Oisin Lunny, Chief Evangelist – August 19, 2014
“Are you experienced, have you ever been experienced, I have”.
These are the immortal lines of Jimi Hendrix’s mind expanding 1967 debut. Almost 50 years after Jimi’s psychedelic masterpiece, today’s technology landscape is evolving at a speed that would have boggled even the most expanded of minds of the 1960s.
At the 2013 Guardian Activate conference, futurist Gerd Leonhard predicted that 80% of global web traffic would come from always connected mobile devices by 2018, while Benedict Evans separately predicted zero growth from PC sales globally during the same period.
In terms of consumer adoption, the age of the PC is over, and we are undeniably in age of mobile.
Mobile is the experience channel of choice for the Millennial generation
In 2011 Pew Research reported that almost 40% of teens “never” used email, instead sending an average of 181 text messages per day. It follows that brand interactions are increasingly mobile, from social to search, from transactions such as shopping and banking to reservations, ticketing and appointment reminders. As a result we are seeing what Forrester calls the “mobile mind shift”, a fundamental change in customer attitudes and expectations driven by mobile device adoption. Today’s “mobile native” consumers are not only experienced users of the latest technology; but in many cases they have access to better equipment than the brands they interact with.
Making it personal
Unlike the PC, mobile devices are inherently personal and rarely shared, and this offers a genuine opportunity for brands to build lasting and meaningful relationships with their consumers. But effectively engaging consumers on a mobile device needs a fresh approach. The “old fashioned” linear campaign based customer journey is no longer sufficient. Consumers expect brands to engage with them on an ongoing basis using the mobile channel. This necessitates a cyclical view of the customer lifecycle, as illustrated by this graphic from Sensei Marketing.
Total Customer Experience (TCE)
But how can an enterprise effectively engage with the modern consumer who is using mobile across a broad and ever-evolving number of use cases? The TCE approach offers a powerful new perspective on customer service. It provides a conceptual framework for identifying a wide array of customer touch points, many of which have the potential to differentiate an enterprise from their competitors.
Image source: Steve French (Openmarket) & Sheryl Kingstone (Yankee Group) “How Enterprises are Improving Customer Engagement via the Mobile Channel“
One of the best ways an enterprise can improve TCE is to use mobile messaging to engage customers pro-actively. Mr. Walt Disney once instructed his theme park staff to anticipate visitors’ needs and be “assertively friendly”. One of our customers, a leading UK airline, is doing just this with its instant customer feedback program. Immediately after passengers board a plane, they receive an SMS that directs them to a “boarding experience” survey. Not only does the survey make customers feel valued and important, it elicits feedback while the customer’s experience is still fresh in their minds. In addition to receiving continual feedback from customers, flight attendants can view the feedback in real-time, which allows them to immediately address any complaints or issues.
How to deploy mobile TCE
The key to successfully applying the TCE approach to mobile interactions is choosing the right technology partner, and using a platform that is flexible enough to meet the myriad of new use cases driven by evolving consumer behaviour. Reliability is also essential, as today’s consumers have zero tolerance for technology failures. Finally, scalability is imperative, as user interactions over the mobile channel can increase exponentially without notice.
OpenMarket’s Mobile Engagement Platform offers a flexible, reliable and highly scalable solution for designing and successfully deploying multiple TCE use cases, across the entire customer lifecycle. The platform integrates with an enterprise’s customer relationship management system (CRM), using all existing customer data to create automated, personal and real-time mobile interactions with their customers.
There is no doubt that customer service is a key differentiator for major enterprises. Consumers expect customer service teams to resolve their issues in a timely manner, and enterprises decision makers should be leveraging the mobile channel as much as possible to accomplish this goal.
If you want to learn how enterprise mobile engagement can transform your total customer experience, contact OpenMarket or visit our website today.