I think you can add returnFormat="plain"
to your cffunction
.
plain: ensure that the return value is a type that ColdFusion can convert directly to a string, and return the string value without serialization. Valid types include all simple types, such as numbers, and XML objects. If the return value is a complex type, such as an array, or a binary value, ColdFusion generates an error. If you specify a returntype attribute, its value must be any, boolean, date, guid, numeric, string, uuid, variablename, or XML; otherwise, ColdFusion generates an error.
By default, ColdFusion serializes all return types (including simple return types), except XML, into WDDX format, and returns XML data as XML text.
That should give you just the string, which would be simpler to parse.
[source]