White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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WHITE PAPER

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy Applications

You don’t need a new mobile strategy, you need a mobile-led customer experience strategy. Here’s how to do it.

White paper

White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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From smartphone to mobile technologies

As smartphone penetration reaches saturation, mobile apps become commonplace and our usage continues to increase, enterprises need to expand their view of mobile, from smartphone to mobile technologies, to embrace a unified ecosystem of customer-centric touchpoints which add value and enhance customer engagement.

A well-rounded mobile strategy is no longer just about creating apps for smartphones and tablets. It needs to incorporate and unify all of the digital touch points where customers, employees and partners interact with technology to deliver outcomes.

Technologies such as smart assistants, voice interfaces and augmented reality are set to radically impact how enterprises design, develop and deploy mobile innovation. This shift is underpinned by easier access to ever-improving technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, machine vision and natural language processing.

Enterprises which ignore this new holistic approach to mobile do so at their peril. Gartner predicts that 90 per cent of large enterprises will not achieve competitive advantage through their mobile strategies during the next three years, due to siloed investment in mobile customer engagement technologies. A robust, forward-looking customer experience strategy needs to understand the changing role of mobile technologies on customer behaviour.

White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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Mobile technologies are transforming customer behaviour

Smartphones are being reimagined whilst mobile technologies become far more connected through new interfaces, forms and networks. New voice-based customer interfaces, multi-purpose super-apps, new smart devices, the increasingly connected home and car and new 5G networks are changing customer behaviours.

Whilst smartphone penetration has reached saturation, customer usage is on the rise. The amount of time we spend, the data we consume and the number of interactions we have with our mobile devices is increasing. Customers are always on, never alone, never bored and always distracted. For some heavy users, this has reached smartphone obsession levels and we are seeing rising levels of anxiety, privacy concerns, mental health issues and cyber bullying as unintended consequences.

“Mobile devices are changing ‘screen time’ from a mere habit to a way of life and it is changing the way our customers think and behave with huge implications for enterprises.”

Adam Kennedy Application Executive Director, Arq Group

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Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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On mobile devices, we create threads of interactions switching frequently across email, messaging, news, work, entertainment or social media, rarely spending more than 20 minutes uninterrupted on any one activity. These patterns vary day to day and shape the daily experience of our customers.

These interactions are led by the utility delivered to customers in big and small moments throughout their day. These moments are defined by Google as know, go, do and buy moments. ‘I want to know’ moments are about accessing information; ‘I want to go’ moments are about finding something near me; ‘I want to do’ moments focus on achieving a task viewing news, playing a game or playing a video; and ‘I want to buy’ moments is where I order or purchase something. Understanding the need and context for mobile moments can help enterprises focus efforts on delivering utility and value.

Threads of interactions

I want to KNOW

moments

Accessing more information

Look up something related to an

interested touchpoint

I want to GO

moments

Explosion of ‘near me’ searches

Find something locally to me now

I want to DO

moments

Consult smartphone for ideas doing a task

Video palying an important role in

‘how to’

I want to BUY

moments

Consult smartphone in store for purchase information/review/

pricing

Big increases in mobile conversion

White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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Emerging mobile technologies

The growing adoption of voice interfaces, AI enabled smart speakers, IoT service-based apps, and tracking and recognition technologies, will either supplement or compete with the smartphone for customer attention, utility and loyalty. Mobile experiences are being transformed by a convergence of a range of emerging technologies for facial recognition, eye tracking, voice recognition, health tracking, gesture recognition and even reading personality and emotion.

Advances in speech recognition, language processing and machine learning are converging to enable voice customer interfaces on mobile devices and in the home and car. We are transitioning from touch to voice and it has significant implications for enterprises.

New form factors including a range of wearables including watches, ear pods and glasses, and display technologies, like foldable displays, will make mobile devices increasingly intelligent, easy to use, entertaining and convenient. These hardware innovations are being complemented by software advances like on-device machine learning which is supporting live captioning, smart reply and other helpful predictive functions that save time.

Whilst innovation across customer-interface, form, display and predictive AI will change customer behaviour, network advances will also lead to significant changes in customer behaviour. The roll-out of 5G networks are transforming the way we live, play and work delivering faster speeds, more capacity and lower latency. 5G networks are delivering 10X faster data transfer, quicker response times and enabling more connected devices giving rise to a massive increase in IoT. Customers will experience high speed downloads and uploads for streaming and sharing, get better performance in crowded places and be able to stream live feeds in real-time which is likely to increase time spent on mobile devices, especially for gaming and entertainment.

The roll-out of 5G networks are transforming the way we live, play and work delivering faster speeds, more capacity and lower latency.

White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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Mobile-led customer experience

Understanding the role of all customer touchpoints in delivering customer satisfaction is foundational. Understanding how mobile technologies are used across your customer’s journey and how emerging technologies are likely to change behaviour is essential in developing a holistic customer experience strategy.

What customers are feeling, thinking and doing at key moments matters and for many, these moments occur with a mobile device. How your customer discovers, searches, buys, pays, acquires, uses, shares and develops relationships with your brand, using mobile technologies, will help you identify pain points and innovation opportunities to improve the customer experience, making it easier, faster, cheaper and more personal.

The barrier to entry for building and deploying mobile apps has all but disappeared. Instead, the challenge lies in adopting the best strategy to ensure your mobile efforts align with the enterprise strategy. Whilst the development of mobile apps will continue to be important, it will be augmented with new mobile technologies that will enable new interfaces, use cases and utility.

Aligning the organisation on the customer experience vision helps cut across siloed interests. Rather than asking if your enterprise can build an app, start by asking why it should build an app, what problems are we solving or what utility do we want to deliver. Simply recreating the mobile web experience, without any native features, fails to recognise the fundamental differences between the touchpoints. Whilst the web tends to be a channel, an app is typically a product in its own right. A channel is all about communication, whereas a product is more utilitarian and functional.

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Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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Measuring regular active usage matters to determine the utility delivered to customers. Unless you’re looking to entertain customers or sell advertising, the amount of time a customer spends in your app probably isn’t a key metric for measuring success. The goal is to deliver value, enhance engagement and improve enterprise outcomes. This likely means offering efficiencies through streamlined processes and solutions in “micro moments”. In return, customers might spend less time in your app but gain more from the engagement.

For many enterprises, the product has always been the proxy for the customer. Changing this mindset can be difficult, but it is essential for those that want to leverage the full potential of mobile technologies. This shift is even more important when enterprises face challenges from nimble, tech-savvy, customer-centric rivals free from the burdens of incumbency. These challenges can emerge seizing on the opportunity offered by an incumbent’s poor customer experience and then using technology as a force multiplier to disrupt.

The three key ways to get customers to use your app are: Design a complete engagement strategy; observe customers, competitors and other industries; and use mobile analytics to learn and iterate.

White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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Personalised mobile-led customer experiences

Mobile technologies are delivered on personal devices that have become integral tools in the lives of customers as they seek fast and helpful ways to get things done. Personalisation is a key element of a customer-centric approach to mobile leveraging intent, purchase, social and location data. This includes creating a seamless customer experience across different touchpoints, whilst building trust in order to strike the delicate balance between utility and privacy.

Customers are increasingly expecting enterprises to know them and their needs and deliver personalised solutions on their mobile devices. They seek tailored recommendations, communication in the relevant mode or context, reminders on things that interest them, to know them no matter where they interact across any device, to fix any service issues fast and to be rewarded for their loyalty. Enterprises can deliver relevant, timely and contextual recommendations and content to customers on their mobile devices to influence customer behaviour across the customer journey to generate mutual value.

For the potential of personalisation to be realised, the enterprise needs to aggregate customer data, build behaviour-based profiles, create a machine learning-enabled decision approach, develop and design relevant content, distribute that content in the right context and measure outcomes to inform ongoing iteration. Advances in mobile technologies are driving new personalisation opportunities enabled by the location services that are best delivered to mobile devices.

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Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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To realise the most value from a customer experience strategy, it should be framed as part of a wider digital transformation and mobile-led. This is where enterprises can learn from both big global technology companies, who are developing the technologies and new platforms, whilst learning how the new mobile technologies are being applied by agile start-ups. Understanding how the mobile ecosystem is changing will help enterprises develop their strategy and help with build, buy and partner choices.

Seven practices of mobile-led customer experience

1 Understand the evolving mobile ecosystem

Partner with the global technology leaders and their partners to understand emerging mobile technologies and their implications whilst learning from start-ups who are applying these technologies.

2Define current customer journeys and define how mobile technologies remove friction and create new utility

Customer journeys are mapped, validated and define opportunities. Customer insights on intent, context and immediacy exist and are applied. Design, features and products are released to enable key customer Know, Go, Do and Buy moments.

3 Think beyond smartphone apps

An app is considered as one, often important, mobile touchpoint but does not realise all opportunities. Partnership exist to explore and/or deploy new technologies like AI and AR to develop new utility or touchpoints across a range of interfaces like voice, wearables and IoT.

4Replace mobile strategy thinking with an aligned customer experience strategy

Mobile technologies form an important part of the customer experience strategy that is aligned to overall enterprise strategy. Take a unified approach to touchpoints to achieve competitive advantage.

5 Leverage mobile to drive personalisation

Mobile touchpoints are prioritised to deliver personalisation providing relevant, timely and contextual recommendations and other content that help customers get what they want seamlessly. Data, profiles, decisioning, content, distribution and measurement inform iteration.

6 Focus on outcomesFocus on delivering usable, feasible and valuable touchpoints that drive improved customer satisfaction, desired customer actions and enterprise value.

7 Continuous development Release, measure and iterate to deliver continuous value. Track emerging technologies and place small, iterative bets to better manage risk.

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Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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Conclusion

Mobile technologies are making customers more reliant, dependent and connected to their devices. Enterprises need to understand how these technologies will affect the behaviour of their customers in order to compete and outperform.

Mobile strategies focused on launching a mobile app are being replaced by a mobile technology-led customer experience strategy. The future of mobile lies beyond smartphone apps alone, embracing a range of new technologies and touchpoints which need to be unified into a customer-centric ecosystem.

We are at one of the most exciting and uncertain stages in the evolution of mobile technologies with the emergence of 5G networks, voice-based interfaces, augmented reality, new form factors, new tracking and recognition technologies, artificial intelligence and new privacy functionality. Understanding these shifts and their implications for your enterprise will help you adapt to engage with your customers across any touchpoint in any context.

White paper

Developing a mobile-led customer experience strategy

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arq.group 1800 664 222

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About Arq Group Arq Group, previously Melbourne IT Group, is Australia’s leading digital solutions partner. Arq Group creates unforgettable experiences, solves complex challenges, and provides seamless, end-to-end solutions – from design thinking, mobile, cloud, analytical insights, digital marketing and web design capabilities that come together to create valuable products and channels and unforgettable consumer experiences. Arq Group powers the growth of businesses, big and small. Founded in 1996, Arq Group has evolved from the leading Australian internet infrastructure business to the leading Australian digital solutions partner. Today, the company builds and manages innovative products and channels to market for many of the country’s largest enterprises, and provides digital marketing solutions to Australian small businesses.

This publication contains general information only. By means of this publication Arq Group is not rendering bespoke professional advice or services. Therefore, this publication alone should not be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Arq Group shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person relying on this publication alone. Given each business is operating under unique circumstances and with individual requirements, please approach us directly for specialist advice. A

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Adam Kennedy Executive Director, Digital Experiences

adam.kennedy@arq.group