What the Rise of Mobile Payment Technology Means for the Contact Center
by Tim Dreyer on May 3rd, 2012
Some recent research will send a chill down the collective spine of all the companies whose contact centers are struggling to meet the expectations of today’s mobile consumers.
Pew issued a survey report, “The Future of Money in a Mobile Age,” that studied emerging trends in mobile payment technology. The prevalence of smart phones and mobile commerce offerings such as Google Wallet are enabling consumers to dispense with their cash and credit cards and make purchases with their phones. Anyone who’s been to Starbucks lately will recognize that mobile payments aren’t part of some wild-eyed science fiction. So mass adoption is more a matter of when, not if.
To that end, Pew’s survey asked respondents whether they agreed with the following statement: “By 2020, most people will have embraced and fully adopted the use of smart-device swiping for purchases they make, nearly eliminating the need for cash or credit cards.” Nearly two-thirds believe that’s a realistic time frame.
While there are a number of factors that must be addressed—competing platforms, security, the role of banks and credit card companies, to name a few—don’t assume that these will slow progress significantly. One only needs to look to Kenya, where 18 million consumers use M-PESA, a mobile banking platform that went live in 2007, to make payments equal to 20 percent of the country’s GDP via text message.
So what should the contact center be doing in 2012 to prepare for the coming mobile storm? A few things jump to mind:
- Implement a robust platform that can evolve to accommodate changing technology
- Develop a multichannel customer experience strategy that emphasizes mobile
- Empower service agents with the tools and capabilities to resolve issues efficiently
With the accelerating pace of technology advances over the past couple of years—remember that the iPad was introduced in January 2010—eight years from now is a relative eternity. Companies that embrace this challenge and make moves now will be in a position to thrive in 2020; those that bury their heads in the sand are going to be in for a rude awakening.
Enhancing Workforce Mobility Through the Consumerization of IT
by Jamie Ryan on May 1st, 2012
Within the last year, businesses have undergone a major transformation as the consumerization of IT makes its way into the enterprise and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies become more prevalent. As today’s workforce increasingly requests the capability to use the same technologies on the job as in their everyday lives, IT departments have been forced to adapt to workers’ preferences and implement policies to support the use of personal devices within the enterprise. According to a 2011 Citrix survey, more than 67 percent of senior executives and IT managers reported that they don’t have policies, procedures or IT systems in place to manage the use of personal devices for business purposes.
Image courtesy of Maas360 www.maas360.com
This consumerization of IT is also further enabling an increasingly mobile workforce. In order to strategically embrace this trend, CIOs must understand how these changes have and will continue to impact the enterprise. Rather than work to block these technologies, CIO’s must find ways to leverage them while maximizing employee efficiency and helping to streamline business processes.
The question is what do organizations gain from allowing employee devices with the walls of enterprise IT? One of the biggest challenges now is keeping a balance between consumerization and the security needs of legacy systems. Since our employees are also consumers, when we understand them we’ll better understand our customers. So while IT needs to adapt in order to keep up with IT consumerization, they also need adopt a “manage the middle” attitude in order to bridge the gap between the consumer and the corporation. It’s a challenge granted but doing so will allow employees to leverage enterprise technologies without sacrificing security while using the tools and techniques that best engage customers.
Going Mobile to Serve the Next-Generation Consumer
by Tim Dreyer on April 17th, 2012
In the current business climate, trying to stay one step ahead of rising customer expectations is a formidable challenge. The rapid consumer adoption of mobile technologies underscores the task companies are facing. Gartner forecasts sales of tablets will exceed 100 million in 2012. Similarly, 472 million smartphones were sold in 2011, and Gartner predicts that market will grow by 39 percent this year.
These sales figures highlight the need for companies to integrate a mobility component into their customer experience strategy. But as consumers get unprecedented speed and access to information, how should companies adapt their approach?
Against this backdrop, many businesses have refocused their efforts on customer experience. A new survey shows that customer engagement is a top priority for retailers in 2012, and mobile figures prominently in their plans.
On this blog, we’ve talked a lot about how customer experience leaders deliver a robust offering across channels so that customers can engage in the channel of their choice. There’s a compelling reason for this approach. The more consistent you can make the experience across channels, the stronger the bond with customers, which translates into revenue growth.
Mazda is the latest example of a company extending its reach to consumers through mobile applications. In Canada, the company rolled out Mazda Connect, a multilingual application available on iTunes. It offers customers the ability to locate dealers, access interactive service manuals, view maintenance videos, and connect instantly to social media platforms. Thanks in part to Mazda Connect, the company’s Canadian sales in December were among the best in its history, and sales have continued to increase with growth of more than 34 percent over last year in March.
Mazda’s efforts represent the next wave of customer engagement: customized tools that provide mobile customers with targeted information. However, when undertaking these kinds of initiatives, companies must consider the entire customer engagement ecosystem. By the time customers turn to the contact center, they’ve likely exhausted self-service offerings, customer forums, and other information channels.
The advent of mobile means this progression can take place in an increasingly compressed time frame—sometimes just a matter of minutes. Effective solutions need to not only understand the customer mind-set but also how all of these elements fit together.
To develop Connect, Mazda tapped Aspect. Our decades of experience in the contact center helped to create an app that strengthened the company’s relationship with its customers. By focusing on the user experience, the Aspect Digital team helped to establish digital communities that serve as an approved information source.
Mazda Connect was successful because it embraced three important characteristics:
- An immersive, interactive brand experience for Mazda’s end users.
- A comprehensive understanding of the uniqueness of individual users
- The means to sustain deeper engagement with customers
We want to congratulate Mazda on its success and look forward to working with them going forward.
Preparing your Contact Center for the Mobile Customer
by Chris O'Brien on March 21st, 2012
Tom is frustrated.
He’s sitting at home in front of his unresponsive cable TV DVR and it’s driving him crazy, because unlike usual, he can’t seem to fix it on his own. First he Googled the problem, hoping to find a quick fix. He then turned to his friends and contacts on Twitter and Facebook to see if anyone had encountered a similar problem. Then he poured over the company website, studied its FAQ page, and read through online communities for answers, but—much to his chagrin—came up empty.
Now, Tom has to meet his girlfriend
at the coffee shop in 15 minutes, and he promised her he’d take care of this today. So he’s hoping to resolve the issue before he gets there. (With their favorite show Community back on the air, the DVR is crucial.) And so, having exhausted all his other options and with no time to spare, Tom turns to his last resort: he calls the contact center from his smartphone on the walk over.
Most agents are set up to respond to calls from individuals calling in from their home or office, typically sitting or standing right next to whatever was causing their problem.
But today, an agent receives a call from Tom. Tom is the mobile consumer. He is pressed for time, on the move, and has higher expectations than consumers of the past. With all of the Internet at his fingertips, he is accustomed to finding the information he needs instantaneously.
What’s more, there are more and more Toms joining the marketplace every day. More smartphones were sold last year than PCs and tablets combined, and a new study shows that the number of mobile Internet users will exceed PC-based Internet users by 2016, with more than half the global popular already owning a mobile handset. As they become the norm, these consumers need a new kind of contact center to meet their ever-rising expectations—otherwise, they will not hesitate to take to social media to broadcast their gripes.
In the world of smartphones and 4G, people like Tom are no longer willing to wait more than 10 seconds for a song to download, let alone spend 90 seconds on hold while customer service agents attempts to flag down their supervisors. They like things resolved quickly and at their convenience, and by the time they have called the contact center, chances are they’ve already exhausted all options for a DIY fix and are looking for the next level of technological expertise and product knowledge — and ultimately, a fast solution to the issue.
Unfortunately, most contact centers lack the functionality needed to meet these expectations. In today’s customer-centric business environment, where customer service and customer engagement rank as top priorities for most retailers, companies that fail to take action do so at their own peril, risking hits to both their reputation and their bottom line. And as technology continues to accelerate, companies that have already fallen behind risk being left in the dust by more nimble, responsive competitors.
Contact center solutions powered by unified communications can help your customer service agents share information faster and put customers in touch with the right people, right away—facilitating an easier, more efficient customer service experience. And, of course, a much happier Tom.
Defining the role of IT in the mobile world
by Jamie Ryan on April 4th, 2011
With the rollout of the iPad 2, the world was once again caught up in the excitement of the promise of a new product. Who wouldn’t like a thinner tablet with enhanced functionality?
I see the announcement as another installment in an ongoing challenge for CIOs struggling to keep pace with the consumer market. As more and more individuals buy smart phones, tablets, and other devices, they increasingly rely on them for business. This dynamic raises all sorts of questions:
- What’s the line between business and personal use when employees are expected to be responsive in the evenings and on weekends?
- How does a company safeguard sensitive information when it has less and less control over end users and devices?
- Is IT responsible for providing technical support for these devices? …Read more >
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Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.