Customer communication management (CCM) provides companies with one of the most integral bridges between your business and your customers. As such, there are many benefits to going digital and implementing a CCM platform to assist your business, including the reduction of time and costs as well as the creation of personalized, targeted content.

Companies like GetResponse and Mailchimp regularly benchmark their customers’ email and social marketing campaigns. The results show a steady increase in mobile (smartphone and tablet) content consumption.

Customer experience (CX) has been gaining traction; it’s now much more than just a buzzword and it now requires your immediate attention. Whether you are an insurance firm, a bank, or any other type of business that interacts with people, the customer’s journey plays an extremely important role for attracting and retaining customer base.

In customer communications management (CCM), we talk a lot about customer experience (CX) and the business leaders who are tasked with improving CX. We’ve seen a growing trend in some industries to create a CXO, or chief experience officer, to facilitate customer experience improvements throughout the customer’s journey – including, of course, the need for great CCM as a major part of CX strategy.

In the just-published Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management Systems, Q1 2015 report, analyst Ted Schadler discusses the role of web content management (WCM) systems in a customer journey. He lists the many tools and channels involved in managing customers' digital experiences in this graphic:

This year was a banner year for Topdown as well as for customer experience management (CXM) and customer communications management (CCM or DOCCM). What follows is a recap of some of the major milestones in our industry, along with our take on what they collectively mean.