Three years ago, Forrester started addressing the question of whether “mobile” is a channel or a device. Today, having gone through rapid mobile innovation, this question remains pertinent, especially in the contact centre industry.
In an article by Tobias Goebel, director of mobile strategy at Aspect, Ocular Technologies’ software partner company, he explains that while many vendors in the customer engagement industry look at mobile as a communications channel for customers, most consumers do not.
“A convincing and appealing mobile customer experience must leverage all channels available on a mobile device so it is misleading to consider ‘mobile’ a channel, or assume that smartphones will drastically simplify how to serve customers in the contact centre,” he says, and stresses that smartphones are a platform supporting multiple methods of communication. Each supported channel has its own benefits and reason d’être.
The communication channels that vendors should be looking at within the mobile realm are: SMS; chat (including web chat and IM); social networks (Twitter, Facebook and more); mobile native or web apps; e-mail; and calls.
Goebel points out SMS, a real-time communication channel, allows for the most concise, to-the-point communication. “It also gets the most immediate attention when sent outbound: 90 percent of all SMSes are read by the intended recipient within three minutes, and 99 percent of all SMSes are opened,” he says.
SMSes are best used for straightforward questions and quick and short dealings. Unfortunately, there is the tendency to overuse this channel, especially for marketing purposes, and so its reason for use and possible misuse needs to be carefully checked.
Chat, is a pure real-time communication channel and, says Goebel, it is similar in nature to SMS in that it is a channel typically for pure textual communication, but it doesn’t have the length restrictions of SMS and therefore works best for longer dialogues required for slightly more complex issues.
“Social networks, specifically Twitter, are again textual and therefore similar to SMS and chat, but add a social component to the mix, messages exchanged here are visible by the public, until they are carried to Twitter’s private direct message channel. Social networks are therefore good for peer service, such as asking friends or other customers for help, as well as for the dreaded public complaint. Social networks as a communication channel are typically asynchronous in nature,” says Goebel.
Many progressive businesses are encouraging self-service channels making mobile native or web apps, which include websites meant for a large monitor, extremely popular.
Conventional e-mail is still well liked as a medium for longer, explanatory-type of communication. It is also the prefect channel for adding file or photo attachments. E-mail, is an asynchronous communication channel.
The last port of call for many customers needing assistance is in fact the “call” channel, including video calls.
“When all other channels fail to resolve an issue, customers switch to using the good old ‘phone’ channel to discuss matters ‘in person’ with the agent, who is now considered an expert – as most issues can nowadays be resolved through self-service,” says Goebel and highlights that today’s voice/ video calls can also originate from other sources, such as a web browser on a laptop, or a mobile app on a tablet.
With such a variety of communication channels offered on the mobile platform, the challenge for vendors therefore becomes managing conversations, context, history and data on each of these, as well as moving between self-service and live service.
“Notably, Aspect published results of its quantitative research into customer preferences and attitudes for customer service across various channels. Although conducted in America, the findings are pertinent in South Africa too, especially as 89% say they are annoyed when having to repeat themselves – a statistic most local contact centre agents could possible confirm too. Aspect best sums it up when it says that this is the omnichannel challenge,” says Ebrahim Dinat, COO at Ocular Technologies.
He adds that even the smallest business should not to be intimidated by the omnichannel and that it is not a passing trend, especially seeing that mobile usage continues to grow exponentially and so too customers’ abilities to interact with organisations using various channels.
“You are already an omnichannel business if you provide your customers with the option of clicking through on e-mail, visiting your website, following you on social media and even answering a call,” Dinat says.
“Next step is to holistically manage those experiences and engagements for customers. Just like a beekeeper, companies need to pull the volume of buzz back into their hive. Luckily, this can be done without a single sting, as proactive, predictive omnichannel customer communication solutions are readily available. Call, e-mail or tweet us. The choice is yours.”
