If It’s Not Mobile, It’s Not Customer Focused

Australians glanced at their mobile devices more than 440 million times per day in 2016 – a 40 million increase from 2015.

It’s not hard to see why. Smartphones have redefined the way we live, how we interact, and the way we work.This in turn, has made mobile a primary vehicle for marketers to drive interactions and engagement.

The mobile revolution may have started with mobile-optimised websites and apps, but today’s brands must have a ‘mobile-first’ focus, end-to-end, if they have a hope of keeping up with competitors and customer expectations.

So, when it comes to your marketing strategy, just how extensive of a role should mobile play? And in what way can you use mobile not just as a tactical tool, but to break down cross-functional silos, improve end-to-end customer experiences, and personalise engagement?

Bringing sales and marketing closer together

As consumers become more mobile-enabled, there’s a growing expectation that sales agents have access to the same information – if not more – as the customers in front of them, and in real-time. Mobile has also raised expectations around how sales engages with customers in the field.

By arming sales teams with customer insights that streamline the sales process and boost productivity, you’re also helping bring marketing and sales closer together. This was certainly the case for Australian bakery giant, Tip Top, which boosted field force sales efficiency by 20 per cent after harnessing mobile applications that brought sales staff closer to customers out in the field.

End-to-end engagement

As experience becomes the ultimate competitive advantage, it has become evident that marketers needs to be tightly integrated with their organisation’s wider customer engagement approach.

To do this, brands need to not only pool together insights from across channels to create a single view of the customer; they also need to treat the customer as one individual, regardless of whether it’s marketing, sales, or service interacting with them. By tapping platforms designed to connect marketing to sales, service and beyond, brands are more likely to create seamless relationships.

Social media data is a vital component in informing that customer view, and in determining the best way to respond, regardless of function or interaction.

Australia Post is one brand reaping the benefits of uniting marketing, sales and service departments with its social presence. The very act of syncing customer service with its 300,000 social followers delivered an immediate 8% uplift in service productivity, straight off the bat.

Personalisation

Marketers are well aware how powerful using consumer insight is in engagement efforts. And as brands strive to deliver ever-more personalised experiences to customers, mobile has an important role to play in making that a reality.

This is not just because mobile is a channel, but because it’s also an important source of customer data. Provided you can unite that with your wider customer view, that is.

Pizza Hut is one brand that’s recognised the power of mobile apps in personalising engagement, and smashed its 2016 sales targets by 28 per cent after uniting marketing and IT platforms in such a way.

How every company becomes mobile-first

According to Gartner, more than 75 per cent of organisations will have adopted at least one app development platform by 2020 to better engage with their customers. But mobile app development can be challenging and costly if the wrong approach is taken.

This process should never be seen as an ‘open and shut’ project where a marketing agency creates a slick front-end app with little substance behind it. Instead, investment is needed in mobilising the full service stack through the business.

The ideal way to do this is by adopting the same cloud on-demand approach, using existing data and a rapid development framework. In this vein, Salesforce App Cloud has been designed to give companies several options for app development, from standard drag-and-drop components, to the ability to build customised apps with no need for code.

Want to know more about how to transform your customer and team journey for mobile? Check out how three of Australia’s most iconic brands - Tip Top, Australia Post and Pizza Hut - are bringing mobile into the heart of workforce enablement and customer management with the help of Salesforce App Cloud in this new eBook: Mobilise the Customer Journey.