Customers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to interact with businesses. This mobile mind shift is happening faster than many businesses anticipated and enterprises need to keep pace with their mobile-centric customers and their competition. We asked some industry experts below their thoughts on the topic.
Tim Hall, Director, Online Customer Service and Sales, Sears
Mobile members add multiple facets to the business mix as they are a rapidly growing demographic whose behavior dictates specific targeting in the funnel and also requires providing the ability to move between voice, online and mobile channels easily. Simplicity for how mobile users receive, view and handle information ̶ such as through responsive design with mobile chat ̶ is critical. Providing a true omnichannel experience for mobile members to find support and then move seamlessly through the journey should be top of mind for businesses.
Dan Miller, Senior Analyst, Opus Research, Inc.
Flip the model! Think “C2B”, not “B2C,” when designing customer care and support solutions. Keep a conversation going with customers, by keeping “Device of Choice,” Channel-of-Choice,” and “Time of Choice” Top-of-Mind. Also remember that many “mobile” interactions originate from people using smartphones from the couch in the TV room. They are mobile in name only, but that’s their choice.
Kurt Marko, Editor-at-Large for Information Week and Network Computing
Mobile apps are today’s version of loyalty cards, only more versatile, interactive and engaging, making them far more valuable to both the business and its customers. Not only can mobile apps interact with customers anyplace, anytime, they provide situational context around communications and transactions which can be used to improve and tailor products, services and offers, which together produce a better customer experience. Indeed, as Starbucks demonstrates, apps are also a gateway to mobile commerce. Make sure you don’t end this year without giving customers a mobile app tied into backend data analytics.
Eric Krapf, Program Co-Chairman, Enterprise Connect/Editor, No Jitter
The first thing businesses need to do is understand the use cases in which their customers would want to interact with them via mobile. The case studies I’ve seen indicate that successful projects select a fairly narrow use case with a clear benefit — notification of some sort, or possibly SMS enablement. For the majority of businesses that are just beginning the process, these kinds of quick wins can build support for broader projects.
Daniel Hong, Senior Director of Product Marketing Strategy, [24]7
Businesses need to espouse the technologist ethos of constant creativity and innovation without being held back by the constraints of legacy infrastructure. Think outside the box first then connect the dots. The rate of change at which customers are accessing information and conducting transactions via mobile devices is astounding. The mobile mind shift is happening faster than many businesses anticipated and this means enterprises need to keep pace with their mobile-centric customers and their competition. Those businesses that “get it” treat mobile– not only as an interaction channel–but as the foundational layer to build multi-faceted engagement where customers and businesses can fully leverage smart device capabilities (to work in concert with existing channels) to transform the customer experience.
