Prediction For 2009 #4: Mobile Takes Bigger Role In Customer Experience

There's been a lot of talk in the past few years about the rise of the mobile device as an advertising vehicle. I've never bought that. Not in the traditional mass marketing sense. My mobile phone is too personal to me. I don't want push messages on there as I wouldn't have wanted them on my computer.

We all know the iphone has revolutionized the way we are starting to use our cell phones. Surfing the Web on mobile devices, Google searches, mobile apps, social mobile. And it will start to push mobile to the forefront of marketing discussions and will start to take some budgetary priority.

One of the biggest areas where we are going to start to see this practically emerge is the role of mobile in the overall customer experience. From marketing to customer service, we need to start working with clients to examine the customer experience life cycle and map where we can fulfill unmet customer needs through the mobile device. How can brands connect you with other shoppers through mobile? How can they create value added marketing experiences in retail (i.e. extend product knowledge on the retail floor?) How can they extend the actual product experience through needs based functionality?

Many clients were only starting to touch on these questions last year and hopefully we will start to see an explosion of examples where mobile starts to take a bigger and potentially even leading role in customer experience.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nobihaya/