In what way will the increasing sophistication and power of smartphones influence customer service?

That is a huge question and possibly unanswerable...... but here's a couple of thoughts: service will be branded, there will be fewer folks involved in service, avatars are in our future, and unemployment is not going away.

Customer services is now open for business, 24x7 in the palm consumer hands. As Scott said, service branding and new efficiencies will be created for main street.

But, and perhaps more importantly, imagine the possibilities of new for fee concierge customer support tiers. Doctors talking to patients, if not checking and monitory health sensors "attached" to the patient. AMEX providing its Platinum and Black Card customers with new innovative voice/video travel, purchase and check in services.
Yes its great the I can get an SMS message telling me flight is cancelled, but how great would it be to answer a video/audio link with a customer rep who calms the waters because they are there for and tells me what my options are. Or maybe its a banker who is helping me through a mortgage process, or a brokerage with retirement, trades or money transfers.

So, we'll do existing things better ( I hope ) and introduce new services that are valuable, creating brand loyalty and convenient to consumers.

Smart phones, in my opinion, become merely another touch point for customers to reach companies with hopefully less lag time and more efficiency. However, if it's used as an incoming phone call, it's no different than a land line. Email hasn't even been improved enough to be efficient i.e,., some companies don't respond before 24 hours, if then -- unacceptable to me and most people who want immediate gratification. So the contact gets kicked up to a phone call! While there are many, many touch points what's important is how effectively and efficiently they are responded to.

In this era, advertising and marketing through smartphones are absolutely a "in" thing with the production of iPhone etc. I believe the individual technology identities are there, e.g. Email, Calling, SMS, Internet, but with increasing sophistication of such smartphones, it combine all these sources to generate more efficiency in communicating with businesses. Eventually, customers are more keen to take up products and read notification on deals and whatnot, which is in my opinion a win-win situation. Communication for the large. Law of large number. Let alone calling, iPad and other devices are checking up allowing face time communication as well. Customers may eventually go into e-shopping, viewing products on the go. Definitely a revolution.

Ever since I purchased my Android, I have been like a kid in a candy store enjoying all its capabilities! I now use my SmartPhone more as a mini-computer than for actual phone usage. As more and more customers switch to SmartPhones, they are expecting more from businesses in relation to their congruent functionality. For example, I am thrilled to be able to have my national brand bank mobile app, but there is no app for my local bank and I have to sign in online and wait for the pages to load, etc before I can check my balances, etc. We are a society of expected instant gratification - at least primarily in larger metropolitan areas. I understand that it is too much to expect smaller businesses to be fully mobile specific due to the expense at this time, but that is the direction we are most definitely headed. Small businesses can keep from being left in the dust by keeping their websites and online services as fast and capable as their expenses will allow and by having top notch phone skills for addressing problems. Email services are slowly succumbing to social media and I think that has a lot to do with Smart Phones as well, since it is far easier to read a news feed or update page than an email on a SmartPhone. But all of that said, for now, customer support on any level is supreme in all respects, so no matter what vehicles are out there for customer contact, it always starts with excellent customer service - now more than ever.