5 Essentials for Mobile Customer Service

I have been trying to figure out lately what is going to happen over the coming years as we start to use mobile devices more and more for service.  I have been doing research into this space a bit and have been reading alot of blogs about the topic as of the last few weeks.  I also have been working to be hyper aware of when I need service and what I do with my mobile device when I am starting the service process with a company.  All of that reading and attention to my own patterns have culminated in this post about what may be the keys going forward for a company thinking about their mobile strategy for customer service.  A quick note before we start though.... These items I talk about below all need to build from a strategy that is agreed upon by all the stakeholders.  Mobile customer service currently is in a bit of a shambles for most companies because for many companies it is still unclear who owns what.  So before starting to think about these things below, make sure you get all the right people in a room and decide what you want your mobile customer service to be before you start thinking about technology and tactics.

After you have taken the time to think about what your mobile customer service is and what it is not, here are some tactical items that will be key to accomplishing your goals:

1.  To App or Not to App

To me, this is the biggest question that will face most companies in the coming years.  Eventually, I think this question will be answered by the advancement of technology, but for the short run, it will be a big question for most companies to solve for.  Why is this such an issue?
Think about your own actions when using a mobile device for service.  You are in the store or on the train or sitting on your couch and you think about an issue you need to resolve.  The first thing you do is whip out your mobile device and likely do one of two things, either google your question or go to the company website and start to look through their info to find an answer to your question.  No where in that flow did you have a burning desire to go download an app from the an App Store of some kind to have on my device so that I could get my answer.  The only exception to this might be a service provider that has deep relationships with their customers and they interact with the company frequently, meaning multiple times per month.  Example of this might be a bank or telco service provider or even a site like Amazon or eBay that have frequent customers.
But for the large majority of companies out there, no matter how badly you want people to engage with you multiple times during the month, they likely will not and will then not want to have to go and download your app just to get service from their mobile device.
So, my opinion is that if you have an app already that is out in the market place, it might make sense to add your customer service tab to this app to have some presence.
If you are still working on the mobile care strategy for your company, my sense is that pushing toward a mobile web experience may end up being more friendly for customers for the way that they will want to interact with you.
Either way, answering this question by thinking about the customer experience first, will go a long way in developing a strong and useful mobile customer experience.

2.  Which Mobile Device to Focus On

It is pretty clear that there are three big opp systems now that dominate the global smartphone/smartdevice handset market.  iOS, Android and Windows.  I am not an expert on development or on operating systems, but every chart that I have read in the past few months is pretty clear that the smart device market is only growing and the players that are clearly in the lead are the three mentioned.  So I think the answer here is that you have to likely think about your strategy in a multi OS environment.  This is not to say that you should launch from the beginning in this way.  Might make sense to first test on one OS and then scale from there.

3.  Service in a 3.5 inch Space

Next biggie for me:  How will you as a company work to create an experience that is simple, relevant and meaningful on a device that could be as small as 3.5 inches?
This will require some starts and stumbles until companies start to get it right.  My sense is that most companies will start with just the basic search type funcationality that might link back to their traditional web site.  Or they will have a CS tab in their app that will try to provide a cleaned up visual with FAQ kind of functionality.  But quickly, I think we will see companies realizing that they need to broaden the way they think about service on these smaller device types.  Companies will start designing interactions that make more sense based on the device type.  For phones, companies could start using location data or voice interfaces to let customers ask more specific questions that would not be limited by a basic search interface. They could leverage new and exciting interfaces to let users interact with them in ways that will bring context and personalization to the interaction, something that is sorely missing in a mobile customer experience today with service.  Eventually, the Siri for the enterprise will dominate this space I believe.  Whether through text interface or voice, every company will have their own Siri company assistant that will help customers find what they need in a way that is much more natural for these mobile devices that have limited screen/visual real estate.

4.  Integration Is a Nightmare, Where to Start

In order for any service expereince to be relevant and meaningful to customers, it needs to feel personal, be simple and just work.  I hate to say it, but this will likely require integration to other systems.  8 years ago, web services were going to change the world, but unfortunately, not everyone has caught up yet.  Especially the very large companies that are still making their way through the big nightmare engagement with IBM or Accenture to become "Web Service Enabled".
If you can't do the big things that will be really useful for the customer experience off the bat because IT will need to build out a bunch of things for you, focus on processes that may not need integrations, but are still step by step instructions that someone could be walked through visually instead.  As the integrations become available, start to plug them in to make the interaction ever more context aware and more personal.
If we have learned one thing over the last 10 years, it is that the ability to start small and scale is paramount to success with any technology project.  No different here.  Don't try to boil the ocean.  Put together the end state on paper and then make your way there over time, proving success every step of the way.

5.  What About Non-Smartphones?

Living in the US or Europe or any major city in the rest of the world, we start to get spoiled in thinking that everyone must have a smartphone by now.  But recent research shows that there are about 6 billion mobile devices on the planet and just 700 million of them are "smart" devices.  Which leaves alot of people still running around with a Nokia handset that is really good at text messaging and maybe making a phone call or two.  What do you do with them?
If you have a large base of customers that are using non smart devices, it might make a lot of sense to invest in a strategy that is focused on SMS.  Answering questions and automating the process of customer service within that channel.  There are billions of customers out there that are using SMS as the primary channel for communication with companies and there is a real opportunity to create an experience that makes this channel simple, personal and reliable.

So, to sum it up, I think the mobile expereience for service is still evolving, but will be coming quicker than we think.  I also think that if we try to just re-create or re-purpose the existing strategies from the web, we will be missing a real opportunity to innovate for customers.

What do you think mobile cusotmer service looks like?

Transparency Is King

I was doing my normal reading the other day of blog posts and my twitter feed when I saw a blog post that stuck out and made me think about a major issue that customer service organizations are facing and will likely continue to struggle with for some time, Transparency in customer service.

You see, the post I was reading was a post about Charter Communications and their customer service transformation process. They have pushed out some marketing messaging promising a much better customer experience as they see the competition heating up, they see service as a differentiator. Smart move on their part in my mind, but the blog post went on to show some interesting messages from social media about the company and their challenge with transparency was front and center.

Message after message talked about how much easier and faster it was to get something taken care of if the person used Twitter as their primary source or channel of entry to deal with Charter. The customers talked and even glowed about the fact that they just had to say a few negative things and immediately someone was responding to them and getting them set up with what they needed to get their issue resolved. Now, this is not a phenomenon that is isolated to Twitter only and to Charter only. This is something that all companies are struggling with and will continue to struggle with until they align their customer service practices with Twitter in one major way, Transparency.

That is what Twitter and Facebook drive in so many ways. Not just with Customer Service issues, but with pricing, marketing, product and on and on. Some will call this collaboration, some will call it co creation with consumers, but I just like to boil it down to one key thing, Transparency.

No rocket science here, but as we all know, social media outlets give consumers the voice to punish brands or companies when they are not being transparent. Everyone can see for themselves when someone has an issue and what the brand is doing about that issue. The big challenge for companies and especially service executives is getting their teams aligned internally to make sure that the same kind of transparency exists in every other channel. If you don't make this a priority, it is my opinion that customers will only then do one of two things:

1. They will continue to use Twitter or Facebook to continually punish you for not making your other channels more transparent

or

2. They will just continue to jump from one new channel to the next knowing that the newer channels of support will represent the fastest and easiest way to resolve an issue.

So the question today for you is, Have you aligned your channels for support so that your customers don't feel like they need to find the "shiny new channel" to get the service the desire?