8 Ways to Leverage Your Customer's Smartphone to Beat the Competition

A recent customer experience survey by [24]7, a customer lifecycle management services company based in Campbell, California, found that smartphone users - who comprised 83% of 800 survey participants - are frustrated when it comes to getting customer service.

Here are the top five sources of frustration for smartphone users:

1. It takes too long to resolve an issue (78%)

2. I need to start over (77%)

3. Too much effort from my part (71%)

4. Need to repeat information when switching channels (70%)

5. No recognition of me or my issue (70%)

There are many solutions to these issues that are well-known and expensive.

However, the most cost-effective solutions are enabled by your customers' smartphones: their devices can help you improve customer experience, and save money, if you can figure out how to leverage them. Here's how.

By integrating your contact center directly with mobile applications, you can begin to tackle those top five complaints:

1. Through their smartphone, your customers can directly send in to the contact center pictures or documents that are relevant to their issue, shortening time to resolution.

2. The app can automatically provide the contact center with all of the information about the customer and issue known to the app, ensuring correct routing of the call the first time, minimizing agent transfers.

3. By having the app transmit the data, errors through miscommunication are minimized, and your callers never have to repeat information.

4. Stop forcing your customers to use an IVR, which they hate. It saves them the time and effort of fumbling with the keypad and complex menus to enter information and then waiting in queue for a representative. Data from Forrester Research shows that “71% [of U.S. online adults] say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service.”

5. You don't really like forcing your customers to use an IVR anyway, do you? Eliminating IVR would be a huge source of personal satisfaction. Do you have good reports that show where people drop out of the IVR? Or which options are used most frequently?

6. Establish data sessions concurrently with voice calls, to transfer data, pictures, documents and anything else that isn't easily communicated by the spoken word. Reduce the amount of effort required of your customers to solve a problem, and speed time to resolution.

7. Identify and segment your customers before they are presented to an IVR our customer service representative. Give preferential treatment to your most valued customers and route inbound queries to the channel - live agent, queue, web chat, e-mail, text message - most appropriate for their issue.

8. Save money on inbound toll-free in the process - as your customers work through your IVR, and then sit in queue listening to music, your telecom bills are climbing.

You can do all of these today to improve the customer experience and lower your costs. These solutions are also readily adapted to websites, as well.

Forrester Research says that few companies today meet the challenge of delivering good customer experiences. Bain & Company says that 80% of companies think they provide superior proposition, but only 8% of companies surveyed have customers who agree.

There are opportunities available to you right now to raise the bar for customer service in your industry, outshine your competition, increase customer retention and grow revenue. Customer expectations are increasing - isn't it time you met them?

Ask us for more details.

Bright Pattern provides next-generation cloud contact center software, ServicePattern™, which includes native multichannel support to improve customer experience, and scales like no other offering in the marketplace.