Keeping up with changing disclosure mandates, privacy laws, security regulations and other compliance requirements for customer billing statements and letters is a real high-wire act for many organizations, especially in heavily regulated sectors such as healthcare, financial services and collections.
A CCM Software Solution Can Help
Complicating matters, the rules can vary by industry and by state and they often must be applied equally to print, digital and social media communications. Plus, penalties for noncompliance can be severe. No wonder ensuring accurate and timely compliance updates to customer statements, letters, reminders and other correspondence can seem nearly as challenging as crossing a tightrope without a net.
You can ditch the compliance tightrope with customer communications management technology. CCM software makes it fast and easy to manage the entire communications lifecycle from initial draft to delivery. That’s especially true for compliance changes.
Leveraging CCM for compliance best practices
Take control. With a Customer Communications Management platform, companies don’t have to rely on outside printers or other vendors to coordinate changes. There’s no more creating the updated document, having IT send the file to the printer, waiting for a sample from the vendor, then (assuming no mistakes so you don’t have to repeat the process) routing it for internal and client approvals. Phew.
With CCM software, you can make the changes yourself in a matter of minutes instead of weeks using the old back and forth approach. Internal reviews are administered and documented right in the system. When applicable, you can send the updated document to your client the same day for their signoff.
Make it modular. A CCM platform enables companies to create blocks of content that map to different documents, emails and text messages. Once you’ve created your templates and populated your content library with these content modules, any change you make in a content block will automatically be updated in all pertinent documents.
Customize compliance. Internal document management systems often don’t allow dynamic matching of a customer’s address to disclosures for a specific state. To cover their bases, companies include all mandated disclosures for the states in which they operate to all customers. For one of our clients before it moved to Nordis’ Expresso CCM platform, printing disclosures for 14 states on 1.7 million letters a year, added up to lots of wasted paper and expense!
CCM tools eliminate the need for these blanket disclosures that are mostly not relevant and possibly confusing and annoying to customers. Companies can create and manage custom data tables that automatically inserts the appropriate state disclosures.
Create a compliance trail. CCM solutions offer an audit function so companies can track changes and approvals over time to different documents and/or content blocks, including which users made which changes. In addition, some CCM software offers an archive feature that lets companies set parameters for storing customer communications, including by customer, by document type and for a certain time period. In the event of an audit, lawsuit or regulatory agency request, they can simply input a customer identification number and retrieve every communication sent to that customer.
Given how important and how difficult it is to remain compliant, growing numbers of companies are adopting CCM software. They simplify and streamline the entire process, improving accuracy and turnaround times for updates and, as a result, enhance customer service. They are the key for successfully managing the complexity and pace of change in compliance requirements.
About the Author
Rich leads Nordis Technologies’ sales and client relations teams and is responsible for revenue growth and client retention. He’s been integral to the company’s fast growth, doubling sales since 2010, and playing a key role in developing new products including ExpressoPay, ExpressoVote and ExpressoArchive. An expert in communications management, financial engagement, production execution and cost optimization, Rich uses his experience to assist customers dramatically improve their communications and payments operations and achieve key objectives. He is a member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association.