Digital Engagement Blog

Consumers love their smart phones, smart devices, and the ability to download mobile apps. There are 75 billion apps in Apple’s app store alone, and with more created every day, consumers have a lot to choose from. While the ever-increasing supply of apps provides a dream for consumers, it can create a nightmare for retailers and app developers.

“Mobile” is quickly becoming a sizzling hot term, a word that offers businesses endless opportunities, and also a source of headaches. What does “mobile” mean to your business?

As businesses look for innovative new ways to communicate with their customers, they are turning more and more to mobile, which offers a new and compelling channel for research, sales and customer care. Mobile engagement offers what Lopez research refers to as a “right-time” experience - the opportunity to offer the right information, on a consumer’s device of choice, exactly when they need it.

As we discussed in a blog post last week, the mobile shopping landscape is rapidly changing, and more U.S. consumers are shopping via mobile device to both buy and redeem gift cards.

The holidays are upon us, and before we know it the weeks of planning, anticipation, decorating and shopping will be over with the blink of an eye. Although Black Friday and Cyber Monday are already over, there will always be a portion of the U.S. shopping population that is procrastinating and will be searching for last-minute gifts.

A couple of months ago, we wrote a blog post about ridesharing innovator Uber, discussing the company’s brilliant idea to partner with nearly a dozen companies to allow users to directly order rides from within their apps.

In part two of this mobile-first customer care series, we discussed how smartphones have changed customers’ expectations – essentially creating a “mobile mind shift” -- and we touched on the five pillars of mobile-first customer care. The mobile mind shift means customers today expect to be able to do anything via their wireless devices in their moment of need. Smart companies will travel ahead of customers and identify these “mobile moments” and find a way to service customers through them in a way that delights them.

Now that we’ve covered the “what” in part one of this series about WebRTC in the contact center, it’s time to look at the “why” when it comes to WebRTC.  While most companies haven’t yet embraced WebRTC for customer interactions (We’re still in the early adoption cycle as the specification continues to work its way through the standards process and gains more industry awareness)  it’s critical for companies to begin crafting a strategy  to empower their digital customer service with WebRTC.

In the fall of last year, e-commerce behemoth Amazon introduced its newest Kindle Fire tablet together with a feature that some industry analysts have called “the shot heard round the world,” in comparison to the first shot fired in the American Revolution at the battle of Lexington. While the Revolutionary War started a trend of freedom throughout many nations of the world, the Kindle Fire “Mayday” button has launched a compelling new trend in customer support: easy browser-to-browser real-time voice and video communication. The Mayday button is an instant live video customer support widget that allows Kindle Fire users to summon an Amazon agent into a free video session within 15 seconds. It’s safe to say that the Mayday button has caused a few sleepless nights for marketing and sales executives of competitive device makers.

We kicked off Money2020 this past Sunday with a presentation of our recent mobile shopping research to members of the Retail Gift Card Association. The research shows that consumers have identified major gaps in retail shopping apps.

Quick: why do you own a cell phone? Is it to play Candy Crush or Angry Birds? Is it to update your Facebook profile with the proud news that your theatrically gifted seven-year-old has been cast as the third tree from the left in the school’s production of the Wizard of Oz? Is it to peek at football game scores during the interminable condo association meeting?  It might be for all of these things, but it’s primarily for convenience. If you’re old enough to remember a life before mobile phones, you’ll recall that making calls while on the go involved finding a phone booth and a quarter and pretending not to notice the highly questionable substance sticking your shoes to the floor.