communication content pieces without hesitation.

It supports customizations such that design and layout changes can be made in a matter of minutes, thus encouraging iterative processes such that time to market for customer communications stays low. In addition, it offers support to preview content pieces so businesses can simulate the communication journey and tweak the content per real-world requirements.

Such flexibilities and self-serviceable capabilities make Perfect Doc Studio highly desirable for product marketers of a business who focus on communication strategies but do not need to know about the underlying technology that can help execute their strategies.

2. EXCELLENT LOCALISATION CAPABILITIES

The capabilities supported by Perfect Doc Studio are built to personalise content at scale so that the same content piece can be contextually tweaked for different geographic locations. This is automation at its finest form, as sophisticated AI/ML models run behind the scenes to make localisation a success for any-sized business.

Data privacy is also handled by default, so businesses do not have to worry about the data of their user base being mishandled. At the same time, localisation algorithms work on data sets to modify content.

3. SUPPORT FOR ALL MAJOR COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

Perfect Doc Studio has native support for all major communication channels such as email, fax, printed letters, SMS, WhatsApp, and audio communication channels and provides seamless integrations of a BPM software with these channels.

Analytics are also available that can provide the effectiveness of customer communications across all channels. As a result, businesses can prioritise and focus on certain channels over the rest, ultimately easing the correspondence management aspects.

4. MIGRATION-FRIENDLY SETUP

As highlighted earlier, out-of-the-box customer communication modules can be a bottleneck for migration events. Perfect Doc Studio facilitates easy & automated migration of existing business communications, which means it is easy to transition when the BPM software is integrated. It is either upgraded to a new instance or off-boarded from the business in favour of a different BPM software.

Perfect Doc Studio is designed to keep the content library and the communication repository modular so that the same repository can be migrated and plugged into the different ecosystems with minimal entry point changes, thus removing the need for building everything from scratch.

Perfect Doc Studio is a great alternative customer communication management solution that integrates natively with BPM solutions. As a result, it cuts down all additional hidden costs, thus ultimately impacting the bottom line of a business. As one of the most cost-effective enterprise CCM solutions on the market, it helps you to grow your business and create a difference in the world.