Volly

Shifting the View to 3D: The Future of Customer Communications

Posted by Chuck Cordray on December 12, 2011 in Consumers, Mailers

It’s hard to ignore the changes taking place in the communications environment. Today consumers receive and send messages via a whole new set of tools. Consumers can surf the web on the road, use apps to make their lives easier, and the choice of devices – from mobile to tablet – is endless. As businesses race to understand and adapt to the new normal, the role of traditional communications, including mail, remains critical for seamless interaction with their audiences and maintaining the trust of their customers.

For consumers who are not yet up to speed on the myriad of channels available to receive communications from their favorite and most trusted brands or customers who choose to continue doing business the traditional way, it is important to remember to integrate while you innovate. Earlier this year, we announced the Volly™ secure digital delivery service. This innovative service is designed to take the experience of traditional mailing – a familiarity some consumers don’t want to leave behind – and bring it into the digital age via an online platform available via desktop, tablet and Smartphone. Right now, Pitney Bowes is working with mailers and service bureaus to meet the demand for change in the industry while still maintaining the brand integrity of their customers and confidence of consumers that modernizing their interactions with businesses can be done easily, effectively and best of all … for free.

We believe that there are three key factors for generating a true shift in the way consumers behave and conduct their daily lives and personal business. In digital mail delivery, these are density, distribution and delight – or the 3Ds.

Viewing Change in 3D

1. Density
Density is key. It’s the difference between going to your online account and seeing nothing but a welcome note and instead seeing a full array of mail with most of your critical bills and statements all in one place. As a company with a 90+ year legacy in the mail and postal industry and current relationships with three-quarters of high-volume mailers across U.S., Pitney Bowes is uniquely positioned to deliver density in digital mail. Thirty large-volume mailers and service bureaus have already seized the opportunity to provide this innovative solution to their customers, with many more on the way. The Volly™ secure digital delivery service fully integrates into mailers’ print streams in multiple places, allowing mailers to integrate their physical and digital mail into one comprehensive and efficient stream.

Building density to create an experience that consumers really use and depend on can only be done with trust— trust not only between solution provider and mailer, but also trust between consumer and mailer. It is imperative to guarantee the integrity of the mailer’s brand digital delivery. At Pitney Bowes, our Volly™ secure digital delivery service was purposefully designed so that it supports the mailer’s brand while offering a new, powerful channel for customer communications. Brands control their messaging, and consumers control their chosen senders, creating a powerful, interactive marketplace.

2. Distribution
Distribution, having the product be widely adopted in the market is first and foremost linked to a compelling experience and significant density of mail. Distribution will be further supported by co-marketing activities with our rapidly expanding partner network, and through our digital marketing efforts.

3. Delight
Pitney Bowes is in it for the long-term — to change the future of communications– and to make the Volly™ secure digital delivery service a compelling experience for mailers and consumers alike. Creating the best consumer experience is categorized as delight. High-volume mailers in the U.S. understand the cost efficiencies of transitioning to digital, yet few consumers have gone paperless. Despite the fact that broadband in the U.S. is ubiquitous, only 10 to 15 percent of people receive their bills and statements digitally. Why the gap?

Everything comes back to density and convenience. Few consumers will create the user names and passwords for each vendor — dozens for most households – to let an aggregation site “scrape” website content. For the brands, those consumers are the ones they have fought hard to get to use their websites directly. The real challenge is to get consumers to adopt digital mail broadly, and that means secure access to lots of mail under one account. There are several new digital mail services out there, but Pitney Bowes wants consumers to have a compelling experience (not that empty mailbox scenario). In fact, today there are about 4,000 brands attached to the Volly™ secure digital delivery service. In addition to “filling the mailbox”, we have been iterating design and adding more social features and functionality to provide the best possible experience. We will not be another lemming racing off the cliff, launching something that doesn’t have enough mailbox density to be compelling to consumers. We’re racing to build the density in the industry that gives everyone – consumers and brands — a reason to join the revolution.

Tags: Consumer Change, customer communications, customer preferences, Digital