By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View/ UC
Strategies Expert
I recently attended Interactive Intelligence’s annual global conference, Interactions 2013, where a highlight was their “cloud” based platform offering for mobile customer self-services, Interaction Mobilizer. ININ has recognized that the solution to supporting mobile customers with smartphones and tablets is to not only maximize the use of customized, multi-modal, self-service business applications (“mobile apps”) offered selectively to customers, but to also simplify integration of such applications with flexible choices for accessing live assistance.
Mobile
self-service applications provide to major benefits to contact center
operational performance:
- They minimize the need and expense for live assistance
- They provide greater “contextual” information to agents for more efficient and effective customer experiences, if and when assistance is needed
What
has to happen with mobile self-service applications is that they must update
traditional online applications designs for mobile device use, as well as
facilitate direct access to live assistance to mobile users with their choice
of contact mode from within the mobile application. That would eliminate the need
to have a customer leave the app to always dial a toll-free number and go to a
waiting queue.
Many
online apps already offer customers the option to use IM and “text chat” for
customer assistance. They can also send emails with questions and problems. What
integration with contact center telephony technology brings to the table is the
that when customer runs into an issue with the self-service application, they
can immediately speak to a qualified representative or request a callback when
such a person is available and get immediate confirmation of that request. No
mobile self-service application will ever always be 100% adequate to satisfy
every customer need, so the option for flexible live assistance must be always
be offered to fill the gaps in the dynamic needs of every mobile consumer.
The future of mobile self-services
Visual
self-services will effectively, slowly, but surely, displace the limitations of
legacy IVR applications by enabling more information to be efficiently
delivered to smartphone and tablet screens. That doesn’t, however, preclude
using the efficiencies and convenience of voice user interfaces (VUIs) for user
inputs, as has already been well demonstrated by Apple’s Siri, and other
“virtual assistants.” Such options will be particularly necessary when mobile
users are walking or driving a car and must be “hands-free” or “eyes-free.”
One
of the other major benefits of increased consumer communications mobility is
that it opens the door to greater accessibility for pro-active, time-sensitive
“notifications” and reminder messages, which, in turn, can be linked
contextually to “self-service” applications or to “click-for assistance.” This
not only reduces the need for expensive and unnecessary live customer
assistance, but will also simplify flexible customer choice to access to such
assistance whenever necessary.
At
the recent 2013 UC Summit, our
survey of invited VARs, SIs, and Consultants showed very high interest in
supporting Mobile UC for customer services for business clients. However, in a
quick audience poll after my presentation, only a very small percentage of the
attendees were involved in helping customers with current IVR applications. So,
the multi-modal, mobile self-service future looks promising, and the
comprehensive tools that Interactive Intelligence has developed will be very
critical to fulfilling that promise!
For more insights about the big shift of customer services to mobile customers, read my post on UC Strategies.com.
Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Posts
