Among the news stories from G-Force in Australia is this bit of thought-leadership from Alcatel-Lucent’s Enterprise Business Unit (aka Genesys). Put briefly: “Make smartphones and the mobile Web tools for customers or prospects to define where, when and how to toggle from self-service to assisted service.”

This simple tactic seems almost self-evident as people discover how to use mobile apps or Web sites to get information from airlines, insurance companies, hotel chains, retailers and others. Indeed, there is not a business of any size that has not started to pursue a “mobile strategy” or at least put out their first app for the iPhone.

But the product planners at Genesys have observed that most mobile efforts are only beginning to incorporate all the knowledge and resources baked into the company’s customer service and contact center fabric. What’s more, only a handful have made it easier for customers to use their smartphones to “escalate” their issues by initiating or transferring their conversation to the right resource (be it an IVR, Web site or customer service agent) without leaving their app or having to re-establish their identity and the general purpose of context of the call.

From a functional point of view, Genesys wants corporate customers and developers to recognize three sets of best practices. The first on the list is “Contact Me” addresses the way that phone calls can be integrated in a smartphone app, including call initiation (click-to-call), that uses the smartphone app’s intelligence to deliver the context of the call or, if it makes more sense, detect the availability of an agent and schedule a callback.

Second set of best practices, “Connect Me,” address is the result of the integration of smartphone-based processing to leverage Genesys IWD (intelligent Workload Distribution) and Conversation Manager. Its purpose is to put mobile customers in touch with the right resource over their choice of communications modes: voice, text or Chat.

Genesys’ third set of best practices surround “Know Me.” This is where Genesys will help its customers take advantage of the smartphone’s ability to authenticate its owner and create the sort of trusted communications link required to deliver highly personalized customer service. Under the “Integrated Mobile Customer Care Apps” umbrella expect to see deep integration of Genesys 8 (the company’s core call routing and customer interaction manager), IWD, Conversation Manager and UC Connect.

Given the level of interest and preliminary effort that Opus Research is observing as companies build their “mobile strategies,” adoption of the Genesys approach could be quite fast. We’ve already seen precursor products at Groupama, the French insurance company. Leading firms in banking, travel, insurance and telecommunications will not be far behind as they move past their first mobile apps to this, more integrated, more empowering approach.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Genesys, Contact Centers, mobile applications, CRM