For years we’ve been hearing about the new and growing problem of “information overload.” The latest report has consumers absorbing an average of 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes a day. But there’s a significant shift in this year’s results that organizations need to acknowledge and respond to; it marks a sea change in how customers are getting information.

What’s different? And how do we apply this to communicating with customers?

The difference in the latest results is a striking change in how we’re getting that information. In the past, most of the information was absorbed passively. A customer sat in front of a TV or a radio and watched or listened, or perhaps read a book, magazine or newspaper. Today with computers and the Internet we’re seeing the beginning of a dramatic reversal in that trend – a higher percentage of a customer’s daily information load is being picked up interactively, with the customer an active participant in the process, including guiding it in direction they want based on the choices offered. The newest results show that 27% of a consumer’s daily information comes from a computer; only 9% from print. Reading, which had been in decline, is also rising again due to the Internet. This shift from passively receiving only what information is presented (with the possible exception of selecting a new channel) to actively interacting with and choosing what information they want to consume offers a huge opportunity for organizations to more effectively target their multi-channel communications to customers.

How can we take advantage of this shift in planning our customer communications projects for 2010? How can we keep customer attention amongst 34 GB per day?

As customers become more accustomed to interactive communication instead of passive, multi-channel communications will quickly emerge as the only effective means to capture and keep customer’s attention. Hardcopy statements will still stay in that print-based 9% and still be one of the most read customer communications, but it will require a tightly coordinated effort to keep the customer’s attention starting with hardcopy and going into more interactive communications. To get and keep the customer’s attention, you must provide them information interactively.

Organizations need to focus on two critical issues: interactivity and inter-channel consistency. As customers become accustomed to receiving more and more of their daily information interactively, they will expect the organizations they do business with to do so as well. Certainly, you may have an interactive web site but the customer has to get there. But how do your transaction statements drive interactivity? What new opportunities will you provide for a customer to interact with your organization? How do you attract and maintain interest? For example, a small but rising percentage of the information consumed comes via games. How do you structure your communications to where they resemble a game, catching your customer’s interest and maintaining it to yield a cross-product sale or product upgrade?

Interactivity must reach across channels, especially the electronic channels – PCs, laptops, phones, PDAs. But maintaining consistency between all these channels is also a critical requirement. If a customer sees an interesting offer while reading their hardcopy statement, but can’t find that offer on your web site, you’ve lost the sale and annoyed a customer. Likewise, if a customer requests to see their balance on their phone, can you, in real-time, create and display an offer for another service they might be interested in (or perhaps know what offer they qualified for when you created their hardcopy statement, and use it)? And have the offer you display on their phone match what they then browse on your web site when they use a laptop?

So as our customers move into 2010 daily absorbing their 34GB, think about what it will take for your multi-channel customer communications to catch and keep their attention.

What can you implement this year to meet the information overload challenge?

Stephen D. Poe, EDP, is a principal and CEO of Nautilus Solutions and is a respected expert in enterprise software product development and management, especially within the transaction document and Transpromo communities. Contact him at sdpoe@nautilussolutions.com or visit him at http://www.nautilussolutions.com  or http://www.linkedin.com/in/sdpoe  for more information.