Effective customer communication is an essential part of customer experience and an important tool for gaining competitive advantage.

That is why customer communication plays a very important role in the strategic planning and management of the company. On the other hand, there are still companies, that haven't attached much importance to this are beginning to feel lagging in customer satisfaction and loyalty, but they also become less competitive due to slow time-to-market. This often results in higher operating costs.

Omnichannel and interactive communication, the basis of modern communication strategies, deliver significant business benefits. When designing, implementing and developing them, it is important to emphasize the involvement and acceptance of changes across the company.

Based on our experience with a number of successfully implemented projects, we have compiled a list of the most important steps for successful design and implementation of modern customer communication:

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• Vision and Strategy

Modern customer communication is a very complex issue, therefore it is necessary to adopt a specific vision and strategy. Knowledge of market-specific requirements is essential. It is also necessary to create a realistic implementation plan mapping the company's ability to effectively use the new strategy in practice.

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• Central control

Principal changes in communication with customers must be introduced from the top to the bottom of the company. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to involve the top management.

Put your efforts into implementing centralized customer communications management. This prevents separate departmental communication solutions. This diversification would most likely lead to a chaotic and heterogeneous communication style of the company. There would be unnecessary fragmentation of technologies, time losses and higher costs.

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• Omnichannel, Digital First

Customer communication needs to be designed as one complex unit. It is appropriate to give maximum attention on the use of digital forms of communication and the interconnection of channels on the principle of Omnichannel.

Therefore, build customer communication design interactively from the beginning or prepare the design to implement interactivity as soon as possible. 

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• One centralized solution and technology platform

Unify the design and management of customer document templates, electronic communications, and channel management within Omnichannel Communications into one central Customer Communication Management / Output Management solution.

Therefore, it is essential to focus on choosing the right technology. It must meet your current needs and in addition, it should be open for development in the future.

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• Costs

A higher share of digital communication brings significant cost savings.

Centralization and open technology platform brings cost savings on implementation reduces vendor lock-in.

Shifting the maximum responsibility directly to business users and minimizing IT involvement in document template design and management delivers not only competitive advantages in response to market needs, but also significantly reduces operating costs.

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• Partner for customer communication

Last but not least is the choice of a partner. Be aware that his knowledge and skills will affect your communication with customers in the coming years.

The ability of your partners to share their know-how in communicating with customers and the experience of successful projects and their application across disciplines is essential. These are then used in the development of the communication strategy, its implementation and development.

During the cooperation, of course, there should be maximum reliability, including subsequent operational support. Therefore, choose a partner who specializes in customer communication solutions and customer communication management solutions. In this case, extensive IT integrators and consultants do not work.

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 Read Case Study about our experience of a successfully implemented project in O2 Czech Republic

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