What is the role of mobile in customer service?

Hi Guy. Mobility brings unbiquity. Customers today want customer service where and when they need (or perceive)they need it.

Mobility adds an extension to traditional services making it more cost effective to provide services that would otherwise not be viable. At the same time, a well developed mobile customer service model ensures organisations provide a consistent and optimized customer service experience to the customer via their smartphone of choice.

This introduces the two sides of mobility in Customer Service: One is providing new services to mobile customers and the other is using mobility as a seamless extension of traditional services infrastructure and delivery models.

Building services that can be delivered any-time, any-where to a customer's mobile device of choice, means customers can get a great customer experience on their terms. This is often an extension of a self-help philosophy and can involve purpose designed apps. The key is quick services delivered in ways that meet the customers' expectations.

Customers can use mobiles to interact with the organisations they choose to deal with, sourcing information to help them make choices when multiple solutions are on offer.

Organisations can make the customer experience better by using mobiles to automatically recognise customers, retrieving their details and other information such as loyalty program data, so they don't have to provide data and preference information they expect the organisation to already know. Some organis-ations use this capability to alert customer service employees to a VIP customer’s presence.

The other side consists of using mobility as a means of delivering customer service. This means making resource pools accessible through centrally managed mobile allocation centres (manual or automated) providing the expertise to quickly and consistently solve all requests. Where customers of small to medium-sized businesses expect 24/7 uptime and support, going mobile is not a trend, but is mandatory.

Whether mobility is being used to manage resource pools or customer access to services, its biggest impact is in the way it improves customer service communications. This can include provision of accurate information and updates, where and when it is needed (may be an automated process), making it a much less time consuming activity.

Mobile devices can also be used as data gathering and billing mechanisms for customer service activities, gathering data and updating and managing customer service records. This is a very cost effective approach and reduces communication costs, therefore reducing customer service cost.

In a nutshell, two fronts, but both about making major improvements to the customer experience.

James