Crisis triggers great innovation - the bygone year was the steppingstone which jerked businesses out of their comfort zone, forcing them to adopt digital transformation to tide over adversities and drive profitability.

"We have covered a "decade in days" when it comes to adoption of digital" - McKinsey & Company

With remote connectivity, social distancing and online purchase becoming the next normal, experts predict that the year 2021 will trigger changes in lifestyle, customer behavior and preferences.

Today, organizations not only face an empowered and tech-savvy customer but also one that is cautious, concerned, engaged and not very loyal. Positioning and formulating a robust CCM and CXM strategy for brands in 2021 would require mapping the evolving customer behavior and requirements, customer inhibitions and spending pattern, which is constantly been reshaped by the ongoing pandemic.

According to McKinsey & Company's COVID-19 Consumer Pulse Survey, most retail companies have seen an addition of more than 10 percent to their existing customer base during the pandemic and will continue to shop online even in the post-COVID world.

The survey also found that more than 75% of consumers in China and USA tried new shopping methods and these trends are to shape consumer habits in the next normal.

Below are a few key differentiators which will make or break your brand’s CCM and CXM strategy in 2021:

1. Automated and Conditional Messaging

Customer behavior, preferences and priorities stand altered in the new normal. However, normalization of any such effect in the next normal still needs to be rightfully awaited. Customer behavior and expectations from brands in terms of purchasing, banking, learning and education, travel or healthcare still follows a volatile pattern.

In the current dynamics, brands need to orchestrate an automated and conditional customer communication system to ensure stability in their CCM and CXM strategy. A rule-based conditional messaging will ensure that any potential change in customer preference can be catered with a dynamic rule authoring for triggering automated messages.

2. Proactive Customer Response Management

Customer experience will emerge as a competitive differentiator, this was quite apparent in the pre-COVID scenario as brands were not competing simply on price and product but on meeting the elevated customer experience expectation of modern customer. COVID-19 pandemic is simply acting as the catalyst to accelerate the delivery of such experience transformation by brands.

The next normal awaits digital leaders that are responsive and proactive in handling customer response and core critical support. Real-time analytics, NLP, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies will aid brands in the next normal in designing an automated response management that can cater to customer query in real-time and prevent any fall out in the post COVID dynamics.

3. Digital Transformation for Contactless Transactional Communication

Post-COVID customer behavior reflects the attitude towards self-service, low or no contact and digital modes of transactional communication. However, print-based and in-person engagement still remains a crucial mode of transactional communication for multitude of businesses globally.

The challenge in the next normal is not about eliminating these modes of transactional communication but reducing it to the level that elevates both the experiences of customer and meets their expectation by leveraging digital-first, cloud-first and API integrations to create digital systems that can address these challenges especially in the BFSI and insurance domain.

4. Customer Experience Management During the Transition

Customer centricity will continue to remain a focus of every brand trying to position their CCM and CXM strategy for success in the next normal. From omnichannel demands of today’s tech-savvy customers to deployment of disruptive technologies including ML, AI, NLP, Cloud and IoT to personalized and contextual communication, every brand today has a renewed thrust towards incorporating customer experience as the primary business strategy and sole competitive differentiator.

Demand and supply dynamics will be shaped by the way brands respond to changing customer behavior with an intuitive and responsive customer communication. The next normal is still to arrive and brands that will be able to deliver to the expectations of the customer during this transition, with behavior-centric communication and omnichannel delivery of personalized products and services, will have the edge and emerge as leaders in the next normal.

The time is to ensure that your CXM and CCM strategies are aligned in the direction of present needs, attitude and behaviors of your customer that truly smoothen their journey with you and elevated their experience during their transition to the next normal.

Espire is a digital and CX transformation expert -is enabling leading banking and financial institutions, as well as insurance companies worldwide, to take complete charge of the complex customer journey. Our extensive capabilities in customer communication management and global partnership with CCM leaders have helped global businesses overcome challenges they face in various stages of their CCM strategy, such as pre-processing, document composition, post-processing, production set-up & post-production and communication delivery. Contact us at marketing@espire.com for any query and do subscribe to our blogs for latest updates and trends.