Mobility is changing the way enterprises approach customer service. The rapid adoption of smart devices by consumers is already having an effect on the deployment of customer care technologies in enterprises.
Ovum expects that as consumers become more savvy about using the mixed-channel mobile environment for complex self-directed service, enterprises will be able to begin tapping the full capabilities of the smart device on multiple levels.
This will occur over the course of the next few years. An important determinant of quality in customer experience will be whether smart, connected interaction (SCI) capabilities are embedded within an enterprise’s mobile apps and contact center infrastructure, as described in Ovum’s recent report The Future of Customer Service in a Mobile World: Smart, Connected Interactions.
SCI enables enterprises to leverage basic contextual and historical information about the customer, along with data that is unique to the mobile experience and the multichannel connectivity of the phone. When these elements are combined, the enterprise can perform triangulated and much more sophisticated analyses of the customer’s needs, and provide a personalized interaction that better manages the overall customer experience.
At the time of writing only a handful of organizations are using SCI capabilities in their mobile customer care, but this is expected to change over the coming years as customers increasingly use smart devices as their entry point for customer service.
Mobility becoming mainstream for customer engagement
Over the next five years there will be notable shifts in the US, the UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia, India, and China when it comes to how consumers engage with enterprises for customer service. More than 50% of inbound customer service calls across these eight countries will be made from a mobile device by 2016, and a significant proportion of that percentage will be from smart devices.