Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

The Fine Art and Science of Outbound Customer Engagement

March 24, 2014

In outbound communication there’s a very fine line between informing customers and turning them against your brand with bothersome communication. It is for this reason that Aspect Software’s announcement of a new customer interaction solution while interesting does leave me a little wary.


Aspect bills the service as a completely cloud based, proactive communication suite that automates two way communication. Tested in limited markets, the suite is now generally available, and is designed to deliver on-time communication about moments relevant to the consumer’s interest.

That is where my questions come in. How does a system manager know what interests me at a given moment in time or why they believe they can accurately anticipate them? Truthfully, past behavior may be indicative of certain actions, but when it comes to a large majority of transactions they’re taking shots in the dark based on previous system feedback and hoping that consumer interest holds steady.

Aspect’s been growing of late and their President and GM of Interaction Management, Chris Koziol, seems to think they understand where consumer interest lies and this knowledge can be monetized. It is exactly what make me nervous.

Koziol stated, “Given how pervasive mobile internet has become, consumers' expectations regarding how, when and where they communicate with the brands they do business with is evolving. Consumers want companies to anticipate their needs and proactively take action to address that need, whether it's as simple as a utility company notifying its customers of a power outage to more sophisticated and personalized notifications.”

While I’d love it if my utility (or better yet cable) company notified me of an outage, past experience tells me that some small shop I only frequent twice a year is going to use the service to inundate me with updates on their summer sales. That’s the downside of outbound marketing; companies aren’t just bothering consumers once a month with paper mailers, they’re showing up in email three times a week. Nothing will get your potential shoppers to unsubscribe faster.

To be fair, many companies will be able to but Aspect’s outbound marketing and systems to great use, especially when executed wisely by their marketing team. Koziol also notes, “Brands need to adapt to the changing consumer environment. Aspect Proactive Engagement Suite helps companies drive, memorable, positive customer experiences while saving costs.” What that doesn’t mean is that the suite will solve marketing timing issues, which are still up to the company.

Aspect’s new service does provide interesting new automated operations and response capture capabilities that will reduce costs and provide actionable insights. These include:

  • Aspect Collect: Automated debt collection application designed to measurably increase payment rates and improve overall business efficiencies.
  • Aspect Survey:  Multi-channel, personalized survey solution to better understand consumer sentiment and follow up to avoid negative impacts.
  • Aspect Verify: Automated solution for monitoring, identifying, preventing and proactively notifying organizations and customers of potentially fraudulent transactions.

In addition customers can set up proactive engagement schedules using the suite’s integrated engagement platform.

I’ve worked in a contact center and I understand how annoyed users can be when they feel harassed. I also know that what one customer considers annoying another will consider timely information. It all comes down to their level of engagement and loyalty to the product. Aspect’s new solution gives managers more tools to anticipate and generate customer demand and improve operational efficiency and effectiveness. How much impact this will have on somebody like me who is spontaneous with many non-discretionary purchases will be interesting to see.




Edited by Peter Bernstein



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