​Effective customer communication is critical in the success of any organization.  Without it, you can expect to lose business, revenue and wallet share.

Organizations that utilize high volumes of customer communications – like banks and credit unions – are at a unique advantage and can leverage business-critical documents to connect with and drive customers to a specific goal.  In order to effectively reach your customers, it is essential to give them information they want, when they want it, and the way they want it. Here are the top 5 features customers expect from your business-critical communications:

1. Consistency
Zendesk says 87% of customers think brands should put more effort into providing a consistent customer communication experience. This is especially true in the way people receive their financial communications. When customers view information, they want it to be the same as it was last time, and the same as it will be next time, so they aren’t constantly searching for the information they’re looking for.
To accomplish this, format your documents using a template that includes designated space for branding, summary tables and transactional information. Documents with consistent formatting not only increase readability, by placing logos and branding in the same area will increase brand recognition.

2. Accessibility 
To make the customer experience truly exceptional, make things as easy as possible.  Customers know how they want to receive and access information.  Your ePresentment should be mobile responsive, user friendly and functional, with all documents available through a single platform, easily logged into from any interface. Take the guess work out of finding information and your customers will thank you!

3. Unique Engagement
62% of millennials report that brand engagement is more likely to make them a loyal customer, according to USC Dornsife. Customers want an experience that is unique to their individual preferences. To maximize engagement, make sure your your documents are consistently formatted and optimized for readability, easily accessible through any platform or channel, and personalized to each individual. 

4. Solutions to problems
Customers wanting solutions to their problems is the driving force that has made Google into what it is today: The #1 search engine for people looking for answers.

Providing solutions in transactional documents and customer communications is actually much easier than it sounds. You can use customer transactional data to target them with specific offers compatible with services they already utilize. Sending personalized marketing (in the form of affiliate ads or cross-selling and upselling) to individuals who, based on previous habits, will have an interest in or need for that particular service provides them with answers to their questions, and solutions to their problems.

3. Self-service
​Organizations should ensure that customers are able to find answers to their questions using an assortment of self-service options, as 50% of customers think it is important to solve product or service issues themselves and 70% expect a company’s website to include a self-service application. Make the most of your customer communications by adding self-service website links to both print and electronic documents. This will not negate the need for customer service calls, but it will reduce call center volumes AND make your customers happier because they satisfy their need to find answers to their questions on their own.

Contact us today to discover how transactional document solutions can strengthen your customer-base, discover new revenue and cut operating costs.

The electronic marketing world is constantly evolving. Ten to fifteen years ago, electronic marketing could be equated to the wild-west frontier. Opportunities were abundant, and the presence of constant white noise surrounding consumers was nowhere near the volume it is now. According to Statistic Brain, the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds, meaning it has become increasingly difficult to effectively reach customers. It’s safe to say that the game has changed drastically as many businesses have upped their electronic marketing efforts in hopes of cutting through the clutter.
 
This is where personalized marketing comes into play. Seventy-three percent of consumers prefer to do business with brands that use personal information to make their shopping experiences more relevant, according to Digital Trends. When done correctly, using personalized marketing in your digital and print business-critical documents can help you effectively reach your customers and yield a high ROI. In addition to offsetting production costs, personalized document marketing can help create a better customer experience by delivering content unique to an individual’s specific needs. The best part? There are no additional costs because your customer documents are already being delivered. 
 
Before we discuss electronic document marketing applications, let’s talk about print for a minute. We know you have probably seen the Internet argument over whether or not print is dying, and while digital has taken precedence in reaching consumers, it is wise to not underestimate the power of print. Not only are print documents still required for compliance reasons in finance and billing, but many consumers opt to receive all of their documents in both print and electronic formats. According to a recent survey, more than six in 10 consumers say they would not choose a provider that does not offer paper bills and statements, and 88% want to be able to switch between electronic and paper bills without difficulty or cost.
 
With the right capabilities and tools such as inline inserts and dynamic messaging, you can effectively personalize and segment marketing on print documents, and even make changes right before a production run. The one-two punch comes in when you maximize your electronic document marketing to complement the print version.
 
Electronic documents offer more real-time marketing capabilities than print because they provide added interactivity and instant access. Here are three applications to enhance your personalized and segmented electronic document marketing:

1.  Push marketing technology – Present a marketing page to customers as they sign on to access their home banking account. This can include promotions, inserts or any document you want to ensure the account holder views as they sign in.
2. Digital onserts - Utilize workflows and business rules to segment your electronic customers and target groups with particular offers that will be most beneficial to the individual. Digital onserts are clickable, which provides instant access to promotions for the customer, and a faster way to drive customer behavior for your business.
3.   Multichannel expanded hyperlinks - Include links to webpages and offers from directly within eDocuments, and route them to any device: desktop, mobile phone, or tablet. The interactive links provide your electronic customers easy and instant access to the promotional content in the messages.
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The benefits of personalized marketing on electronic documents are enormous to both customers and your business. Maximize the capabilities of your electronic document marketing in tangent to print documents, and you’ll start seeing a significantly improved ROI.

For the past decade, moving to paperless communications has been at the forefront of most organizations’ minds. Not only is electronic delivery a customer expectation, it also benefits your business’ bottom line. In fact, a recent study estimates that moving from paper to electronic delivery of certain documents could reduce costs of producing communications by 36 percent. While it is not a new concept, the challenge still exists in accelerating eAdoption. Here are three secrets to driving paperless customer communications:

1.Provide Consistency in Electronic Document Formatting
Many third party software packages generally provide a rudimentary print layout of a document for use electronic use, thus creating a stale, unfriendly document that does not match the printed, often legal, version.  This creates customer reluctance in moving to electronic delivery because the same document presented in different formats for print and electronic can be confusing.

A successful electronic conversion includes providing an exact replica electronically that is offered in print and mail. A very important reason to offer online statements in the same format as printed is to provide the institution’s customers with a true legal document online rather than a home banking transaction printout. Because most customers require a legal version of their documents in the event of a loan application or tax audit, offering the statement in the same format will encourage eAdoption.

2.Rethink Print Default
Many organizations still have print documents as the default option on new accounts. When customers are not made aware that they can make the switch to paperless, they assume print and mail is what will serve them best. For statements and other documents that aren’t necessarily required to be sent via snail mail, a good option is to set electronic delivery as the default option on new accounts.

“When we switched cores in 2009, we made a big push toward eAdoption on new accounts opened by setting the default statement option to electronic,” said Sandy Gaskamp, Operations Support Manager at University Federal Credit Union. “We now have an 86% eAdoption rate with over 205,000 members, and they all seem to be enjoying the advantages of going paperless.” This not only enhances the customer experience, but also saves on print production and postage costs. In order to meet regulatory stands, be sure to communicate the default option with new account holders so they can verify it as the option they desire.

3.Offer More Outside of Online Banking
Online banking has been widely implemented in financial institutions to provide customers with easier access to accounts in order to alleviate traditional in-person transactions and decrease print and mail costs. However, due to the lack of eAdoption, the ROI on online banking platforms alone has not been as high as originally anticipated. Typically, it is difficult to convert non-transactional customers to electronic documents due to the perception that they do not need to access online banking to manage a daily balance or transfer money. Translation: One cannot live by online banking alone.

Your business’ website coupled with a mobile-responsive ePresentment platform can work wonders for eAdoption rates. If an electronic document can be accessed and viewed securely from your website without going through online banking, the potential audience for eStatements and other electronic documents increases beyond online banking users because customers then do not have to remember a login or sign up for online banking in order to switch to digital document delivery. By providing a direct access point to electronic documents, the overall customer experience is heightened. Additionally, if you are being charged by your provider for each online banking user, the users who opt out of paper documents through ePresentment are less costly.

Customers also desire a central location to access all account documents including notices, loan coupons and tax forms. If your business can support electronic documents, including eStatements, eNotices, eLoan Coupons and eTax Forms, your customer  has the option to receive all communications electronically, which is a win-win scenario.

Conclusion
By giving your customers the opportunity to access more of their documents online, you can begin the conversion toward providing total comprehensive electronic services. It is important to remember that the customer is looking for at least as much value as they receive from a printed document.

To read more strategies on driving paperless communication, access our white paper.