Curating the Mobile Customer Experience Users Expect with CPaaS
"There's an app for that." These words have never been more true than in today's consumer market. But has the mobile customer experience plateaued despite an overwhelming abundance of mobile options? Are customers still satisfied by simply having an app for that — or do they want something more?
While there may be truths to both sides of this argument, consumers have never had such high demand for, or expectations of, the apps that populate their home screens. But what exactly are they looking for?
A New Perspective on Performance
Consumers want, in one word, performance. According to a recent survey featured in TechRepublic, it's difficult to secure permanent real estate on consumers' phones. A full 80 percent of users surveyed said they had no hesitations giving an app the boot if performance didn't meet their expectations.
And it's not just about pure programmatic performance, either. It's important to take the importance of customer experience into account if your app has any hopes of taking up lasting residence on the customer's device.
So what's a developer to do? For starters, taking the "less is more" approach can set your app above all the white noise. Instead of getting caught up in the features race, make it a point to ensure that your app stays focused.
For example, if you're building a retail app, your customers should be able to execute their orders in only a few clicks. Your customers open their apps with a very specific purpose in mind. The more difficult it is or longer it takes to accomplish that job, the less enjoyable their experience is going to be.
You might be saying to yourself "but my customers don't just want to do X or Y with our app." Great point. Thanks to the revolution of cloud capabilities, you don't need to add app complexity with each new feature.
An app needs to provide relevant, personalized content with the convenience of seamless integration. CPaaS is just a revolutionary way to check all those mobile customer experience boxes.
An excellent example of this game-changing ability can be found in mobile communication. Whether your app is designed for retail, social networking or entertainment, users expect at least some level of communication capabilities. Suppose they're filling their mobile shopping cart and have a question about a product they've placed in their cart. Think about how you would expect to communicate in the same situation.
Would you:
- Find contact information within the app and then dial the number or send the email.
- Conduct a Google search.
- Download a separate, support-focused app.
- Take advantage of built-in functionality to chat, text, call, or video conference right there on the spot.
If you answered anything but 'D,' you're doing it wrong. As obvious as that choice may seem, surprisingly few organizations bundle these options with their customer-facing apps. The reason? Many think that the development requirements are too steep to justify the added customer experience benefits.
The Answer for Mobile Customer Experience is ... CPaaS?
The good news here is that you don't have to exhaust your own development or IT resources to pull off comprehensive mobile communication. With the use of communications platforms as a service (CPaaS), you can seamlessly integrate real-time communication — think voice, messaging, phone verification, and so on — without lifting a finger to prop up supporting infrastructure. It's all taken care of with the power of the cloud. Thanks to handy APIs, your dev team doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, either.
The crux of the issue is really pretty simple. A better-performing app is one that's intuitive, relevant and satisfying. Contextual communication is a huge piece of that puzzle. Our previous example illustrates CPaaS's effect on the intuition and satisfaction parts. As for relevance, look no further than the biggest digital phenomena in recent memory: social media.
This works in two ways and the result is beautiful. You get to enhance the value and performance of your own app while cashing in on the relevance of your user's social media presence.
The first piece entails leveraging automated, personalized communications based on a user's previous interactions. CPaaS coordinates the magic when a customer makes contact through your app and a relevant deal, order update or service announcement is made. This means they get timely contact through your app at those "ah-ha" moments that build trust and help your customers feel valued.
The second aspect is all about giving the customer every opportunity for effective communication wherever their screen takes them, such as chat APIs that let them message you straight from their social media app. This convenience is exactly the kind of "performance" your users expect and the ones that lead to better mobile interactions.
In the end, it's simply not enough to "have an app for that." Instead, that app needs to provide relevant, personalized content with the convenience of seamless integration, and CPaaS is a revolutionary way to check all those mobile customer experience boxes.
Contact Vonage Business to learn more about how cloud-based communications can aid your company.
