Using CCM to power smarter communications
We have previously talked about Customer Communications Management (CCM) and how it can benefit housing associations, but what can CCM offer in helping with customer engagement, tenant satisfaction, and increasing operational efficiencies?
Data is king, long live data!
Creating engaging and relevant communications, from the simplest letter or email through to more complex rent and service charge demands, requires data – often from more than one source. It may be your service charges come from one system, rent from another, and customer preferences are stored in a bespoke system with its own database. Bringing this data together in a single record for a tenant that can be used to drive communication and all its variations is no mean task and usually needs precious and scarce time from IT. CCM systems solve this by having a data integration capability that allows the combining of many data sources into a single customer “view” and further allows grouping, aggregation, and sorting. The fields in this “view” can not only be displayed in a communication but can also drive conditional formatting and content, further enhancing the messages.
Where there is data smoke, there is business fire
So, you’ve exported the data from your housing management platform into Excel but then a colleague remembers that a few schemes need “tweaking” and creates a formula that is used to display the periodic charge. However, unbeknownst to everyone, there is an error in this formula and now every tenant’s periodic charge is incorrect.
Fast forward a few weeks and the call centre is inundated with queries.
CCM tools can avert this by enforcing data validations and business rules, quarantining communications that are incorrect, and allowing the business to rectify the Excel error.
From template madness to content Nirvana
How many organisations either use the reporting facility of their housing management platform or use plain old Word mail merge to send out communications? Do you maintain dozens of templates that only differ by a few paragraphs or dread the impact of when your customer services email changes as part of your new brand drive? CCM systems solve template
proliferation by allowing the reuse of common content so when you need to change your customer services email, you only need to do it in one place for it to flow through all your communications. Additionally, conditional content can be easily incorporated using your shiny new data “view” to drive tailored language and content (why offer paying by direct debit if your tenant already pays that way?) so you can lose that network folder with your umpteen word variations. Best of all, little or no involvement is needed by IT.
Why can’t we send an email instead?
You’ve worked hard and captured tenants’ preferences for mailings and want to send an email to those who confirmed this preference. Alternatively, you want to add a flyer on rubbish collection but only to a certain segment of residents who it applies to? CCM systems come with a flexible process control engine that allows you to easily output to the channel of choice and including or excluding external content based on fields in your data “view”. You can achieve more complex tasks such as pushing copies of communications back to your document management system or even having manual approval steps so no document goes out with “hidden” errors.
The right tools for the job
Having the right tool to send out important and often regulatory information to residents can bring many benefits. While investing in a CCM platform is an option there are many aspects to consider and an alternative approach is to look at CCM managed service providers that offer an efficient way to improve customer experience and engagement, reduce call centre queries and leave you to spend more time dealing with the important stuff.
This article was featured in Housing Executive magazine, Issue 6, May ‘22, Page 10
