Half of UK contact centres are planning to support mobile technology for customer contact within the next 12 to 18 months, according to a new study by Aspect Software. Surveying 100 UK organisations in a range of industries1, the research also found that a large majority of these organisations (86 per cent) already claim to have either the technical infrastructure in place, or are planning to do so, in order to support mobile technology for customer service.
The influence of mobility on people’s lives, their attitudes and choices, and the way they now communicate with each other, have revolutionised brand marketing. According to Gartner, tablet computers will outsell desktop and laptop sales by 60 per cent by 20152, and Ofcom reports that the majority of the UK population now own at least one mobile device3. However, organisations have been slow to embrace this change for customer care due to bandwidth limitations as well as capital investment in technology, although some companies such as Air France KLM have already seen success with it.
Mark King, senior vice president of European Sales at Aspect comments, “the research clearly shows that contact centres are investing in support for mobile technologies, which offer both the consumer and the supplier a convenient communications channel. Perhaps crucially for many organisations, mobile provides a self-service first-point-of-contact that may reduce the need to interact with an organisation all together and help drive call avoidance strategies.”
King adds, “Development in enterprise networking, data centre capability and better bandwidth, as well as the proliferation of unified communications (UC) enablers such as Microsoft Lync, have re-affirmed the benefits of mobile communications in business, and now it is stretching to customer engagement.”