Are you making it easy for your prospects and customers to do business with you, or are you unwittingly making it harder?
We’re talking about mobile phones – and the fact that an incredibly high percentage of people who contact you will be doing so through them. Landlines are going the way of fax machines.
Mobile Phone Usage Facts
According to stats released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the number of adults with a mobile but no fixed-line phone climbed to 5.7 million, up from 3.4 million in five years – that’s a 31% increase, in such a short period of time. And a Roy Morgan report further showed that a whopping 58% of these adults without a landline are aged between 25 and 34. Now, when you factor in the actual number of people who own a smartphone and are probably likely to use it to contact you – we’re looking at 81% of the population. And in fact, if they’re under 29 – we’re talking 99%, according to a 2017 Sensis Report.
So, what all this means is that most people who contact you will be using a smartphone – and they’ll want service fast. Many will prefer self-service, and those that do need to speak to someone don’t want to be waiting on hold for long, because they’re time-poor, and waiting chews up battery power.
The good news is that Premier Contact Point’s fully hosted Mobile Customer Experience (CX) service provides an exciting array of communication features that make it possible to enhance CX in ways that have never been available through landline communications.
Six clever strategies to boost sales and streamline operations
Here’s just six of the many innovative ways that progressive businesses and organisations are using mobility features to take Customer Experience to a whole new level.
1. Stimulate sales
Your marketing team promotes your products and services using a variety of media including social media, publicity, advertising, emails and telemarketing campaigns. Now you can also generate interest and sales through text messaging – the preferred communication method of many millennials.
Ideal for notifying customers of:
- upcoming entertainment, business or leisure events
- new product or service releases
- retail sales events
2. Stimulate repeat business
Sending texts to remind customers it’s time for a regular check-up or service is an excellent strategy for increasing repeat revenue.
Ideal for:
- Auto and equipment service centres
- Trade maintenance services
- Health care providers – for health check-ups
- Beauty service providers
3. Streamline operations
Sending automated notifications about appointments or deliveries through text messaging is helpful to customers and reduces the administrative workload.
Used extensively by:
- health care providers
- service centres
- transport and accommodation services
- delivery services
4. Keep customers informed
Being proactive by keeping customers informed during extraordinary peak times using a variety of channels will reduce inbound volumes and demonstrate care and commitment to customer service.
Examples include:
- environmental emergencies and accidents
- service outages
- large scale events
5. Provide instant help to website visitors
Adding a ‘Click to Call’ button to your website or app makes it easy for prospects to chat to you now, while their interest is at a peak.
Ideal for:
- answering product/service enquiries before purchase and taking sales orders
- providing customer service / help desk support from a live team member when they can’t find the answer on your website
- directing enquiries into a queue, or connecting into self-help options through your IVR
6. Put customers in control
When customers do need to call your contact centre, give them the power to decide what they want to do when faced with a possible wait.
- Keep them engaged and save time by asking them to pre-authenticate or enter information that will be presented to the agent upon connection, like identification details, membership or order numbers
- Allow them to delay call answering if something has cropped up, and stay in the queue for a few more minutes
- Give them the option to request a call back if they don’t wish to stay on hold
Contact Centres of all sizes need to get mobile now
‘By 2020, Customer Experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator’, according to the Walker Customers 2020 report.
The marketing departments and contact centres of progressive organisations know that the customer controls the business landscape; and in order to keep them loyal, the organisation must be proactive in communicating and delivering the service that their customers want, using the channels they prefer.
This is just as applicable to businesses with a small customer service / telemarketing team of 4 or 5 people, as it is to contact centres with 20 or 200 team members.
As most consumers now research, shop and communicate predominantly through their smartphones, it is crucial that business embrace Mobile Customer Experience into their Customer Service and Marketing operations as soon as possible.
In Part 2, we’ll delve into innovative ways Contact Centres are using mobility during and after calls.
Find out more about our Contact Centre Mobile Customer Experience Service
If you’d like to find out more about the Premier Contact Point Mobility Module, call us on 1300 85 11 11 or email us. We’ll give you an impressive behind-the-scenes peek, so you can see how easy it is to deliver impressive mobile customer experience, in your Contact Centre.
