Customer Communications
At SSI we know that the most crucial aspect of communicating with existing customers is getting the data right. Nothing makes a company look more inept than addressing customers incorrectly or trying to sell them something they already have or don’t need. Even worse, sending letters or invoices to outdated or incorrect addresses is a waste of time and budget and can reduce your ROI significantly.
For example, we know that for many businesses, the customer base is quite mobile and, therefore, new customer information is often incorrect or incomplete. For that reason, accessing current and correct address information to update your business records is vital. Otherwise, all your customer communications – bills, statements, and notices – could repeatedly be mailed to the wrong address. Sales drop off, cash flow suffers, and thousands of dollars are wasted on communications that are never received.
SSI has a proven system of address updating that can dramatically lower your cost per communication. When combined with our Return Mail Management System (RMMS), we can help you spend less to reach more customers.
In addition, communicating with existing customers often must include regulatory compliance. Privacy notices, notices of rate or other types of changes, and customer service issues are just a few of the specialized communications in which SSI excels. We understand the need for accuracy, timeliness, security, and confidentiality.
Case Study:
Watch What You’re Mailing, Know Where Your Customers Are, and Quit Wasting Money!
Our client, a Fortune 500 company, was communicating account information to both businesses and individuals daily. This seemed to make sense until SSI audited the data and found two troubling problems that the customer didn’t know existed.
First, many customers were getting multiple letters (in separate envelopes), sometimes as many as ten a day! Each letter contained exactly the same information, but regarding different accounts. Each letter cost our client 68¢ in postage, paper stock, and processing fees.
SSI created a process that summarized each customer’s information and listed all relevant account numbers in a single letter, with no additional programming by our client’s IT department. Mailing twice a week allowed for even more consolidation and greater savings.
The savings amounted to approximately 15% of our client’s total budget, saving them over $20,000 per quarter.
SSI also found a second problem that involved updating customer addresses.
Approximately 13% of our client’s customers had either moved or given a bad or incomplete address. This is especially significant if a company is mailing multiple letters to the same customer (like an on-going retention program) or communicating something that requires immediate customer response (like warranty registration, collection letters or notifications).
By updating our client’s addresses, we ensured that the right customers received the right information on time, the first time. In addition, we were able to identify customers that needed special attention, such as a phone call, to correct their information before – not after – multiple letters or invoices had been sent to the wrong address.