Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a series of recent articles from Lenati's blog.
As mobile becomes the common denominator guiding, informing and influencing the customer through their journey, the opportunity to increase ROI through mobile is growing exponentially.
Companies must start by developing a clear understanding of customer needs and how mobile offerings can serve those needs. Only then can they make strategic decisions regarding purpose, features and overall user experience. These strategic goals in turn determine what must be measured and what defines success.
Guiding Frameworks
1. Customer Needs
Companies should consider what needs different sets of customers have and how they can solve them through mobile features. Consider these questions:
- What purposes do our customers have for mobile interaction with our company?
- At what points during daily life will they be using mobile to interact with us?
- What unique customer journeys must mobile accommodate?
- Which features are necessary to aid these journeys?
- How will customers control their own "destiny" within our mobile universe, and find the experience that fits their context and purpose?
2. Customer Journeys
Companies need to develop an understanding of the context in which customers will be using mobile. Will it be for:
- On-the-go shopping? This type of experience must be easy, fun, visual, and fast.
- Transaction facilitation? This type of experience must remove friction in customer transactions and speed and ease the customer experience.
- Physical space augmentation? This type of experience must provide useful services to make physical interactions more engaging, informative and smooth.
- Entertainment? This type of experience should draw customers to the mobile experience and act as a starting point for engagement.
3. Customer Measurement
Mobile apps make measuring customer activities easy. But it's important to focus on only a few key performance indicators when determining if the customer experience is working. And some of those customer experience measures need to be outside the mobile environment, such as the number of service interactions required by mobile users before the experience is perfected. Consider:
- Customer adoption and retention measures, such as adoption rates, drop-out rates and use frequency;
- Customer engagement measures, pitting features against each other in a competition for highest-use;
- Customer service measures, counting not only digital service interactions like chat, email or pushing a call button, but also recording physical service interactions when employees help mobile customers get set-up.