IM as a customer service UI
1 year ago, I was asked to speak about Mobile as a customer service, payments and fraud management channel at the annual innovations conference run by the major Canadian technology and services firm CGI. To supplement my standard slide deck, I decided to make a video and help communicate customer sentiment on the topic.
As the aim was to catch international consumer sentiment, we decided to ask the public in some of London’s tourist districts. On the clip, you will see some interesting people on London’s streets (my home town) and get insight into how they like to get things done in relation to account related issues. It comes as no surprise these people prefer to use simple messaging or apps. You can see that 3 minute video below or here.
More recently (5am this morning), I came across a Forbes article by Neil Howel on Why Millennials Are Texting More And Talking Less. In this article, Neil covers how organisations are following suit and removing costly corporate voicemail from their internal communications tools. As part of a firm-wide campaign to cut costs, JPMorgan Chase offered to eliminate voicemail for thousands of employees who don’t interact directly with clients. About 65% took the offer, resulting in over $3 million in annual savings and last year, when Coca-Cola made a similar move to remove corporate voicemail, only 6% of employees decided to keep it.
Whilst it is interesting to see a trend emerge in the removal of costly voice messaging communications for internal operations, at Telrock, we focus on ‘brand to consumer’ engagement, or more specifically ‘machine to consumer device’ engagement. From this perspective, Neil goes on to state that messages now outrank phone calls as the dominant form of communication among Millennials. Fully 68% of 18- to 29-year-olds say that they texted “a lot” the previous day, which plunges to 47% among 30- to 49-year-olds and 26% among 50- to 64-year-olds. Older Nielsen data indicate that average monthly voice minutes used by 18- to 34-year-olds plummeted from about 1,200 in 2008 to 900 in 2010. Texting among 18- to 24-year-olds more than doubled over this period, soaring from 600 to over 1,400 texts a month.
Why are Millennials shying away from calls? Many see the phone as overly intrusive, even presumptuous. One young worker tellsThe Wall Street Journal that calling someone “without e-mailing first can make it seem as though you’re prioritising your needs over theirs.”
Mobile is nothing new and most of our Clients, partners or industry folks have already rolled out their mobile app, or many apps and continually ask me if ‘SMS as a channel’, or more specifically ‘messaging as a UI’ will remain, given their own app download rates. I empathise with this question, as originally when we first started controlling machines, it was the command line, this was quickly replaced with the GUI, then the web came along and things got easier for Consumers. In our current age, arrive SmartPhones, which means that Customers can just download and swipe to get things done (as you can see from our video, this is much loved). However, whilst the mobile app GUIs may be ubiquitous, there is a growing trend for messaging, with the advent of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Slack. This coupled with the recent development that you can now order your Uber through messaging, via Facebook’s M (FaceBook Messenger) should lead to an interesting landscape in 2016.
Might we be reverting back to the old command line as a way to get things done?
Russell Robinson
Co-founder & Director of Product @ Telrock
@RSJRobinson