If your organization is sending communications only on paper, you can be sure a good number of your customers wish they could receive those documents electronically. If you are already providing customers with electronic versions of your paper documents, you know how difficult it is to keep up with rapid and fluid changes in customer preferences, communication technology, and regulations.
Businesses of all kinds are coming to grips with customer expectations fueled by a “Now Economy”. Almost none of those companies consider multi-channel document distribution their core mission. They’d rather be spending time delivering products and services, cultivating new leads, and improving the bottom line.
Consumers have clearly communicated how they want to interact with companies. They want more choices and they want control. The problem for companies is their systems and processes weren’t built to support that degree of flexibility. For decades, it was the companies that decided how information flowed back and forth between enterprises and customers. If customers were given choices at all, they were limited and manageable.
Things have changed.
Today, your customers may want to hear from you through email, fax, text, automated phone messaging, mobile apps, tablets, chat, social media, wearable technology, video, personal assistants like Amazon’s Echo, or their refrigerator door. And, oh yes, they still want some documents on paper. Tomorrow the list may be even longer.
Though it’s not really fair, studies have shown that customers expect small local companies to offer at least some of the same communication choices as large global enterprises. That’s a huge challenge.
Most organizations lack the budget dollars and internal expertise required to set up and maintain their own multi-channel and customer preference document distribution systems. With an eye on improving the customer experience, all companies would like to have the benefits of systems such as customer activity tracking, shortened payment cycles, and targeted marketing. They just don’t have the resources to pull it off.
That is why more companies are shutting down their internal customer communications operations and turning to trusted service providers that already have the expertise and processes in place to give customers what they want. Companies know that as new channels develop and technology advances, their customer communications partners will be better equipped to handle the challenges and can capitalize on new opportunities.
Communicating via electronic channels involves much more than sending customers a PDF via email or posting the documents to online portals. While those efforts might have satisfied customers several years ago, they are no longer enough. To heighten the customer experience, companies must develop or outsource new infrastructure elements. It requires maintenance to monitor deliverability and assess the effectiveness of the channels, systems to format messages according to the display properties of customer devices, and customer interfaces for stating and changing document delivery choices.
As the communications environment becomes more complex, companies like Shelton Connect are offering their clients a better way to stay in touch and meet their customer’s demands. Instead of absorbing the expense of deploying their own customer communications solutions (that may be obsolete in a few years), companies are turning to providers like Shelton Connect to handle the details for them.