Customer Communications Blog

To say the modern customer is mercurial may be an obvious overstatement. While many companies may have little understanding of what their customer really wants from them today, far too many have much less awareness of what their customers expect tomorrow.

Customers are usually quick to let you (and the world) know when you’ve done something wrong. Most are less inclined to reach out with praise. Recently, one of our oldest customers, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSFL, also known as Florida Blue) sent us some feedback that we just have to share.

Using Master Data Management to Close Gaps in Customer Experience Gartner defines master data management (MDM) as “a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies and chart of accounts.” Basically, it means linking all data sources into a single master file that provides a common point of reference.

Managing Data for Unknown Prospects Versus Known Customers Enterprise data management (EDM) refers to how organizations define, integrate and retrieve data. The goal is to have clean and consistent data that is easy to access and results in smooth transactions across technologies and business functions. As anyone who works with data knows, this is far easier said than done. The main reason for the difficulty is data silos, which result from data being gathered, stored, and perhaps managed by different departments for different purposes. And when databases are developed in isolation from each other, it becomes a challenge to consolidate and map their data centrally for use across business functions.

Rockville, Md.—Topdown®, the leading provider of customer correspondence and document automation software, announced today the company has formed a private group on LinkedIn called Customer Experience Architects. Customer experience architects include Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Information Officers, and other business leaders responsible for customer experience (CX) strategy, customer communications, and related information systems. 

The following is an excerpt from an article published by loyalty360 and written by John Zimmerer. So many technology purchases are being made in the name of “customer experience” (CX) that the projected growth in CX market size is astronomical. CX is clearly a huge and growing piece of many companies’ budgets, so decision-making in this area is getting more and more attention among business leaders and analysts alike. According to many of the analysts I speak with, companies often struggle with these three challenges in particular: