Businesses Say Customer Service is the #1 Priority for Mobile Apps

A new survey by FollowAnalytics of mid-size and large companies reports that for businesses building mobile apps, their #1 priority for doing so was to improve Customer Service. This might be a surprise to those who assume that a business would mainly get a mobile app just because it’s the “cool” thing to do these days…

38 percent of the survey’s 451 respondents said their primarily purpose in creating an app was improving customer service. Another 12 percent said it was to foster customer loyalty, and slightly more than a quarter wanted to extend their customer experiences beyond the Web.

“Customer service is the primary purpose of brands’ mobile presence,” said FollowAnalytics’ CEO Samir Addamine. “Especially in banking, insurance, retail, ecommerce, travel, hospitality, and automotive.”

Interestingly, less than a quarter of marketers viewed their app primarily as a means to increase revenue.

Read the full story right here…

Businesses who utilize their apps to enhance their customer service are making a smart move. They realize that they are now only a tap or two away from their customers at any given time.  That immediacy and efficiency is great – compared to the customer posting a negative review or comment on Twitter or Facebook – and it possibly going viral.

Many businesses go a step further and use their apps to collect data and communicate on a detailed level with their customers. For example, users of an Insurance app can report incidents, submit photos, and follow the progress of a claim. Or users of a Restaurant app can send a voice message to the Chef; or even a video testimonial if their service or meal was excellent.

Others are incorporating their mobile app data with their CRM’s to help ensure their customer records are as complete and accurate as possible. They can then utilize that for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and for customer loyalty programs as well.

For those businesses on the sidelines regarding a mobile app, all objective measures indicate that now may be an excellent time to get in.  Whether you goal is to improve customer service, extend the experience from your website, build customer loyalty – it’s absolutely critical that you get a mobile app developer that understands your specific business needs and can effectively promote your app to your customers and your prospects.

In a brilliant bit of branding coup, Oscar Mayer has created and released an actual dating mobile app that aims to bring together like-minded people who share a deep and abiding love for…bacon!

Proving once again that “there’s an app for that” – this free iOS app called “Sizzl” aims to give dating apps like Tinder a run for their money and match up people nearby based on your preferences.  This is how it works:

Via adweek.com

You download the app, specify your bacon preferences in a customizable profile, upload photos and start swiping your greasy digits through pics of local fellow bacon lovers. Depending on how “Sizzl-ing” they are, you can message and meet up with other Sizzl users, based on a mutual-matching system, for what Oscar Mayer is calling “bacon-wrapped dates.”

“In love, as it is in bacon, it’s important to be discerning when selecting your perfect match and to never settle for less than the best,” Eric Dahmer, marketing director at Oscar Mayer, says in a statement. “We passionately cure our bacon for 12 hours, and lovingly smoke-house it for another 12, making it the true bacon for bacon lovers. With the launch of Sizzl, we’re thrilled to give our true bacon lovers the chance to find each other and potentially meet their soulmates, in life and in bacon.”

https://youtu.be/Vh3RuV-xoZc

This Sizzl app from Oscar Mayer is a great example of what you get when you take a pinch of strategy, mix in 3 parts creativity, add a bit of branding – and package it all in a custom developed mobile app cleverly designed to engage your core and desired target audience and generate buzz.

Very clever indeed!

If you want to check out the Sizzl app for yourself – it’s only available for download for the next 6 months – and exclusively on iOS, for iPhone 5 and up (sorry Android and Windows users).

What’s most interesting about the feat is that Snapchat has reached this milestone after clocking 2 billion video views per day in May this year and 3 billion just five weeks ago. The numbers clearly indicate the rapid growth of the company and its potential to help businesses reach more customers.

Implications for Businesses/Advertisers

There’s a bit of controversy however, regarding the 4 Billion daily views comparison with Facebook. Facebook counts a view when someone watches at least 3 seconds of autoplay in it’s News feed. Whereas Snapchat counts it upon click – and the experience is very different – with Snapchat grabbing the viewers attention by playing the video Full-screen, and for only 10 seconds. This makes for much stronger engagement with the viewer.

For businesses and advertisers, this validates that the views are likely real – something that they would pay more for (vs. Facebook). In addition, the ability to set a time limit allows you to create a unique call-to-action that creates true excitement.

The growing popularity of the app is motivating both Snapchat – and tech savvy businesses – to come up with creative ways to make the platform even more effective and engaging.

This incredible 4 Billion daily view achievement by Snapchat is catching the eye of all those businesses and entrepreneurs sitting on the sidelines thinking about or planning to develop a mobile app and capitalize on what could be just the beginning of another profitable run in the social messaging mobile app space.

It’s Official! For the first time, people are spending more time using their mobile apps than watching television. According to the latest study from Flurry Analytics, U.S. consumers spent 198 minutes per day using mobile apps vs. 168 minutes watching TV. These numbers are up from 2014 – and do not include time spent using mobile browsers.

The report also notes it’s difficult to quantify how much of that time spent on apps overlaps with time spent on TV, since lots of people use their phones while watching TV. And while apps are making headway, TV usage isn’t decreasing.

Read the full story from Mashable.com

So after surpassing Desktop web usage, consumers love for mobile apps has yet to look back – and is now the top media channel in the U.S.

Are you surprised at this historic, cultural shift? We’re not!

If you’re a typical mobile user, you know the drill: (1) Find that cool, awesome new app in the app store. (2) Download it. (3) Use it once or twice. (4) Find another shiny new object in the app store that looks even cooler.

If you develop mobile apps, this is exactly what you don’t want to face.  Read more Via recode.net

“As if getting a mobile app developed and installed isn’t hard enough, keeping users engaged with it may be the biggest challenge of all,” Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for Adobe Digital Index told Re/code. “It’s a very crowded space and brands are vying for consumers that are becoming increasingly more selective.”

Fighting the stark reality of the ‘6 Month Half Life’ of mobile apps – and getting users to open and use the apps they have already downloaded is an on-going challenge for every mobile app developer.

Some solutions include re-targeting ads to get people to use the apps that they already have – instead of downloading the newest ‘shiny objects’ from the app store.

Building user loyalty is a critical issue in the world of mobile app development and we will continue to explore this and offer valuable tips and solutions to help you succeed in this area.

At the end of the day, you want the User Experience for your new m-commerce mobile app to be smooth, unforgettable, and without a doubt, top-notch. This is what separates an unsuccessful app from one that quickly reaches its forecasted goals. There is a lot that could go wrong; but fortunately we’ve brought in a resourceful team of expert advisers to help steer you in the right direction:

In a world dominated by mobile phones, finding a way to sell your product or service via smartphone is a good move. But when it’s your first time launching an m-commerce app, there’s a lot that’s easy to overlook. So I asked 10 founders from YEC the following:

“What is the No. 1 usability consideration I should not overlook when launching an m-commerce app?”

Their best answers are below:

Read the full story right here…

So the advice from these 10 experts includes:

• Navigation

• Incentives

• Aesthetics

• Conversion

• Data Collection

• Content

• User Testing

• Platform Usability

Keep these valuable tips in mind, and you’ll go a long way towards making sure that the users of your new mobile commerce app will enjoy their experience and keep coming back again and again – hopefully bringing with them a few of their friends along the way!