It’s time to get SMART customer engagement strategies

Organisations called on to take advantage of today’s powerful, multi-channel smart phones by creating a new model for mobile customer engagement

With today’s mobile approach mostly limited to self-service and limited transactions, Alcatel-Lucent is prescribing a strategy that brings conversations to mobile customer service applications by intelligently linking contact centre agents and customer care resources from across the enterprise, including those in the back office and branch locations.

While many companies already offer their customers mobile service apps  - consider the thousands available for banking, retail and travel  -  these are often poorly integrated within a company’s existing customer service strategy and contact centre technology platform.

As a result, today’s mobile customers suffer from a disconnected experience that often delivers frustrating hold times or no way to contact an agent or resource for additional support. This disconnected approach also fails to unleash the power of today’s smart phones in transforming customer engagement with proactive contact, personalised applications and location-based services.

Alcatel-Lucent has outlined its Genesys Mobile Customer Engagement strategy, which focuses on helping companies move from transactional applications to mobile conversations and recommends the following best practices:

• Contact Me – provide seamless and secure 'click-to-call' capabilities with context from smart phone applications with immediate agent support or scheduled call backs.
• Connect Me – deliver mobile customers to best resource from contact centre to back office departments and branch locations, across any channel – voice, SMS, chat.
• Know Me – provide personalised mobile experience based current service tasks and proactive contact with targeted offers and location-based services.

"Today’s consumers rely on their smart phones and tablets to be their 'windows to the world.' Businesses need to be creative in offering apps that integrate into all areas of the enterprise, from sales and marketing to customer care," said Tom Burns, President, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise.

This new strategy also seeks to bring conversations to mobile customer service applications by intelligently linking contact centre agents and customer care resources from across the enterprise, including those in the back office and branch locations.