OpenMarket – April 14, 2015
Enterprises at various stages of the mobile maturity curve have different perspectives on mobilizing their business. Some have specific Return on Investment (ROI) or customer satisfaction requirements for a particular use case or project, while others understand that if they don’t do it they won’t be as competitive.
A big part of mobilization includes adding mobile messaging as an engagement channel with customers and employees, and for optimizing business operations. In working with Global 2000 enterprises I’ve seen three main reasons for why enterprises move forward with integrating mobile messaging into their business processes and systems.
#1: Nearly Everyone has a Mobile Device
Anyone in the mobile industry should know the standard stats:
With compelling numbers like these, businesses should no longer be asking if they should mobilize, but instead how and what to prioritize. Companies that move quickly will gain a competitive advantage and can potentially reshape their industry. Enterprises overly focused on having concrete ROIs are somewhat missing the point – the world is going mobile and if they don’t, then their customers will pass them by.
#2: Improving Customer Experience (CX)
Mobile is a very effective channel for improving the customer experience and CX is major differentiator for many global brands like Amazon, Nordstrom, Walmart and others. Customer experience can impact businesses in two major ways:
The cost of poor customer experience:
- Poor quality of customer experience is the #1 reason for churn, not price
- 89% of customers stop buying after a single bad experience
- Acquiring new customers is 5x to 10x more costly than keeping existing ones
The benefits of a good customer experience:
- 62% of customers purchase more after a good customer experience
- 55% of customers would pay extra to guarantee a better experience
- A 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company
Many enterprises are now integrating text messaging into their CX plans – from product promotions, to order and shipping alerts, and even text-enabling their toll-free customer support lines. With nearly everyone owning a mobile phone, no app download requirement and a very familiar technology at hand, SMS is the best channel for improving CX.
#3: Return on Investment
Every so often I get asked about the ROI for a particular enterprise mobile messaging use case. Some scenarios are easier to determine an ROI for – like order and shipping alerts to reduce calls to the call center, or having contact centers using more affordable text messaging services versus voice calls.
Other use cases clearly improve the CX (i.e., flight delay alerts), but may be harder to calculate a specific ROI, even though studies show that improving the CX will deliver tangible financial benefits. And internal use cases such as corporate communications and IT outage alerts impact employee engagement, satisfaction and business continuity – clearly beneficial results, but somewhat more challenging to calculate an ROI.
And in some cases you just need to have faith that if nearly 100% of your customers and employees have mobile devices and use text messaging, then it’s probably a good idea to start using it to engage with them.
In an increasingly competitive landscape, now is the time for companies to mobilize their business processes and communication strategies. Please share your thoughts on how text messaging has transformed the way you engage with your customers and employees.