What is CCM? Understanding Customer Communications Management Software

Customer communications is a general term that refers to many different types of communications across all industries and sectors. Payment confirmations, appointment reminders, account statements, direct marketing emails, invoices, and correspondence about an account can all fall under the label of “customer communications”. That’s why it can sometimes be challenging for people to determine whether Customer Communications Management Software, aka CCM software, is right for their particular requirement and need.

Sites like G2 add to the confusion by using a broad definition of CCM, grouping together tools that don’t align with how the industry defines Customer Communications Management software.

What is Customer Communications Management (CCM) Software?

Customer Communications Management (CCM) software is a well-established and well-defined software market segment that grew out of the document composition solutions targeting print communications in the 1990s. CCM has been the subject of industry analyst reviews and forecasts since the early 2000s.

The tech industry analyst firm, Forrester, defines CCM software as:

Software used to compose, format, personalize, and distribute content to support physical and electronic customer communications and improve the customer experience. CCM software supports content types such as letterhead, invoices, correspondence, marketing materials, policies, statements, and welcome kits.

Most often the communications managed in CCM solutions are complex in nature. They are outbound communications that are highly personalized, containing personal account or transaction data, text, and graphics that vary according to demographic (such as region) or product or customer profiles. These communications might be produced in batch jobs—such as monthly billing cycles—or triggered on demand, like a claims status update.

In addition, these solutions can support sales, customer service, and support teams that need to provide personalized communications to an individual, leveraging a common template.

Today’s CCM platforms empower organizations to send communications and content across a variety of channels, including:

• Print and mail
• Email
• SMS/text messaging
• Web portals
• Mobile apps
• Chat and interactive experiences

Why CCM Software Matters

CCM software manages mission-critical communications and information, particularly for organizations operating in regulated industries like financial services, insurance, healthcare, and utilities. The selection of the right CCM solution supports several strategic initiatives including:

1. Enhanced customer experiences

CCM Software enables consistent, relevant communications tailored to individual preferences and needs—driving higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. AI is also leveraged to support sentiment, reading levels, and translation for increased customer understanding and communication effectiveness.

2. Operational efficiency

Modern CCM platforms offer several capabilities, including putting communications management in the hands of business users and intelligent approaches to content management to reduce manual effort and accelerate time-to-market.

3. Regulatory compliance

For regulated industries, CCM software ensures that required disclosures, disclaimers, and brand standards are appropriately and accurately applied where required.

4. Digital transformation and omnichannel accuracy

Whether a customer receives a printed statement, an email, or link to a Web page, CCM Software ensures accuracy of information and consistency in messaging and branding.

Key capabilities of a modern CCM platform

CCM solutions have been in the market for decades, and it isn’t unusual to find some organizations relying on outdated solutions that no longer meet the needs of a modern workforce or customer base. These legacy systems require IT intervention for content, data and rules updates; have outdated approaches to content and template management; and provide limited options for digital channel support.

Modern CCM solutions offer significant advancements for both the user experience and customer experience.

• Content management approaches that enable efficient updates and reuse across touchpoints and channels (central templates, components, and rules)
• AI for sentiment, plain language, reading level optimization, and translations
• Business-user led content, data, and rules management
• Variation management and template reuse to reduce the number of touchpoints under management
• Data integration (from core management systems like customer relationship management (CRM) systems and policy administration platforms)
• Rules-based personalization and content targeting
• Multichannel communications support
• APIs for supporting headless content management
• Approval workflows and audit trails
• Integrated QA capabilities
• Analytics and reporting

How Messagepoint powers intelligent CCM

Today’s customer experience extends across both the physical and digital realms. While other CCM Software vendors still rely on old-school approaches built for printed documents, Messagepoint’s cloud-based, no-code platform provides intelligent content management across all channels.

Only Messagepoint leverages a unique modular approach to content management that enables our customers to manage content in reusable components. This means content isn’t locked in a single document or template but instead is easily used and reused in both dynamically generated composed communications and via headless APIs in any modern digital endpoint, including messaging and mobile apps, web pages, or chatbots.

Intelligent content control

Messagepoint’s intelligent content hub eliminates the need to duplicate and redundantly manage content across individual document templates and different systems to support customer experiences across multiple channels. When content needs to be edited, Messagepoint enables business users to make the change once and have the update instantly appear across all related touchpoints and channels – ensuring speed, consistency, and compliance.

The leader in AI-powered CCM Software

Messagepoint has pioneered the use of AI for customer communications with a focus on helping customers streamline the processes of content migration, optimization, and translation. As the first CCM solution to integrate AI, Messagepoint leads the market in our ability to accelerate content optimization processes while taking advantage of enterprise-grade security and controls.

Gain independence from your print vendors

As organizations seek to accelerate time to market, reduce costs, and efficiently manage communications across print and digital channels, the old operating model of farming out communications management to print service providers no longer works. Messagepoint enables organizations to take back control of their communications with a cloud-based approach that creates optionality in managing vendor relationships. This allows teams to centrally control content and timelines of communications across all channels and the freedom to choose the right partners.

Messagepoint is an award-winning CCM solution that is recognized as a leader by industry analysts covering the space, including IDC, Aspire, QKS, and Celent.

Final Thoughts on Customer Communications Management

CCM is more than just document generation—it’s a core function of your customer experience strategy. As customers expect more personalized and seamless interactions across channels, having a modern, intelligent CCM solution becomes essential.