Volly

Volly and Voltaire’s Vicissitude

Posted by Bernie Gracy on January 05, 2011 in Consumers, Mailers

“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms”

- Voltaire

Having spent more than a decade in the high volume transaction output industry, I have witnessed numerous waves of innovation, automation, and optimization in how businesses communicate to their customers and prospects.  These waves have levered information, document, IT, and production assets to streamline processes, wring out cost, improve integrity, refine targeting, increase relevance, and strengthen messaging in the never ending battle to optimize the customer/channel mix, lower the cost to serve, and yet maintain an ongoing profitable dialogue.

I have also witnessed how businesses have attempted to change the behavior of their customers to move to lower cost channels. With regards to e-messaging they have attempted to raise awareness of environmental benefits, offered improved record keeping, “secured” email, provided modest financial incentives, all the way to treating a mailpiece as a lottery ticket where the customer could win thousands in cash or a new car if they would only go paperless.

In both of these cases it has been business setting the terms of the relationship with the customer. However with the consumerization of IT, the ubiquity of broadband, and the explosive growth of smartphones and now tablet computers, the terms of the relationship are changing quickly.

A vicissitude is a sudden or unexpected change or shifts encountered in one’s life, activities, or surroundings. For high volume mailers, they should now take heed from the quote from Voltaire above. It is time to let customers define the terms of the conversation – yet at the same time not go broke in trying to manage the relationships with these newly empowered patrons.

Resolving this dichotomy was a core design principle of Volly – to create a level playing field for both mailers and consumers – what Gartner coined as the “mutually managed experience.” Consumers have been provided a platform and experience to opt-in, be alerted, receive, and manage content, payments, and opportunities when, where, and how they want. Mailers and other providers have been given an opportunity to securely send content to consumers via Volly at a substantially lower cost while levering their existing production, document, and information assets to make it happen.

Take a look at Volly. And get in the game…

Tags: automation, documents, e-messaging, high volume, innovation, payments, secure digitial delivery service, Volly