Is Mobile Way Past Due for Companies You Do Business With?

By Rachael Green, Project Manager

A recent conversation with my husband and a friend of ours reminded me once again how important it is to have a good mobile site and the customer service support to go with it.

I was using my husband’s computer to transfer some tax files from his laptop over to mine. I noticed the laptop touch pad wasn’t working very well, so I plugged in a wireless mouse and got the files moved. When I finished, I asked him if he wanted me to leave the mouse with the computer.  He responded with: “I haven’t really used it since I got my phone.  There are only a few things I have to use the computer for.”

We all commented on how there are so many things we can do from our smartphones now that we often prefer it for the convenience. The conversation flowed into how annoying it can be when there’s something we can do from a computer but not a smartphone or tablet. Or when we go to access a site and they are clearly not set up appropriately for mobile visitors.

This all got me thinking about providing quality, useful and usable support from a mobile device, and wondering why more companies don’t have a virtual agent for their mobile sites.  Our society has clearly shifted in terms of consumer preferences, but mobile support hasn’t caught up yet.  We (all of us consumers) want to use our smartphones like our computers. Using the computer seems more cumbersome than ever before. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2015, at least 60% of the Internet users will opt for mobile customer service applications as their first option. Why not get a virtual agent on your mobile site to bring your company’s content to the forefront where the virtual agent lets us do what we really want: self-serve.