mbergelson
Member Since: 16th May 2012
Blogger
Mike is Founding Partner of Serve Lab, a boutique investment fund focused exclusively on technology startups driving innovation in customer care. He was co-founder and CEO of Audium, the leading provider of next generation contact center service creation software, which was acquired by Cisco in 2006. At Cisco he ran strategy for their enterprise collaboration business and, prior to that, led product management for Cisco's suite of customer care products.
My answers
There is a certain inevitability to the fact that mobile apps will, over time, drive customer care interactions. Consider the math - around half of calls to contact centers (in the US, at least) are made from mobile devices today. As of a few weeks ago, half of all US mobile phones are smart phones.
Most call centers can't track the device from which calls are originated, but the math suggests that ~ 20 - 30% of calls are coming from smart devices today. This number will likely double in the next few years based on growing smart phone adoption and decreased landline usage.
If people are setting up calls from smart devices, a world of possibilities presents itself for improving the experience for callers and, as an aside, saving money for enterprises.
Alas - and importantly - the industry will lag significantly behind consumer expectation. Consider the example you cite as the "pin-up for service app implementation" - Air Asia. Apologies for being a bit of a curmudgeon but that's far from a panacea of customer service.
I posted a brief blog about some specific observations of that app after reading your article on the Opus Research site.