Why Customer Engagement isn’t just a fad & how you could actually rule your market through it

Recently came across an article from Colloquy library (http://bit.ly/1hZbMlr), which talks about the extraordinary ability of human beings to make the time go fast. Skeptics may say such sort of thing is impossible; but wait, you haven’t read the entire scenario yet. The article talks about the concept of “Flow” which essentially means that when you are doing an extremely interesting activity, it generates an uncommon rhythm which can make time to fly by. Remember a really interesting movie or more pertinently, a captivating video game? You would readily indulge into fond nostalgic memories of your childhood or teenage.

                  When you are in pure ‘Flow’ the activity occupies your life

So coming back to the Flow, Colloquy article says that if a company or brand is able to generate such Flow for its customers, their brand image & repeat purchases will be immensely uplifted.  The area of marketing that encapsulates this subject is that of Customer Engagement. Customer Engagement is a vital part of CRM. Actually, if you take a high-level look, both CRM & CEM (Customer Engagement Management) can appear very similar. This white paper by Experian (http://bit.ly/1mwnbid) accentuates this fact. The same white paper also tries to decode CEM into 4 Is – Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy, Influence. Our view on Customer Engagement is that it’s the art of initiating or furthering active conversations with the customers on continuously or on need-basis, provided this communication adds value to the product or service. Wikipedia defines Customer Engagement as the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer-led or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline. 

As we have been introduced to Customer Engagement Management (CEM), let us also explore its need in the business. CEM brings a lot of great benefits to your brand & company. Still, many people dismiss CEM as a marketing gimmick primarily because its benefits are not always linear, tangible or 1:1 traceable with the efforts. Let us explore some of the benefits which can be practically traced to good CEM: First one is Customer Retention. Properly engaged customers will always stick to your brand. (Just think of it along the lines of retention probability of properly attended spouses!) Secondly, engaged customers will automatically generate a buzz for your brand or company. Knowingly or even unknowingly. You’ll never know in which way engaged customers will sing your praises even through casual conversations within their network. Such ‘happily engaged’ customers are largely responsible for bringing in referrals. And it’s not just perceptual value. Did you know there are many operational efficiencies to be gained from customer engagement? In that regard, this study paper by Forrester Research is an interesting read - http://adobe.ly/1dTuCYS. This is only one side. On the other side, your customers are not left behind. They get increased total relationship value & a great customer experience. It could be a Win-Win in the making.  

Let us assume you are impressed & want to have a go at CEM. But how will you do it? As I see it, it would be optimal to divide it in 2 parameters – CEM Stages & Channels of CEM. CEM Stages signify the stages in the Engagement lifecycle. I would roughly list them as Enrollment stage, Engagement stage, Gamification stage. All of these stages require feedback loops & instant 2-way communications. Second parameter is CEM Channels. There will always be that good old channel of in-store engagement where your service staff will engage with the customer. Then there come the technological channels – Mobile & Internet. You can engage your customers via SMS-based/USSD-based/IVR-based Mobile solutions or you can design apps for specific mobile platforms (Android, iOS, WindowsPhone).  These apps may use SMS services or internet data (GPRS, 3G) for as communication mediums. There have also been significant developments in the web-based customer engagement solutions. 

Customers are definitely ready for more engagement from the companies & this article (http://bit.ly/1jXahFB) solidifies the belief. One of the more interesting figures is that as many as 86% customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Judging from the steady rise in consumerism plus steeply rising use of technology by humans to interact, Customer Engagement may be your kingmaker in the market.

Is the ‘Tata Sky Mobile App’ too ambitious for India’s Network Infrastructure?

On May 2013, Tata Sky launched “new version” of their Tata Sky Mobile App for the Android platform. This app is supposed to be doing tonnes of stuff for you. Their catchphrase is ‘Take your TV with you, everywhere you go’. It lets you use your android device as a remote control for the Tata Sky Set-top box, Use Remote Record functionality, browse through their EPG (Electronic Program Guide) & much more. And recently we have noticed a trend wherein many DTH Service Providers are rendering streaming of On The Go television. That’s a really welcome trend, but do we really have the necessary telecom infrastructure to avail these services?

4G is yet to pick up the pace in India. However, we can certainly say that most of the metros in India have fair 3G connectivity. The Wi-Fi dependent services of the Tata Sky Mobile App (remote control, gesture remote etc.) can surely be used hassle free. However, that should not be the true purpose of a DTH mobile app. You already have your Set Top Box Remote for that. I feel that the true value proposition of such apps lies in the prospect of providing streaming television. However, such a ground-breaking functionality requires very high speed & high fidelity networks. Are such networks present in India over larger areas? The only times I encountered such WiFi networks having high-speed internet connectivity were in corporate offices, colleges & some households. In none of those places watching television on mobile is readily allowed or advisable (unless the organization is Google or Facebook, of course). It’s not allowed in colleges & offices while you could simply switch on your TV set when you are at home. The real benefit of this app is being able to stream television on road (not while driving!), on playgrounds, on outings, in food joints (this may be possible in a few places).

Coming back to our discussion about internet connectivity, do our cities (lets skip villages for now) have that powerful internet ‘in the air’ to render hiccup-free video streaming?  I think not. And we all know about the hugely inflated costs of unlimited 3G connections. The spotlight is now on the telecom service providers, who must weave efficient network architectures to attract the public at large. Companies like Vodafone, Reliance have already sensed this & they have started to focus on their 4G infrastructure in India. Soon enough others will have to follow suit. 

Lastly, dear reader, what is your opinion about the Tata Sky’s strategy? Is it too soon to roll out such services in our market or is it a tactical masterstroke designed by peeking into the future?  I guess only time will tell. I for one think that it is just another value added service without any practical advantage; but it is something which could be a make-or-break kind of masterstroke in future.   

PaaS - The Future is here!

Platform-as-a-Service is the talk of town in software industry these days. And make no mistake about it; almost every ITES company is keeping a keen eye on the developments in the PaaS domain. And why wouldn’t they?  PaaS on the verge of becoming the most popular option among software services delivery models. More specifically, PaaS comes under the domain of cloud computing. It is one of the service delivery models of cloud computing.

Let us now see what PaaS really is. PaaS (Platform as a Service) is exactly what it name suggests. It does not provide you with traditional software (a standalone & definite computer application) that suits your needs. Instead, it provides the client with Tools & Libraries to build their own softwares. Ultimately, the user creates his/her own software by making use of the tools & libraries provided under PaaS contract. As per this thread from stackoverflow.com - http://bit.ly/1iyA6gs, in PaaS the service provider provides you with computing platforms which may include an operating system, programming language execution environment, database & web server.

A PaaS user is not provided with a rigid application; instead he/she has great flexibility & control over building of the apps as well as their deployment. PaaS providers essentially rent their platform to let users play with the given tools, environments & libraries, thus enabling them to create their own applications. Some examples are Google App Engine, Heroku etc. - which provide users with fantastic development tools including compilers, execution environments & version control systems. These platforms take care of application deployment side, too. Because of all these facilities, PaaS is already changing the manner in which softwares are developed & deployed, as illustrated in this article -

 http://www.infoworld.com/t/paas/how-paas-changing-enterprise-app-dev-237985. Developers are curious & enthusiastic about trying out PaaS-based development because it could save them from a bunch of cumbersome tasks, as Rourke McNamara succinctly explains in this article -   http://bit.ly/1iZNxUU.

There are many types of PaaS. First is Add-on Development which renders platform for developing add-ons for specific softwares. Next is Stand-alone Development Environments which provide users with a generalized development platform. Furthermore, there are Application Delivery-only platforms which do not include code compilation & debugging capabilities but instead facilitate application deployment aspects such as security & scalability. There are many more types emerging at a rapid speed.

While reading about PaaS, I came across an interesting presentation on slideshare. Here’s the link - http://slidesha.re/1efOeJZ. This presentation talks about SPHERE platform by commercetools which claims to be the first PaaS-based solution to develop E-commerce apps. It provides an extensive set of tools to facilitate app development for -  customer profile management, merchant integration, payments & the like.  All in all, Platform-as-a-Service has made the businesses seriously rethink their App Development, Deployment & Software License Purchase strategies. Barring an incredible collapse, it seems to be the way to go for businesses, whether they are on provider-side or receiver-side of IT services. World is ready for a walk in the clouds...... are you?

Notes to Myself - A Customer Experiences

The moment I hear of Loyalty programs at any of the stores from any of the so-called big business houses, I indulge myself in a moment of cynicism. The core of the matter here is that very few or practically none of the businesses we know in India have customer centricity in focus.Loyalty programs are a logical extension of great customer experience. Trying to buy loyalty without a good customer experience….or dare I say sometimes a rotten experience is bound to boomerang and have a counter effect. It leaves such a bad taste in the mouth that a person is cynical on being talked to about the benefits of Loyalty programs for the brand. The thought going through the mind is that – “Guys, first get your basic act together and deliver what your product/service promises and then move on to trying something else!”

I had a weird experience a couple of months back with Tata Broadband. I had been using their services for 6-8 months when I suddenly faced a problem in connectivity. I called up customer care to be told that I do not exist as a customer. After repeated calls and on providing bill nos. for the past so many months, I was still told by customer care that even though they understood my problem, they could not help as I do not exist as a customer in their database and they could not even register my complaint as such. I repeated my customer id no. for the nth time to the nth customer care executive and told them to check out their portal where I could log in using my id. I was told that theirs is an outsourced agency and they can only work on data they are provided with. Turned down yet again! I tried this for 4 days repeatedly for a couple of hours, lost productive hours crying myself hoarse and crying in front of anyone who would care to listen. My colleagues finally got bored and told me to change my provider which I agreed to and decided that I will get this done asap!.  Well, the ordeal ended when I just resigned myself to the absurdity of the situation………..  Cut to 3 months later, some arbitrary Tata Broadband collection agency started hounding me stating that 600 Rs. Of post paid money was due to them ( I had subscribed to Pre-paid…I said so and was told that the system says post paid). I promptly released my frustrations and gave vent to my feelings …ending up with a firm resolve that I would not stand this and will not pay even a single new paisa. Well, …..the hounding continued for the next 5 months….and finally I paid up the 600 Rs. And today I am a free bird. It will take me some time to get the courage to approach another broadband operator! So much for the Tata brand name…..So every time I walk into any of the Tata stores in any of their diverse businesses and am offered a Loyalty card, I laugh to myself…Actually I am sh*t scared!!!

Let me recount another experience which happened a couple of days earlier with Axis Bank Credit card division. With the new ruling for a Chip and Pin card by RBI becoming mandatory, Axis Bank decided to send me a brand new replacement card. (I have a Platinum card and a lot of my monthly payments are linked to it) What they forgot to do was send the PIN by courier. (though I did receive an SMS that the PIN had been delivered to me… J) I tried getting across to the relevant persons but in vain, till the day arrived when without using PIN, the card would not work (48 hrs to go). I called up customer care  and learned that I have been crying unneccesarily! Axis Bank has a wonderful IVR system that makes the entire process smooth and I could even generate my credit card PIN there and then. Great I thought, we are really making progress now……. But it was not to be. What I encountered was another horrendous customer experience!!

(To be continued….)

- Guest Blog

Loyalty or Disloyalty Programs!

Despite several new malls and stores opening up in the last seven years that I've been living in Pune, India, I've been a loyal shopper at one of India's pioneering retailer. Good ambience, adequate assortment of products, reasonable prices, and, above all, a loyalty card that gives me reward points every time I shop there - these are the main reasons why I've been  fulfilling almost 100% of my needs around clothing and electronics from this retailer for the past decade or so. In between, since I was living abroad, I hadn't visited this retailer for close to two years. But the first time I wanted to buy some clothes upon my return to India, I remembered this retailer and visited one of their stores. After picking up a couple of shirts and trousers, I reached the checkout counter and presented my credit card along with the loyalty card. Lo and behold, I was told that my loyalty card had expired due to non-usage for two years, and that I had to re-apply for another card. My immediate reaction was, when banks and others could offer the facility of reactivating dormant accounts, why couldn't this retailer do the same with their loyalty card? With the kind of choice that I now have, shouldn't they be glad that I thought of them first - and not any of the other stores - when I wanted to buy something that they sold? Did this retailer expect me to visit their store when I was abroad just to keep my loyalty card active? No prizes for guessing what I did: I dropped the goods at the counter and just walked out of the store. And, thanks to this retailer's foolish behavior, I got a chance to check out some of the other malls and stores that have cropped up on the scene during the decade that I was loyal to this retailer. Since I liked what I saw at these new places, I'm unlikely to ever return to this retailer in future. I can't miss the irony of how a loyalty program, when poorly managed, can breed disloyalty. UPDATE: Since writing this post, I've come across some retailers in the US leveraging mobile phones in novel ways to make enrolment to loyalty programs extremely frictionless. In one case, after making the payment for your purchase, you let the billing clerk know your mobile phone number. You receive a text message within seconds with an offer that you can redeem on your next visit. No form to fill. No nothing. The retailer has enrolled you to their loyalty program using your mobile number as the unique identifier. As simple as that! - Guest Blog (Contributed by S. Ketharaman)

Doubling Mobile Wallet Adoption by Halving its Scope

In Mobile Wallets Should Fix What's Broken - And It Ain't Payments, we saw why consumers were more likely to try out mobile wallets for store loyalty cards than debit or credit cards. In this post, we’ll go beyond initial adoption and see where these two mobile wallet use cases - “mobile loyalty” and “mobile payment” respectively - stand with respect to sustained usage. On that count, early adopters will be forced back to plastic if not enough merchants accepted mobile wallets or they found mobile wallets cumbersome, or both. Therefore, merchant acceptance and user experience are two critical success factors for the ongoing use of mobile wallets. Let’s see how mobile loyalty compares with mobile payment on these CSFs. Merchant Acceptance By the very nature of a loyalty program, no one will complain if their loyalty cards are "misused" by someone else, so loyalty card transactions don't need a signature or PIN. Since many retailers don't insist on swiping or dipping plastic loyalty cards, consumers can earn rewards by simply reading the loyalty # off of their loyalty app. Therefore, mobile loyalty apps will enjoy sustained usage even if a merchant can't or won't install special equipment required to read loyalty card details off of smartphone screens. On the other hand, in-store plastic debit and credit card transactions require PIN / signature and swipe / dip. Merchants have invested in the requisite infrastructure for handling plastic payment cards decades ago. For them to now consider accepting mobile payments, they need to invest in additional equipment to scan payment cards off of smartphones (via NFC, QR code or Bluetooth or equivalent). That's a big hurdle for widespread adoption of mobile payments. As if that were not enough, merchants also have to contend with higher processing fees for accepting mobile payments since such transactions are classified as Card Not Present, which attracts higher interchange rates. Therefore, merchants face a double whammy while accepting mobile wallets for payments. User Experience In-store use of both mobile loyalty and mobile payments entail the user to fire up the app and select the appropriate card from among the many cards saved on the app. The time taken for these steps depends upon highly variable factors like the smartphone model and the number of cards saved on the mobile wallet. As a result, the jury is out on whether mobile wallets slow down the in-store checkout process or not. That said, the very nature of loyalty programs makes it easier to mitigate potential checkout delays since there's only one loyalty card that's 'appropriate' for a given store e.g. Subcard at Subway or PAYBACK at Big Bazaar. A location based mobile wallet app like Apple Passbook can save time by automatically selecting the correct loyalty card at a given store location. The same is not so straightforward in the case of a payment card where any (open loop) card would work at any store, thereby undermining the notion of  'appropriate card'. The above comparison makes it clear that mobile wallets fare better on both merchant acceptance and user experience when they're positioned at store loyalty cards rather than debit or credit cards. This signals a brighter outlook for sustained usage and mainstream adoption of mobile loyalty as against mobile payment. Guest Blog (Contributed by S. Ketharaman)

Mobile Wallets Should Fix What’s Broken – And It Ain’t Payments

My leather wallet wore out recently. With so much buzz around mobile wallets, I was wondering if I should even bother with another leather wallet. Before switching to a mobile wallet, I inventoried the contents of my wallet and arranged them into two piles. LHS: This pile contained payment related items such as cash, two credit cards and one debit card. RHS: All non payment related items went into this pile. A partial list of contents included many store loyalty cards, two driving licenses, one paper receipt, one health insurance card and one alumnus card. It was immediately obvious that the pile on the right was much larger than the one on the left. Look like it's no different for most people: According to this PandoDaily article, "Physical wallets, pockets, and purses... carry a wide variety of items, from cash and credit cards to coupons and boarding passes." Looking at the plastic payment cards on the LHS, I realized - like many others - that nothing is broken with them. It's no big deal carrying two credit cards and one debit card. Even people who use many more cards than me on a regular basis can always choose to leave a few of them behind at home. This is possible because payment cards are interchangeable, which means any (open loop) card will work at any store. For eons, I'm used to handing over my plastic cards at checkout or doing the swipe, dip or tap action myself where the merchant allows it. Therefore, I don't see a compelling reason to change the way I use my payment cards. On the other hand, plastic loyalty cards on the RHS are a major source of pain. First of all, there are too many of them to fit in my wallet. I can't take an arbitrary decision to leave some cards behind since I'd lose rewards when I shop at those stores. Barring a few coalition cards like PAYBACK and NECTAR,  loyalty cards are not interchangeable across stores. Secondly, I forfeit rewards on shopping done by others in my family at a certain retailer when its loyalty card is in my wallet. These are pain areas worth resolving. Mobile wallets fit the bill perfectly. All of them obviate the need to carry multiple cards. Some like KeyRing allow users to scan a single loyalty card into multiple smartphones, so they can earn rewards whenever any of their family members go shopping. While I still need to go out and buy another leather wallet, I can avoid cramming all my store loyalty cards into it by moving them to a mobile wallet. I can already hear people suffixing the last sentence with "provided merchants accept loyalty cards off of smartphones". I agree that that's not a given. But, in the next part of this post, I'll explain why merchants are lot more likely to accept mobile wallets for loyalty - rather than payment - cards. Watch this space. Guest Blog (Contributed by S. Ketharaman)

Beware of Losing Sales with Bad Loyalty Programs!

It wasn’t so long ago that I’d blogged about how one particular retailer’s loyalty program actually bred disloyalty. The ink is hardly dry on that post and I’ve already found another retailer that’s going down the same path and is bound to lose sales as a result of its poorly conceived loyalty program. Retailer X, as we shall call this retailer, is the retail division of a multidivision conglomerate. My family has been shopping with Retailer X for several years, so when it recently launched a loyalty program, I didn’t hesitate to sign up for it as soon as it was offered to me. However, in this day and age of frictionless enrolment into loyalty programs on the basis of just a mobile phone number, it was a bit strange to find that the checkout attendant at Retailer X insisted that I had to complete a long printed form while standing at the checkout queue. I flatly refused to do this. Thankfully, the store manager saw sense and permitted me to take the blank form home, complete it at my convenience and return it to the store later. With a painful enrolment process out of the way, I thought that I could begin to literally enjoy the – er – rewards of my labor when I went shopping at Retailer X. However, that was not to be. Most retailers in India credit rewards for purchases on the basis of any personally identifiable information of the customer like card number, cardholder’s name or even mobile phone number in case the customer has forgotten to carry their card along while going shopping or has consciously left it at home because there simply isn’t enough space in their wallet for all the loyalty cards they’ve signed up for. Retailer X doesn’t. You must hand over your loyalty card to the attendant while checking out or you lose your rewards. They don’t even credit your reward points when you bring along the loyalty card and the previous bill on your next trip. I’m not demanding the superior customer experience enjoyed by users ofKeyring and similar mobile loyalty programs in the USA who’re used to storing multiple loyalty cards in a single mobile app instead of having to stuff them inside their wallets. But, it’s quite exasperating when Retailer X doesn’t even follow the generally accepted practice in India. So, what do we do now? Simple: I keep Retailer X’s loyalty card with me and shop at Retailer X whenever I find it convenient to do so. My wife has simply stopped visiting Retailer X now because she doesn’t find it worth the trouble to remember to retrieve the card from me when she thinks of going shopping there. Funny, considering both of us used to visit Retailer X – individually or together – for several years when it didn’t even have a loyalty program! But, that’s typical consumer behavior for you: Having enrolled for a loyalty program with Retailer X, consumers would hate spending money there and be denied rewards by Retailer X’s rigid policy. It’s an irony that, after launching a loyalty program, Retailer X has actually lost a sizable share of our household budget, which is now spent at its competitors’ stores. Since others credit reward points on the basis of card surrogates like name or membership number, we don’t face the same problem with them. Retailer X’s loss is their gain. Now, there’s a lesson in this for product managers and marketers in retail companies. In the course of providing product management solutions to many product companies, my company GTM360 Marketing Solutions regularly comes across features that demand additional efforts from users without giving them any commensurate gain. When we recommend a suitable change to these features such that they don’t tax the users, we often get push backs from engineers and product managers of the form that can be paraphrased in the present context as follows: As a loyal customer, my wife and I would / should make the extra effort of remembering to carry the loyalty card along with us whenever we visit Retailer X individually or together, therefore Retailer X’s policy requiring physical presentment of the loyalty card is not an issue. If Retailer X feels wants to hide behind this logic, I’m sorry to say it’s making a big mistake and will pay dearly in lost sales. In today’s world, consumers are spoilt for choice and won’t be inclined to take any additional trouble just to conform with any one retailer’s misguided policies. Instead, they’ll shop elsewhere. Retailer X will end up being the loser by taxing its consumers’ loyalty too much. If it thinks of bringing up ’security’ to justify its policy, sorry, it won’t work with me. Retailer X will face no different fate. - Guest Blog (Contributed by S. Ketharaman)

Mobility for Last Mile Connectivity

Today’s world is moving at a lightning speed. No, I’m not talking about earth’s rotation speed about its own axis or its orbital speed around the sun. I’m essentially talking about fast changing lifestyles of people & shorter product lifecycles. In today’s India, travelling & movement of people within the country has increased to a large extent. Moreover, people just do not want to lose contact while travelling. The need to stay connected (especially in young & middle-aged generation) is starting to become one of the basic needs of humans. Add to that busy schedules, online payment services & you’ve uncovered a new business domain – ‘Mobility’.

One industry was bound to make a huge leap of progress due to this need of mobility – the E-commerce industry.  Naturally, it has recorded really big numbers in terms of growth. ( 88% y-o-y growth in the last year, details as per economic times report - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/indias-e-commerce-market-rose-88-in-2013-survey/articleshow/28144076.cms ) E-commerce growth can be attributed to a few other reasons too, viz., standardized products (consumers do not need to check the product quality physically, since most product categories have adopted standardized manufacturing) & online payment services (there are so many alternatives to cash payments available today).  

How exactly has this become possible? Let us have a glance at technological breakthroughs achieved by mankind in the last 2 decades: First one is wireless communication. Whether you are using GSM/CDMA with 3G,4G connectivity, GPRS, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi; you are using some form of wireless communication. Admittedly, some of these technologies have been invented far back than last 2 decades, but they have really become power friendly & consumer-friendly in the last 2 decades. Second one is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has enabled such miniaturization of almost all devices that it is astonishing to believe the improvement in sizes & processing powers of devices just 15 years ago.

Businesses of course have to keep up with technological & lifestyle changes & hence companies have been focusing more & more in the area of Mobility. Mobility can be deployed by organizations in 2 ways – Enterprise Mobility (as a supporting platform to accommodate BYOD style of working [Bring-Your-Own-Device]) & leveraging Mobility as a tool to engage customers. A few mobility solutions are already available in the market. However, most of them cater the need of enterprise mobility. It would be really interesting to see the innovative solutions in the area of customer engagement & customer loyalty.

Today most of the companies have a hard time connecting to their consumers. This is particularly applicable for FMCG industries, where volume of sales is so high that currently companies don’t even bother recording the names of even the frequent customers. Mobility technologies could be a great enabler to actually link organizations to their customers.  Here are some of the ways through which businesses can leverage mobility to engage with their customers:  1) CRM   2) Transaction Tracking 3) Targeted Advertising   4) Incentivization

First one is CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Mobile CRM stands to be a great way for a company to engage with its customers. It provides tremendous amount of time & place flexibility to the customer. They don’t have to stand in long queues or wait for an access to PCs to interact with the company. Some part of this was already being provided through IVRs, but now smartphones & Internet connectivity have really brought the Customer Helpdesk in the palm of consumer’s hand. Companies can do Servicing & Troubleshooting as well as solicit Instant Feedbacks through mobility. Second way is Transaction Tracking. Customers don’t do all their transactions at a specific outlet or on the PC. Through mobile devices, most of their transactions can be recorded.  Mobile devices present businesses with a 24x7x365 touchpoint to reach their consumers. Next step in customer mobility is Targeted Advertising. If transactions of customers are recorded, we can draw out patterns & based on those trends targeted advertising can be sent to the customers. Furthermore, since a company gains lot of info about the buying patterns of a consumer, accurate & more importantly instant incentivization can also be done through mobility.

Thus businesses exploring the terrain of consumer mobility stand to gain a lot from it. Organizations however, must re-think their approach & attitude about the mobile computing world. Some tips can be found here – http://bit.ly/1gGJ4Fb. Proper implementation of customer mobility solutions can really go a long way for companies in creating long-term & fruitful engagement with their customers.