A Sponsored Article by eLoyalty, a TeleTech Company
A recent study by Gartner showed that, while 30% to 45% of customer interactions took place over a mobile device, only 2% to 6% of customer service requests were completed via a mobile device (“Improve Mobile Customer Service to Improve the Customer Experience,” May 2015). This gap highlights how businesses are failing to capitalize on their customers’ mobile device usage, and the wasted opportunity to engage with customers on channels they’re already using.
Making the need for a mobile strategy even more critical is the continued growth of mobile-only Internet users, currently at more than 11% of consumers, according to comScore’s Media Metrix Multi-Platform (March 2014–2015). Adding other factors, such as Google algorithm updates where sites’ “mobile friendliness” determines websites’ rankings in search results (see “Finding More Mobile-Friendly Search Results,” Google Webmaster Central Blog, February 2015) and the public’s general impatience with companies that don’t “do” mobile, makes the case for having a mobile strategy in place all that more compelling.
To help you down the road of mobile-friendly customer experience, the following are some best practices for your organization’s mobile strategy:
1. Respect your mobile customers. With up to 45% of transactions taking place over mobile devices, you simply can’t ignore the mobile user or insist that they move to a desktop. Instead, your customers must be able to do everything on a mobile device that they would on a desktop—including self-help and customer service interactions, whether through your company’s app or a mobile web browser.
2. Deliver true crossfunctionality. If a customer determines that she needs to interact directly with a representative, she should not be forced to abandon her mobile transaction to call. Your mobile experience should allow for the smooth escalation of interactions, including the ability to one-touch contact a company expert, through chat or voice.
3. Provide persistence of conversations. Your mobile customer must be able to continue her interaction with you across digital channels with content maintained. For example, if a banking customer is filling out a mortgage application on her tablet and has a question about interest rates, she shouldn’t have to start a conversation with a representative asking her name and the reason for the contact. Contextual information about the user such as profile, online activity and geolocation must be relayed to the to the contact center for context-based routing, allowing for specialized call treatment in keeping with the transaction already begun on her mobile device.
4. Capture sales at the point of contact. As your customers browse your products, instant access to a representative by voice or chat allows for recommendations of products and services while they are actively shopping, providing opportunities for upsell and reducing customer abandonment.
5. Consider enhanced features. Immersive video, live assist collaboration, co-browse, and representatives able to see and control the customer’s screen to highlight key information and push content provide a more meaningful and engaging customer experience. Having a representative as a partner in a transaction creates intimacy of shared experience: a personal shopper helping you pick out the right product, a financial advisor aiding in the choice of a stock portfolio, a health insurance agent assisting with a claims dispute.
While the transition to a mobile strategy can be daunting, it doesn’t have to be costly or difficult. Mobile solutions should be able to reuse existing contact center and collaboration infrastructure, devices and programming logic, simply adding to and enhancing current customer engagement strategies. The case for making the jump can be found in these of parting statistics:
- 11.3% of consumers are mobile-only users
- (comScore, April 2015);
- mobile platforms account for 60% of total digital media time spent (comScore, June 2015);
- 75% of consumers think companies should make answers to all their common questions available via smartphones (Symantex);
- 63% of companies view mobile customer service as a competitive differentiator (ICMI).
While having a robust mobile solution is a competitive advantage, not having one can be a death sentence—no company can ignore its customers 60% of the time and expect to be in business long.