Your Complete Customer Communications Management (CCM) Platform

CCM is often used for transactional communications with sensitive financial data and personally identifiable information that companies must safeguard, such as billing statements, payment reminders, and explanations of benefits. These communications also include regulatory and legal disclosures and other compliance customer correspondence, including validation notices, adverse action letters and annual privacy policies.

CCM is applied to additional types of customer communications, including HOA governance and election documents, welcome kits and sales and marketing materials.

Catering to preferences for any combination of print and mail, email and/or text messaging is important for improving customer experience and meeting customer expectations, especially for billing and other payments-related communications.  More than 75% of consumers want to choose which channels businesses use to communicate with them, reported Keypoint Intelligence, but omnichannel customer communications aren’t always available.

One out of 4 consumers isn’t offered any electronic billing options, according to InvoiceCloud’s The State of Online Payments. Yet ACI Speedpay Pulse consumer research on billing preferences found an overwhelming majority wanted omnichannel choices:

• 60% of consumers wanted electronic statements
• 25% wanted a combination of paper and digital
• 16% wanted paper

A CCM platform is a cloud-based software solution that enables organizations to create, deliver, and manage customer communications. Top must-have features:

• Client control of platform and process
• Omnichannel and personalization capabilities via print, email, text, mobile
• Automation
• Scalability
• Customizable
• Client-specified customer service, ranging from self-service to full service
• Documentation history, from first draft through archiving and real-time document access for customer service and online presentment
• Reporting and analytics
• Robust security and compliance measures, including SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA for healthcare communications
• Easy integration with print and mail fulfillment, electronic bill presentment and payments, CRM and other systems

CCM technology is the centerpiece of a strategic approach to customer communications. It enables companies to transform what’s traditionally been treated as routine outreach through generic bills to personalized experiences that improve engagement, payments and loyalty.

• Greater control and flexibility for managing and adapting communications in response to changing business conditions and customer preferences
• Better customer experience and engagement, due to more personalized and effective interactions, leading to more on-time payments and increased loyalty/repeat business
• Improved employee experience and productivity with simple streamlined process
• Increased operating efficiency through digital transformation and high degree of automation
• Enhanced compliance
• Stronger data security

Billers and loan servicers of all sizes use CCM, including high-volume mailers and companies that operate in highly regulated industries. In addition, CCM platforms are essential for enterprises communicating with consumers/owners/patients at various stages of the customer journey or over time, including HOAs and timeshare companies that send vacation offers, reservation confirmations, owners surveys, and much more.

Industries that use CCM include:

Auto finance

Credit and collections

Consumer financial services

Healthcare

Insurance

Mortgage

Property management

Utilities

Vacation ownership

A CX-focused strategy for customer communications fosters superior personalized experiences:

• Eliminating silos for consistent branding and customer experiences across interactions.
• Omnichannel delivery drives engagement.
• Catering to consumers’ growing preference for digital. In its 2024 communications and CX research, global CCM market research firm Aspire found that 55% of North American consumers prefer digital-only delivery. Aspire research also revealed that for the first time, a generation of consumers, Gen Z (18 to 26-year-olds) named mobile as their preferred communication channel.
• Personalization at scale. Gone are the days of generic one-size-fits-all messages. CCM platforms allow companies to leverage customer data to tailor communications based on individual preferences and history, strengthening a sense of connection.
• Actionable content. CCM goes beyond simply delivering static information. It allows businesses to embed interactive elements within transactional messages, such as a “one-click” payment option. Interactive elements remove steps, encouraging customers to take immediate action and streamlining the overall experience.

Some CCM solutions integrate the ability to develop and manage communications with digital and print production and delivery. Combining development and distribution of omnichannel communications on a single system simplifies managing different communication types—print, email, text—and delivery channels. It improves security because personal customer information isn’t shared with multiple vendors, provides significant ease of use for employees and delivers substantial operating efficiencies.

Importantly, the integration can enable and accelerate strategic changes such as adopting a digital-first approach to transactional communications. Some complete solutions make it simple to automate a waterfall of communications for customers. For example, a company may first arrange to send emailed billing statements, but if they bounce or remain unopened for a set number of days, the system automatically prints and mails a paper copy.

While customers see consumer billing and payments as part of the same interaction, behind the scenes, companies often operate two separate systems that don’t easily integrate or share information or processes. That makes it harder to meet customer expectations for consistency, personalization and seamlessness across company touchpoints.

Some companies offer both CCM and EBPP platforms with easy integration. This unified approach removes steps for customers, such as including a payment link in an emailed statement or QR code to the payment portal on a mailed paper statement. It also simplifies bill presentment, with the online payment system linking to the CCM platform to present on demand the customer’s actual bill or other documents in the payment portal.

Operationally, the combined systems streamline managing the entire cycle of billing and payments.

Expresso, Nordis’ scalable and secure patented cloud CCM platform, has long provided leading omnichannel and personalization capabilities to drive better CX and engagement. Unlike most CCM point solutions, Expresso seamlessly integrates with Nordis’ email, text messaging and print production and mailing services for a complete solution from a single vendor. When further integrated with ExpressoPay®, Nordis’ electronic bill presentment and payments system, companies scan easily manage the entire cycle of billing and payments on one platform.

Please contact us for more information, or request a demo.