Design for the Generic Smartphone

8 Mobile Contact Center Design Ideas

Did you know that only two companies, Facebook and Google, have apps that are installed in the majority of smartphones in the US? If you don’t work for Google or Facebook, most of your customers won’t have your mobile application. And, if you are over 35, you probably don’t want to: according to comScore, only 37% are interested in discovering and installing new ones. Considering the amount of time and energy spent to convince an audience to install an application, and use it more than twice, adoption rates of mobile applications are disappointing.

But why the all of the effort for tepid results? It solves a huge problem. Mobile applications connect people to the software of the company, to enable them to complain, order plane tickets or watch training videos. This direct connection is remarkably more efficient than calling the company, for both customers and employees. The problem, of course, is that most business interactions are transactional, and relatively rare. How many businesses do you call monthly, even weekly? It’s easy to forget you even installed an application a few days after you did.

Instead, design for the 90% of your customers that carry a smartphone, and don’t assume they have your application installed. Instead of depending upon mobile applications, provide a mobile web experience — and deliver the link to it over SMS. You can depend upon your customers to carry smartphones that can make a phone call, send a text message, open a mobile browser and take a picture. With the combination of those four capabilities, businesses can provide solutions that nearly all of your customers can use, now. You’ll surprise yourself on how many problems you can solve.