Can you recall your first experience of early smartphone apps? Where they based on trivial, or informational use cases? The first iPhone 3 app I witnessed was a beer-drinking app, which would mimic a glass of beer being drunk empty as the user tilted the phone over to much hilarity in the office.
Fast-forward to today and we are in the midst of a mobile digital age where apps understand the context of what we are doing. Whatsapp knows which friends are online, Spotify suggests playlists, Netflix recommends films, Tripcase knows my next flight and Waze can get me home fast with two finger presses.
Every time I run one of our Talk Mobile workshops, I ask the audience what is their favourite app. Most people mention two, one they use frequently and one they love to use. And every time, I learn about a new app that does fantastically useful stuff for us.
This has involved a significant shift beyond information and transactions to user experiences where context and advice make our life easier, encompassed in what is being termed the Digital journey. And at the heart of this journey are mobile apps that know what you want to do next.
Nevertheless time and again we encounter mobile apps that come up short. Our banking apps should be warning us if we over spend this week. Our supermarket apps should flag up what we are likely to need or more importantly what we will not need in our cart almost like an inventory management service. We most certainly should not be receiving the load of outbound notifications and marketing clutter we get through poorly conceived push notifications or email.
Considering how mobile can enhance this experience is key: consider my entire user journey, allow me to upload a photo if it saves me time, use my location to guide me, if I complain get back to me immediately with what I require, push me stuff I really need to know and drop the rest. You don’t have to ask me my customer number, address, post-code, birthday and mother’s maiden name every time, you have access to my finger print.
By linking mobile, business process, data and customer insight these great Digital experiences are possible and they do not need to take years to implement. By using mobile cloud services, organizations can get started immediately, providing fantastic user experiences, driving loyalty, attracting business, achieving efficiency and gaining significant advantage over the competition.
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