What device are you using when you are standing in line? How about when you just landed in Boston on the airport runway? Obviously, your cell phone. And what are you doing on that phone? Using apps, visiting mobile optimized websites (the others aren’t worth surfing from a phone), sending text messages… you know, the usual stuff.
You know you aren’t alone, just look around you anywhere you go. People are focused on their phones. The latest research shows there are more smart phones in use than other types of cell phones (46% of adults in the US according to Pew Interest Research).
I’m bringing this up to emphasize the fact that you need a mobile strategy for your business. You customers expect more and more from your company via mobile.
Here are a few of their growing expectations.
- Customers want a mobile accessible website (not just your current website, it doesn’t look great on a small phone screen and is often hard to use). Are you like me? Do you groan when you try to access a website with your smart phone and find it isn’t made for a mobile device? Usually I just give up.
- Customers want mobile apps that make their life easier or better.
- Customers want it to be easy to find your store details, inventory info, and whatever other tools help them make decisions, make a purchase or reservation, donate or whatever.
- Customers want to reach your customer service via their preferred channel – that increasingly means social media channels like Twitter (where they spend lots of time already in their day).
Customer expectations will continue to grow on par with the speed of technology innovation. You’ve no doubt heard how mobile devices will soon will become our wallet, our office, control our home remotely (appliances, security) and beyond.
If you don’t have a mobile strategy today that ties into your overall business goals and customer engagement strategy start now. Your mobile strategy shouldn’t be far afield from the rest of your business strategy. You’ll want to consider where your customer touchpoints occur via mobile just like you consider all channels where interaction points occur. Of course, you’ll want to find out what would be most useful to your customers as well. Start by examining their life and their needs, how many mobile users are hitting your website today? What are they doing via their mobile phones? Figure out how you can make it easy to interact with your company/ service/ product and you will be ahead in the game.
No one wants to be left behind when competition wins market share for playing in the space their customers live – the mobile/ wireless space.
