By Mark Clark, Contact Solutions
Consumers love their mobile apps. And with 75 billion apps in Apple’s appstore alone, they have a lot to choose from. But with more choices and easier
access to information, consumers have developed less tolerance for difficulty. They’ve
experienced a mobile mind shift — they expect personalized solutions to their
problems immediately.
In fact, according to new data
from Forrester Research, consumers have little tolerance for long or difficult
service interactions. Up to 55% of U.S. online adults are likely to abandon
their online purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to their question. In
addition, 77% say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company
can do to provide them with good online customer service, up six points from
2012.
Take a major retail department store
chain. They’ve put time, money and manpower into delivering a beautiful mobile
application that allows customers to shop, claim deals, get directions, share
wish lists on their favorite social networks, and more. With a major marketing
program in place advertising the mobile application through television,
in-store ads, online and more, the mobile app has become a favorite of their
prime customer base. Customers are engaging with the mobile app when and how
they want, and it’s a great success. It’s seemingly all there, except for one
piece: Customer care. As soon as a customer has a problem with their shopping
cart and they need to ask a question, they are stuck. The customer has to exit
the mobile app and dial an 800 number for help or they get a stilted and
scripted “live chat” online, and suddenly that wonderful experience has
completely disappeared and they have lost control.
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But mobile customer care can take that pain away. Mobile
serving options should be part of the entire experience — that means customers
have access to self-service and agents on their own terms. They should be able
to start, stop and resume interactions when and how they need to, without
having to make a voice call, and get their problems solved immediately rather
than waiting on hold for an agent.
Placing a higher priority on customer care also can
compensate for gaps in a mobile application. While extensive functionality is a
dream for most businesses, it’s rare to find a fully operational app that does
everything you want it to do. Even if you have a team of engineers working
overtime on fixing bugs within your app, there will inevitably be a problem. By
providing excellent customer care within the app, you can make up for negative
experiences that are more difficult to control and end up with happy users,
even if they didn’t initially have that perfect mobile moment.
Customer care has a huge
impact on whether or not consumers are willing to do future business with your
company. The vast majority (97%) of consumers say customer care has an impact
on whether or not they do business with a company, 62% will post a review on a
company branded site, and more than half will post a negative review on social
networks.
Enterprises are missing a
huge opportunity to provide consumers with a more efficient experience to solve
their problems.
Give them options to
engage with you and let them pick the time, place and method. If you don’t,
they will take control in one way or another — by moving their wallets to a
competitor, posting negatively about your brand or repeatedly screaming “agent”
into the phone or punching zero in anger or frustration. Make no mistake that the
mobile mind shift has given consumers all the tools and thought patterns to
control their own experience with your brand. Why not make it a win-win?
Mobile apps inherently
lend themselves to self-service. Customers already enjoy being able to do make
decisions, purchases and otherwise interact with their apps on their own terms.
By integrating mobile customer care directly within the app instead of tacking
it on at the end, you’ve simply extended that level of self-service your
customers have come to expect from within the app. You not only improve the
overall experience, but improve the brand experience across the entire
lifecycle of the customer from purchase through care and throughout the ongoing
relationship. In this way, the contact center can actually enhance the mobile
moment.
Take a look at your mobile
app. Is customer care part of it? Today’s shopper is savvy and evolved, and if
you lack all of the functionality they expect, you’re leaving business on the
table. Make sure you are developing a comprehensive mobile strategy that
doesn’t lead to app abandonment.
As Director of
Solutions Marketing, Mark Clark helps Contact Solutions grow its business by
delivering differentiated value to its customers. Mark has an extensive background
in B2B tech marketing and product management for enterprise software firms
where he has helped these companies achieve rapid growth.