Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Varolii CEO Nicholas Tiliacos said that last year 90 trillion emails were sent, and of those, 80 percent were spam. In addition, he and others cited a recent Harris Interactive poll that says customers on average receive more than 50 messages a day through various channels. And 75 percent of consumers will simply ignore the message if it is not relevant. However, if a communication is personalized, relevant, convenient, and offers a way to interact, 96 percent of consumers will take action.

Tiliacos likened the situation to a "communications arms race, and your customer relationships are at stake." He said to overcome communication fatigue, companies need to provide communications that have intelligence about the customer and the company. "At the end of the day we're communicating with individuals," he said. And they want interactions that are relevant and respectful, convenient, conversational, and give the consumer some level of control. He explained that companies need to be smart in their communications with customers by:

1. Understanding and acting on individual behavior by updating individual preferences based on real-time behavior analysis.

2. Creating a two-way conversation with customers that allow customers to interact with messages instead of just sending one-way alerts.

3. Creating a cross-channel strategy so customers can seamlessly move from one communications channel to another.

Going one step further, Varolii Executive Vice President of Field Operations Jeffrey Read outlined four potential communication pitfalls and what companies can do about them.

1. Mobility - As an increasingly mobile society, we are becoming more demanding, harder to find, and more fickle, Read says. What's more, consumer behavior on a mobile phone is different than that of a landline. According to Read, companies on average see an 80-percent higher answer rate on weekdays on outbound calls if they call a customer's mobile phone rather than a landline. Companies need to understand the differences among their customer base and act accordingly.

2. Channel Convergence on Smart Phones - Consumers have many options with their phones these days - voice, email, text, Web. But many companies still rely on voice calls. Yet Varolii research found that for most consumers, texts outnumber voice calls by two to one. In addition, many customers will use multiple channels when responding to a message from their phone, yet Read says many companies cannot handle cross-channel integration.

3. Self-service versus agent interaction - Traditional wisdom says that customers prefer talking to a real person. But a recent report from Accenture says that 2010 will be the "tipping point" as more people will choose self-service options over dealing with an agent. "We're seeing a shift in how customers use communications channels," Read says. Companies must be ready to serve customers in a variety of ways.

4. Automation that isn't smart. Just because you can send out a million automated notifications doesn't mean you should. "It's not about doing more, it's about doing the right communications," Read says. For companies using automation, he recommends measuring success by the final result, not the cost per message. The shift toward quality over quantity is happening.

The goal, the executives say, is to move a company toward "mass personalization" by applying technology to distinguish the differences between individuals and treating them differently. Where have I heard that before? It looks like technology is finally catching up to the one-to-one concept.