By
Kim Martin
|
Date Published: May 28, 2013 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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Comments
This post originally appeared on
voxeo.com
in March, 2013.
To learn more about serving today’s mobile customer,
read Voxeo’s whitepaper
, Unified Self‑Service: Delivering on the Value of Multi‑Channel Customer Interactions.
Today’s customers are mobile, always connected and more demanding than ever. Consequently, there’s a steady increase in companies that recognize the need to serve and engage customers via their communication channel of choice – as well as the bottom-line savings and growth opportunities that come with this approach. However, embracing the evolutions through a contact center and communications strategy that serves the mobile customer is just the beginning. Effectively implementing such a strategy takes an understanding of how to build and manage customer relationships in an evolving, multi-dimensional communications landscape.
It’s not enough to simply give customers new ways to interact with your business. Customers expect a unified customer experience and superior service regardless of the communication channel. Here are 5 steps you can take now to successfully engage today’s mobile customers.
THINK MULTI-CHANNEL AND SIMPLIFY ACCESS TO INFORMATION.
A 2012 study by Pew Internet found that 46% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in May 2011. Companies must think beyond speech self-service to provide convenient, fast access to information via the customer’s preferred channel — which may include text, mobile web, mobile chat, social networks or smartphone apps. The ability to deliver a rich user experience regardless of the channel is becoming an important competitive advantage.
USE YOUR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE.
Just like traditional voice, all the various mobile channels, including self-service interactions, should integrate with existing Business Intelligence (BI) and CRM systems. Select a solution that doesn’t just pull real-time customer data, but will PUSH information gathered by self-service text, mobile web and social engagement applications back into your BI systems. This approach promotes consistent support while eliminating the frustration of customers having to reenter information when interacting with your business using various channels.
DYNAMICALLY PERSONALIZE INTERACTIONS.
Why present irrelevant self-service menus and outbound messages? Personalization streamlines customeraccess to information and improves loyalty. It also gives companies the ability to provide proactive service,meaningful promotions and timely up‑sell offers that are ideal for delivery via mobile channels like textand social networks. Personalization has traditionally been complex to deploy, but a multi‑channeldevelopment environment that integrates with your BI and CRM systems simplifies creation of personalizeddialogs that work with any channel.
USE ACTIONABLE, CROSS‑CHANNEL ANALYTICS.
Insist on real-time consolidated analytics across all of your traditional and mobile self‑service applications in order to identify issues and opportunities for improved service. Look for a tool that tracks multi‑channel user actions, automatically consolidates information from multiple sources, and allows reporting to be customized with application-specific data for a more complete view of your customer and the customer experience.
TAKE SELF-SERVICE TO THE CLOUD.
Is your contact center ready to serve customers via more channels, deliver proactive outbound support and manage a growing number of conversations that are taking place on social networks? Automated self‑service applications help companies scale their support for the mobile customer. Building and deploying these applications in the Cloud offers an easy, pay-as-you-go migration path to multichannel customer service. Consider providers that offer seamless support for cloud hosting and premise deployment so you can keep your options open or even leverage a hybrid solution.