Johannesburg, 29 Jan 2015
"It takes just a split second when looking up to see at least one, but typically, many, people looking down at their smartphones, preoccupied with matters ranging from work to social," says Ebrahim Dinat, COO at contact centre solutions provider Ocular Technologies.
He adds that today, as both an individual and as a society, being connected translates into being mobile, and the end result is that customers are becoming more aware and demanding of the companies they interact with, as well as the communication channels these companies provide.
According to the white paper: "Five steps to serving customers in a mobile world", which was published by Voxeo - an interactive voice response company belonging to Ocular Technologies' software partner, Aspect - there is a steady increase in companies that recognise 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. This is positive. However, the paper also states it is not enough to simply give customers new ways to interact with your business.
So, how can companies and their contact centres fully and effectively engage with today's mobile customers? Voxeo lists the following five steps, guiding organisations to achieve success:
1. Think multi-channel and simplify access to information
Companies must look 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.
2. 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 customer relationship management (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 re-enter information when interacting with your business using various channels.
3. Dynamically personalise interactions
Why present irrelevant self-service menus and outbound messages? Personalisation streamlines customer access 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 text and social networks. Personalisation has traditionally been complex to deploy, but a multi-channel development environment that integrates with your BI and CRM systems simplifies creation of personalised dialogues that work with any channel.
4. 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 customised with application-specific data for a more complete view of your customer and the customer experience.
5. Take self-service to the cloud
Is your contact centre 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 multi-channel customer service. Consider providers that offer seamless support for cloud hosting and premises deployment so you can keep your options open, or even leverage a hybrid solution.
"One of the greatest advantages of working in a mobile society is that it does not matter where in the world your business is located or where your customers live - what matters now is how you connect with clients while ensuring that your mobile-friendly strategy is on par with the exponential, both current and expected, mobile growth," adds Dinat.
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