Can you name 15 trends in the contact center industry, especially the Top 2015 Trends that are or could be affecting the way you do business?
By reading this article on Trend #1, you are on your way to not only being conversant in the top trends, but to learning how your business can benefit from making that knowledge part of a more successful contact center strategy.
By signing in on our website, you now have access to all Top 15 Trends in 2015, as they become available, anytime you want to refer to them.
Trend #1 – Mobile Customer Care
Did you know that 722 million smartphones were shipped in 2012, bringing the worldwide installed base to the 1 billion mark! In 2014-15, smartphone shipments were expected to surpass 1 billion for the first time, marking another milestone in the dominance of mobile devices.
Mobility Climbs to Higher Peaks
Source: The Contact Center Satisfaction Index Mid-Year 2013
Smartphones and the Customer Service Revolution
Customer service in this mobile era is being driven by the explosive growth of smartphones and the increased functionality they provide. Predictions are that they will be responsible for 37 percent of inbound customer service calls in North America by 2016. This fundamentally transforms how customers interact with call centers, and according to Forrester, 68 percent of decision makers say smartphone integration is a top priority.
Almost four in five consumers surveyed already use mobile applications for customer service. The forecast is for the functionality and number of mobile customer service solutions to grow in 2015.
The development focus is now on customer engagement and user-friendly navigation. Ensuring that the interaction with customers is clear and easy to understand will be crucial in the redesign or creation of your mobile applications. It’s equally important to provide the best customer experience on your mobile app by combining tools that enhance the interaction with customers. Adam Faulkner, a specialist in customer service and contact center systems, says, “2015 will see mobile apps combine with services such as call-back and web chat to make engagement even easier for customers.”
Allowing customers to easily connect to a live agent – directly from within your mobile application – means they can avoid having to start the interaction over by calling your contact center. That’s huge! Who wouldn’t want that improvement to the overall customer service experience! Mobile Rescue from Fonolo is one product that offers these value-added capabilities.
Mobile Apps for Mobile Customer Care
Smart phones and tablets are revolutionizing the way customers interact with every business. Many companies are trying to embrace mobile customer care by simply moving existing Internet applications to a mobile platform. Typically, these apps are transactional, allowing customers to check a balance or a flight schedule. But as more customers move to smart devices, they expect more from their apps and abandon those that aren’t useful to them.
Mobility embraces multiple aspects of an organization. As mobile devices change and include more functionality, they have the potential for an even greater impact. Early mobile customer services apps enabled web access, but in contrast with what we have now, they really weren’t designed as customer service apps. Interactions and call times were often lengthy. The interactions themselves were not particularly engaging. Instead of improving the customer experience, interactions seemed disconnected, with no fluidity between contact channels.
The How To of Connecting Mobile Devices to Your Contact Center
Making a transition to mobility that improves the customer experience involves much more than finding a vendor who can do it all for you. You must first start moving your development strategy in the direction of an additional layer of infrastructure that will translate and send info out to mobile devices. You will have such back-end considerations as integration with your service infrastructure, generating and creating access to information in real time, integration with customer data and analytics, just to name a few.
In the process, you have to determine your objectives with regard to the customer service experience you want to provide. Consider what is most important in your contact center. Mobile service strategic decisions fall in to four main categories: Reach, Offering, Value Chain and Commitment. Mobile objectives follow your overall business objectives such as Increase Revenue and Reduce Costs.
As you develop an overall business strategy that includes mobility, identify your objectives and choose relevant mobile objectives. Seek out a vendor partner who can guide you along the path to an ongoing solution that continues to meet your objectives over time.