#voice interaction

The requirements necessary to effectively track your Mobile Lifestyle Strategy include the following:

Understanding the customer perspective — using techniques like Day in the Life to get a true picture of the customer experience versus what the company perceives that experience to be.

Considering multiple customer profiles — using journey maps and similar UX techniques to differentiate how various types of customers (age, gender, etc.) experience products, brands and services differently.

Leveraging customer Touch Points — customers connect with your company in countless ways and by following many paths (email, text, web sites, social media, etc.).

In this world of emerging technologies (Augmented/Virtual Reality, IoT, Blockchain, Machine Learning, Wearables, etc.), we must all focus on building a mobile strategy rooted in your organization’s business values, and which aligns with your customer’s mobile lifestyle. The nature of the customer’s mobile lifestyle is premised upon a mobile-first approach. Ask yourself: what is the mobile touch point during your customer’s journey? The ultimate goal here is to eliminate steps or speed delivery of goods and services through emerging technologies; helping customers fulfill their needs as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Some emerging technologies that will start to play a more visible role in shaping the Customer’s Mobile Lifestyle in 2018 include:

Voice Interaction – voice integration expands the customer’s Mobile Lifestyle to include many new possibilities, most notably our ability to voice-control devices. How long before the ability to talk to devices and computers eliminates the need for a user interface? The journey of voice interaction has just begun and taking full advantage of its power now means transforming the way you do business, transforming the way you service customers, and transforming the way you create products and services.

Geofencing – Geofencing is a great way to increase your brand’s value, so long as you’re careful. Geofencing is not just about the opportunity to target customers with personalized ads in the context of their physical location. Rather, we should view Geofencing technology as an opportunity to track — in real time — key performance indicators that drive your business as well as an opportunity to understand how customers view/use your brand when at home versus on-the-go.

Cognitive Computing; Cognitive computing in the form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as chatbots and virtual agents will play a larger role in the Mobile Customer Lifestyle when it comes to customer support and online merchant interactions. For instance, IBM’s Watson-based platform leverages AI’s natural language processing (NLP) and cognitive computing to build customized business chatbots for customer interactions. As with Geofencing, the value of Cognitive Computing will come from tracking chatbot analytics to increase user engagement and drive monetization.

Augmented Reality (AR) offers digital enhancements to real-world experiences during your Customer’s Mobile Lifestyle. AR use cases already abound in retail, advertising, construction, manufacturing, training, etc. but it is best to provide novel content to justify the AR experience and enhance the Mobile Customer Lifestyle while encouraging customers to try/buy new products and services.

As touched upon above, to achieve a successful Customer’s Mobile Lifestyle Strategy, your organization must incorporate the following strategies:

Day-in-the-Life — Day-in-the-Life sessions generate a complete and accurate picture of real-world user requirements. Over the course of a Day-in-the-Life session, strategists interview and physically shadow subjects as they perform their daily tasks, being sure to record every relevant detail. This may entail accompanying drivers on a ride-along to experience customer interactions as they occur, taking a factory tour or sitting with operators as they interact with customers over the phone.

Micro-Moments — Micro-moments occur when a user turns to a mobile device to perform a task and the mobile device predicts the user’s need (by using prior history, time/date or physical location as triggers) and provides information and a UI that prioritizes fulfilling the task at hand.

Micro-Personalization — Content that provides exactly what the customer is looking for at any given time. This might take the form of short blog posts, how-to videos, step-by-step guides or even downloadable coupons and special offers.

Technology Agnostic — Software is described as being technology agnostic when it is unbiased in terms of which technology tool is used to run it. Allowable device tools may include wearables, Android or iOS smartphones or tablets, or laptop or desktop computers.

These emerging technologies and strategies will be the building blocks for aligning your business with your Customer’s Mobile Lifestyle. By 2018, every organization wishing to remain competitive in the digital age will have adopted some mix of mobile platforms, customer personalization and targeting, analytics, corporate systems and emerging technologies to support their Mobile Strategy. Companies need to evolve their Mobile Strategy to incorporate the Customer’s Mobile Lifestyle; not just to check the boxes and build the apps they believe should be in their Mobile Portfolio.