Two billion people now use smart phones, and in America, for at least two hours a day. Many Customers only Customer Experience with you might be a Mobile Experience. How will they feel about yours? What does your app say about you?
The Economist’s recent article, “Planet of the phones” describes the smartphone as the defining technology of the 21st Century. With startling statistics, including an estimate that by 2020 80% of the adult population will own one, it is clear that people love their phones—using them more and more each day. The average American spends two hours a day on their phone.
With so many people on their mobile phones, it’s clear that an organization’s mobile experience is critical to making a great Customer Experience. Chances are, many people might not have any other interaction with your brand or service that isn’t mobile. It is more critical than ever before to make sure that your mobile channel is in line with the Experience your brand promise makes.
What Makes a Great Mobile Experience?
VIEW OUR MOBILE EXPERIENCE INFOGRAPHIC HERE
When designing your mobile experience, there are a lot of details to consider, both technically and practically. However, if you bear in mind the general principles of what makes any other channel great, it’s easier to focus your efforts, including:
- A clear and definite purpose that delivers your intended Customer Experience. Your Customer Experience should be the same no matter what channel your Customer is using. Use the Customer Experience Statement as your basis for the development of your mobile channel.
- An Experience evoking the deliberate emotions you want. Over 50% of any Customer’s perception of the Experience is tied into how they feel about your Experience, or what we call the Emotional Signature®. The Mobile Experience is no exception. You must start with the emotion you want your Customer to feel after your Experience, and build backward from that point to get there.
- An outside-in approach to function. Like all your Customer Experience channels, your Mobile Experience needs a Customer-centric focus. It’s not what makes the mobile experience work for your organization, or what we would call operationally-focused, but what works for the Customer’s needs on the go, or customer-focused.
- Deliberate use of cues that appeal to the subconscious needs and feelings of your Customers. Your Customers are using your Mobile Experience to satisfy a need or emotion they are feeling. Understanding what these are, and how it might be different when your Customer is mobile (as opposed to in a store or online), is an important way to make the Mobile Experience a great one for the Customer. Subconscious cues will help you create fill these needs and evoke these emotions the way you want.
Mobile Experience Might be the Most Important Channel
Part of what an organization must also consider is how a mobile device can facilitate their experience. Phones can do so much more than play cat videos or score a triple word score with “qintar” on Words With Friends.
Phones know a lot about the user and can help streamline an experience by mining that data effectively. In a doctor’s office, it can take vital signs and communicate information about physical activity. As I mentioned in a previous post, local SEO can help a potential coffee customer find your shop “within walking distance” or an errand-running parent on their lunch hour find your children’s shoe shop in “midtown.”
Your Mobile Experience matters. Today, over half of adults have a smartphone and by 2020, 80% of adults will. It is critical your Mobile Experience delivers your intended Customer Experience. Because apparently, that’s where most people are going to have any Experience with your brand at all.
Since over 50% of a Customer’s impression of your Experience is how they feel about it, what will they think of your mobile experience?
If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:
- Mobile Experience: Harness the Power of Your Mobile Channel
- Subconscious Clues That Call People to Action
- Why I Suffered Through a Website Redesign (and You Should, Too!)
Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.
Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX