In Three Ways to Use CCM Metrics, Analytics to Improve Customer Experience, one of the three methods I mentioned was multichannel contextualization:

Unless you’re a brand-spanking-new startup, your organization almost certainly has legacy software. By “legacy,” we mean previously acquired and now outdated – any software that was purchased when business requirements and market dynamics were different than they are today.

All companies have two topline objectives, regardless of industry, size or business model: revenue growth and profitability. So the metrics that companies gather for any business function, including customer communications management (CCM), usually speak to one or both of these. Profitability usually gets translated to CCM in terms of operational efficiency. The goal is simply to spend less generating, distributing and tracking communications. Since customer service call centers are usually the most costly way to deliver customer service, there’s a lot of sensitivity around call center volume, resolution rates, cost per touch, etc. So companies work to deflect the need for customers to use the call center through methods such as customer self service portals and improved customer communications.

Cloud-based software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions appeal to many enterprises. Most companies are either looking for software they can access through a web browser and/or they want to subscribe to or “rent” their software for a monthly fee. How an organization pays for its software is often a function of their CFO’s preference — for example, to capitalize the purchase of software for EBITDA reasons, or treat it as a monthly operating expense for cash flow reasons. Why an organization uses and where it manages its software, however, come down to line of business and IT requirements.

When building out a customer experience management (CXM or CEM) architecture, you will need to address marketing, commerce and service functions. With the right allocation of resources, you will be able to provide a rich, consistent and deeply personalized customer experience at every stage of the customer lifecycle and across each touchpoint. To do this, you need to determine how, not whether, you will be sharing data and content across your digital experience (DX) platform.

This is the fourth in a four-part series exploring in more detail the ideas presented in Four Surprising Pitfalls in the Way of Great Customer Experience. Be sure to read Part 1: Process v. Project, Part 2: Prioritizing Tactics and Part 3: Sharing the Investment if you haven’t already.