Jane uses ACME Auto Insurance and needs to get in touch with customer service because she just got in a fender bender. She's standing on the sidewalk, next to her car and reaches into her purse for her smartphone to contact ACME. Depending on Jane's favorite media channel to communicate, she may just pull up the customer service phone number and call them. However, it is more and more likely that Jane will have ACME's mobile application downloaded to her phone and will contact ACME via the app.
Mobile apps for customer service are a beautiful thing. They give the client a variety of choices on how they can communicate and simplify the communication process. Sticking with the auto insurance theme above, if a client is using their provider's mobile app, their choices may include email, chat, SMS, sending pictures and video chat. Perhaps they start out on a chat. They are having trouble describing the damage to their car so they take a picture and send it to the agent via the chat. Or perhaps they turn their chat into a video chat so they can show their agent the location of their car, the damage to their car and the damage to the other driver's car. An omnichannel conversation can take place going from a chat to chat with pictures, to a video call, back to chat and then to a voice call. What a flexible tool to allow customers to communicate with contact center agents.
Other than providing multiple communication channels and flexibility for customers, another benefit for the call center is that the communication through a mobile app is using the Internet so there is no toll-free per minute charges per call. For companies with millions of minutes a month of toll-free charges, encouraging customers to use a mobile app can result in huge savings on traffic.
If your contact center has not investigated the implications of using a mobile app, perhaps it is time. Watch a recorded webinar called 7 Issues Solved by our Mobile Customer Service solution or contact Bright Pattern for an omnichannel mobile app demonstration
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