Wooing Customers in a Weakened Economy

I recently met a friend of mine, a senior executive at a well-known financial services firm, and we soon found ourselves mulling over today’s tough business climate and the weakening U.S. economy. As veterans of this industry, we’ve weathered tough times before, but this time feels much different. Organizations today are fighting to win customers on a global basis, and have spent a small fortune on CRM implementations in an attempt to provide a better customer experience. However, these systems are not able to automate the numerous customer touch points in a consistent manner -- one that’s capable of leveraging and protecting their brand and providing a truly unique and informed customer experience. It's a missed opportunity and one that organizations are desperate to resolve.

Worse, customer’s expectations have grown to the point that they expect organizations to speak to them at “the audience of one” level and convey high quality communications at each and every touch-point. Companies like Amazon have excelled in personalizing the customer experience to the point that customers are now asking themselves, “If they can do it, why can’t you?”

Solutions such as dynamic enterprise publishing or “transpromotional” (TransPromo) marketing are earning a seat at the table for many organizations as it enables them to reduce costs and to increase revenue-enhancing activities. These offerings primarily focus on interactive content and transactional output capabilities with proactive marketing which allows an organization to maximize document white space, manage and leverage multi-channel distribution, combine content from multiple sources while creating interactive two way communications. Large companies are leveraging technology in order to provide the same level of service as the neighborhood mom and pop shop and are delivering personalized and customized customer communications in a process the analyst community call TransPromo.

The true power and ultimate value of TransPromo is its ability to integrate and manage communications across all channels to generate a unified and meaningful customer experience that meets regulation requirements. By creating a consolidated enterprise strategy that supports reusable content, organizations can achieve a meaningful customer relationship that translates into long term loyally and improved profitability across the enterprise. While streamlined processes and simplified support and infrastructure reduce operational costs, faster time to market, quicker response to changing conditions, and finer control of customer communications all increase revenue opportunities. Not a bad conversion rate considering today’s economy.

Chris Stone, is president and CEO of StreamServe, a global leader in dynamic document composition, management and delivery solutions. He can be reached at chris.stone@streamserve.com or visit the company at www.streamserve.com.