The Edge of Service, Issue 15: Getting Mobile Customer Service Right

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There are an estimated 7 billion active mobile phone subscriptions today—one for every living person on the planet, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Of course, the number can be misleading, given that many people in developed regions have multiple devices, while others still do not have access. Even so, the proliferation of mobile, growing percentage of the world's population that has a device, and prevalence of smartphones (at close to 3 billion) represent stunning social and technological developments.

The impact on sales alone—never mind all the ways service is delivered—is eye–popping. Goldman Sachs estimates that through 2015, 686 million consumers around the globe will have made a purchase on their mobile devices. By 2018, the number is projected to be 1.9 billion.

For those shaping and managing customer services and the overall customer experience, this is getting interesting! You'll find it no surprise that mobile represented the largest growth in access channel usage over the past year, according to ICMI research:

Mobile – 18.9%
Chat – 12.5%
Social media – 9%
Video – 7%
SMS – 6.4%

Mobile is, of course, much more than just a channel. From a service and interaction perspective, mobile can enable new channels (e.g., interactions that begin within mobile apps), can be a seamless conduit to existing channels (i.e., phone, chat, social communities, and others), and can facilitate new combinations (e.g., texting a picture or short video to an insurance adjuster while reviewing the case with them).

So, how do you cultivate an effective mobile strategy? How do you tackle this vast and fast–changing opportunity?

My emphatic encouragement is to start by getting your organization aligned. Ensure that everybody, across functional areas, is working towards the same objectives.

I recall visiting a health care organization that was working on a suite of mobile–based health management tools—very useful new apps. But they were being developed and launched largely independent of contact center involvement (different divisions, separate teams). The results were predictable: service misses and gaps. The solution was to create a cross–functional team (marketing, IT, contact center, et al.) with a comprehensive view of the customer experience, and then incorporate planning activities into ongoing developments. Customer experience improved quickly.

Once the organization is on board and a working group established, there are some emerging practices we strongly encourage you to incorporate, including:

Shape your mobile customer service strategy. As outlined here, this involves anticipating customer expectations, including the features and functions they desire (e.g., text); updating your customer access strategy; and putting processes in place to effectively handle the different types of workload that will evolve.
Cultivate unified tools and processes. This helps reduce customer effort, facilitates a 360–degree view of the customer and the context of service interactions, and, ultimately, enables an engaging experience. This step also involves ensuring that agents have the tools they need.
Establish direct links and easy transitions between the channels. Some channels are more suitable for evolving issues than others (e.g., agent interactions can sometimes benefit from providing on–the–fly links to Web resources). There is a lot of room for improvement here. Research conducted by Aspect indicates that 61% of customers have not been able to easily switch from one channel to another when interacting with customer service. On the upside, Twitter research found that "when brands created personal interactions—defined as conversations that included the customer's name and the customer service rep's signature in tweets—77% of those customers were likely to recommend the brand."
Get your apps in good shape. By all means, don't dither—get them out there. But you've got to ensure they are ready for prime time. In results that were probably no surprise, a Compuware study found that customers have little tolerance for glitchy or unstable mobile apps. Specifically, 71% of users have a low tolerance for unstable apps and will delete an app if it crashes. And 79% of users report that they would only retry an app once or twice if it failed to work the first time. Speed is also important; Walmart boosted conversions 2% simply by improving app load time from 7.2 to 2.9 seconds.
Finally, as you think through your strategy, don't be afraid of enabling seamless connections to agents. (The mobile app of one of the airlines I often fly provides easy alternatives. I'll always go as far as possible with self-serve, confident that help is available if needed. Another carrier I fly makes reaching an agent from their app far less intuitive; their intent might be to avoid calls, but I tend to call sooner and more often, not wanting to start from scratch if something gets complicated.)

Mobile is an unprecedented opportunity to differentiate through service. Restructure your organization as needed, update your customer access strategy, and plan and manage workloads as they evolve. Above all, ensure that strategy and planning in this fast-moving space is a living, ongoing part of your organization's development.

Recent Issues

The Edge of Service, Issue 14: Hiring for Service: It's Time for a Rethink
The Edge of Service, Issue 13: The Statistics Behind a Service Revolution
The Edge of Service, Issue 12: The Keys to Social Customer Service