What is the impact of mobile on our customer experience management efforts?

I saw it again the other day: another headline for a webinar screaming out “Understand the 5 implications for optimizing collections in a mobile world” or some such thing. As if, by merely “implementing mobile” (whatever they mean by that: is it text messaging? two-way text messaging, the latest hot fad? Two-way email? Web transactions occurring on mobile phones and tablets?) we can fundamentally change the customer equation.

Recently, the CEO of PegaSystems pointed out that “75% of mobile application rollouts are reportedly missing their target expectations” and it was not because they expectations were set too high. He rightly pointed out that mobile is just another touch point for the customer, and if it doesn’t work alongside all the others then it lives on its own gulag – just like text messages and emails and web sites that aren’t fully coordinated with agent dialogue. Forrester and other analyst firms are calling this kind of interaction “omnichannel communications” (one conversation, carried out across a whole range of devices) in contrast with multi-channel (which is having more than one channel engaged to reach a customer, not necessarily coordinated with one another).

What is mobile, if not “just another touch point” with the customer that needs to be seamlessly folded into the overall conversation? The difference between CMC’s approach and that of any of the silo’d communications providers (whether IVR, dialer, or email or text or web) is that CMC is agnostic to the specific channel of communication and entirely focused on the effectiveness of the entire conversation, which includes the offer being made to that individual customer and the content of the disclosure or document as well as any input gathered from the customer (and redecisioning the offer, if appropriate) in order to resolve the situation. Mobile, in that context, is just another piece of the puzzle. The challenge is being able to solve the entire puzzle for the customer as cost-effectively as possible for the bank.