Five events when technology makes all the difference for your business

Many consumers today use multiple devices and channels to communicate, and they expect to be able to engage with brands wherever they go.  Yet some consumers are still more comfortable with print communications, or some combination of both print and electronic. It’s up to a business to maximise customer engagement by ensuring the central message never changes even if the medium does.

That's the heart of the challenge every business faces in crafting and sending their messages using technology. They need to constantly make adjustments to their existing technology, without scrapping the core systems they already have, or investing hundreds of thousands in entirely new platforms. This “customer experience management” shouldn’t cost a lot, although its value can be considered priceless.

Here are five times in the life of every business when a transition to a new way of working creates friction between new and old technology, and when having the right solution to address this challenge makes all the difference.

1. A Branding Change

Whenever a company rebrands, its new logos and colour schemes generate fresh energy and, hopefully, excitement among customers. On the other side of the coin, even changing something as simple as a logo on an invoice could cost thousands of dollars and take months to do – all your existing collateral needs to be revamped to reflect your new image. And for the purposes of brand consistency, it needs to be done in one fell swoop – that's where technology comes into play.

2. Transition from Print

Even though delivery of bills, invoices and statements is faster and cheaper when it’s done digitally, your customers still want a mix of both printed and electronic communication. Online payments have surged; yet, according to a Keep Me Posted report, 76% of respondents would prefer a mixture of online and paper communication. Businesses focused on customer centricity are shifting now from all print to a hybrid combination; it's important they have the technology in place to enable that shift, while still allowing for consistency in messaging across both print and digital channels.

3. Improving Customer Service

Let's stay on the printed communications example. The goal of what are often called “transactional” mailings, such as invoices or statements, is to get a customer to take an action, whether that's paying a bill, opting into (or out of) a particular service or updating contact information. But what if that information is difficult or impossible to find on the document? Sometimes, you may need to make changes to font, layout, design or colour to better direct your customer's attention to where it needs to go. Technology allows you to make these changes quickly, enhancing customer engagement through better designs, without needing to invest a lot of money into core platforms.

4. A Change in Workflow

Sometimes the trigger event for new technology is just to improve operations and workflow generally. The problem is, not all technology plays nice with existing systems. Say you add a flashy new printer to your workflow. It works perfectly, except it doesn’t properly synchronise with your core software platform, and can’t print at its fully rated speed. You would basically need a translator to make the whole operation work as smoothly as it once did. That's something you need to know beforehand, to avoid any problems.

5. Business Interruptions

Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. It's the core element of every business continuity plan, and it's saved many a business that would have otherwise been stopped in its tracks by everything from bad weather to a cyberattack. Technology that stays running – or that has fail-safes in the event it doesn't – is going to keep your client-facing communications going no matter what. Your business, and your customer centricity, can’t stop just because your printer did.

Pitney Bowes provides a host of customer engagement technologies to help you collect revenue and drive your business. Click here to check out our high performance mail finishing solutions.