Part 1 of this series introduced the incredible innovation opportunity that mobile heralds for today's marketers. Part 2 explored innovating brand engagement through mobile. Part 3 illuminated ways to innovate sales channels through mobile. And, last week, in Part 4, I focused on innovating product offerings through mobile.
This week, in the fifth segment of the series, I cover innovating customer experiences through mobile.
Marketers go to extraordinary lengths to acquire customers. And customer-courting hits all the hot buttons—deep discounts, special upgrades, and extra benefits—customers are made to feel special for doing business with companies. But once prospects have been converted into customers, marketers must focus the majority of their resources on acquiring more customers.
Yet the majority of complaints from customers don't pertain to the buying process; their anger is sharply focused on the subsequent experience. (Just search Twitter for any major brand; the frustration from customers is on full display.) Poor experiences lead to customer attrition, which presses marketers to focus on acquiring yet more customers to make up for the high rates of churn. It's a numbers game that plays out every month, with the hopes of more customers gained than lost.
But what about focusing on ways to innovate the customer experience as a way to decrease customer attrition and drive additional purchases? Especially since keeping customers is far less expensive than courting new ones... why not focus on increasing the lifetime value of customers by ensuring they feel valued, both pre- and post-purchase?
Mobile is a boon to the customer experience, because mobile provides myriad ways for marketers to delight customers and improve their experiences in ways previously unavailable. Specifically, marketers should map mobile's capabilities and tools to their customers' journey—before, during, and after the sale—to identify innovative ways to streamline customer interactions, remove friction from customer-centric processes, and deepen the overall brand experience for customers.
Let's look at examples of sophisticated organizations using mobile apps, mobile augmented reality, and other mobile technologies to innovate their customers' experiences through mobile.
Chase: Wielding Mobile to Produce a Friction-Free Virtual Banking Experience for Customers
Banking is an essential practice for businesses and consumers alike, but many of the processes are inconvenient; they require customers to interrupt their daily routines and go to a physical venue to conduct their banking transactions. Sure, the ATMs of the '80s and electronic banking systems of the 90s helped streamline many banking processes. But friction still exists; even in the 21st century, physical checks still exist, and they require customers to stop everything, leave where they are, and go to the bank to deposit funds.
We are rapidly evolving to an age where currency is more data than cash (or coin), so why not apply mobile's capabilities and tools to streamline this process for customers? That's precisely what banks, including JPMorgan Chase, have done through mobile to improve the customer experience. Through Chase's "Quick Deposit" app, customers can—at any time of day, and from anywhere—make their deposits through their mobile devices:
Customers simply launch the app, scan the front and back of endorsed checks, and, "auto-magically," their mobile phones transform into virtual banking tellers. No need for customers to interrupt their daily routines to go to the bank for deposits, and no delays for customers, beyond the normal time it takes for a check to clear. Thus, a process once riddled with friction is now quick and easy.
Chase has innovated the customer experience through mobile because it has streamlined a seemingly simple process that, for far too long, was far too complex for its customers.
How Chase Bank has seized the mobile innovation moment:
- Before Mobile? Banking customers had to interrupt their daily routines to visit the physical bank to deposit physical checks.
- After Innovation? Banking customers enjoy a seamless customer experience—by depositing their physical checks anytime, anywhere, with their smartphones morphing into virtual banking tellers.
Discover Hong Kong: Wielding Mobile to Provide a Better, Easier Travel Experience for Customers
Products and services aren't the only types of brands that can wield mobile to innovate the customer experience. Places are brands, too. The only difference is that customers are dubbed "visitors," whether consumer tourists or business travelers. And just like companies, these places seek increased revenue from visitors to stimulate local economies.
Take Hong Kong's Tourism Board, in partnership with Cathay Pacific Airways, and how it innovated the customer experience through a brilliant strategy that used mobile to streamline how visitors navigated the city, all the while providing depth to the overall city experience for visitors:
First, think about traveling to new cities, and new countries, and all the information doing so requires of visitors to purchase, carry, and digest. Visitors need maps, travel booklets, even hired guides to help them explore a city to enjoy all the famed landmarks and hidden treasures. But with all that visitors need to buy and carry, and all that they need to read and learn, let's face it... traveling can be quite a chore.