Mobile - Expanding the Potential of Care

As consumers we are use to automated solutions. They afford speed and control and are a necessity for companies working to meet both shareholder and customer needs. For Care the road to automated solutions began with DTMF or touchtone systems. Its introduction was largely for the benefit of the company, enabling cost savings over assisted service. As speech was introduced as an enabling technology, new voice solutions emerged, which not only accelerated savings but also improved the customer experience. As we migrate further and further to meeting the needs of a Care 2.0 world the evolution in automation will continue with event greater opportunities to improve the customer experience and offer new lifestyle experiences.

The next step in the evolution of automation will take into account we are all servicing a culture of mobility, where the mobile phone becomes the primary device for communications. This evolution is here today, with companies beginning to deploy asynchronous multi-modal care solutions. Multi-modal refers to solutions that use more than one means of interacting. In asynchronous multi-modal care, customers benefit from the convenience of using their voice to interact with the system, while also benefiting from a text based reference. After all, as kids from an early age, we are thought to use both visual and audio channels to learn. New customer facing solutions are emerging where a customer can request their last five bank balances and be presented with this data in text format in real time. Or a customer booking train travel can request a listing of all scheduled trains to Boston and view these on his or her mobile device versus trying to remember all that has been heard.

The true opportunity though for creating a very unique and differentiated customer experience comes with synchronous multi-modal care. Here the customer benefits from voice as a preferred means of access to information and services combined with the rich media experience of the web. Companies benefit from interactions occurring over the data channel and leveraging VoIP to reduce the cost of service all while delivering a new lifestyle experience to customers. Imagine booking a vacation and while interacting with the automated system being able to see live video of the hotels you are comparing. Or if you are an investment banking company, being able to offer a customer a podcast on the latest company they are interested in. And for the marketing VP, the care experience can become a new marketing channel by playing a company message or ad, while the system accesses a customer’s record. In short, synchronous multi-modal care solutions promise to deliver a completely different type of experience that benefits the customer and company alike.