This post is a continuation of The Mobile Channel - Part 2 and the initial post in the series, The Mobile Channel.
The complexity of the emerging contact channel world is so daunting that many companies are struggling to find answers that work. Is there a way to take advantage of these new technologies? How can business value be created from them? Risk/Reward assessments frequently leave companies focused on risk and adopting a wait and see strategy.
A paramount question any business needs to consider when defining a mobile channel strategy: What is the impact on the customer? Not just what is the benefit of interacting with customers via a mobile channel. But what is the impact of this new, very different world on my customer and how will my new mobile channel make my relationship with the customer more valuable, relevant and compelling in the new context of this very different world?
A sense of the impact on the customer is presented in the article: Precision Marketing, Five Ways to Make Better Marketing Investment Decisions by Jennifer Lacks Kaplan and Yakir Siegal: "Once at the mercy of marketers, customers have developed coping mechanisms to combat the torrent of information and messages that come their way. Companies need to move past traditional approaches to get their attention." In effect, businesses are paying a hidden price for every new contact mechanism. Instead of embracing the new mechanism, customers actively combat the intrusion, seeking defense mechanisms, from pop-up blockers on web pages, to fast-forwarding over commercials on PVR's. In the broader sense of how this impacts the mobile channel, customers are shell-shocked by the constant influx of messages and contact. The impact is customers are, in Kaplan and Siegel's words: "similar to cameras: a camera's shutter is closed except in the brief moments the shutter opens to take a picture of a scene."
This phenomenon is escalating over time. Anyone famiiliar with the love-hate relationship a user has with a blackberry can appreciate this notion. What it means for a business implementing a mobile channel is clear. Getting a customer to use the mobile channel will only work if the customer's shutter is open. Creating business value from the mobile channel will depend on minimizing the hidden price of the new contact channel and by taking account of the rapidly diminishing open-shutter time and leveraging it to produce the greatest satisfaction in the shortest possible time.
For the conclusion of The Mobile Channel series, please read on to The Mobile Channel - Part 4.
Cheers,
Dave Dingle
Co-Founder, BoomBoat Inc.
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