Mobile Accessibility Improves Client Trust

Garret Carlson is Slalom Consulting’s National Solutions Director responsible for supporting Slalom’s technology solutions across all of Slalom’s offices.

Even with best-in-class line of business applications and solid disaster recovery plans, systems go down. IT service outages cause internal havoc and affect vendor/client relationships. Although SLA’s will support rapid recovery of systems, many times the biggest issue is ‘recovering’ from the hit in terms of trust with your client. System downtime or the perception of downtime creates cracks in the foundation of client relationships. So what is the mortar that can help fix the cracks? Many are looking at the mobile enterprise.

An effective rescue of client confidence is the ability to provide mobile data to your field service teams. Giving client-side support teams the ability to find the needed subject matter expert or the clients’ accounts payable individual at their fingertips (even when billing and CRM systems are down) shows agility and true perseverance towards client success. Murphy’s Law dictates that clients will call when there is a telephony hiccup in your customer service call center. Or they will want more information about their invoice from your billing system. At that point, a level of panic sets in for the client and the next call will be escalating the issue to someone they know.

Your best client relationship custodians are many times sitting onsite with your clients. Their success aligns with the success of their client.  Many times they live in the same neighborhood and have kids in the same schools. Business discussions bleed over into little league games and PTA meetings. These impromptu settings provide one of the best opportunities to differentiate your company’s responsiveness ability to service the client.  When clients want information, they don’t care about server maintenance or outage windows or your inability to access that information right now. What they want is answers and a sense of security and trust that “their” information and support is not in jeopardy.

Mobile line-of-business applications are developed every day. Mobile apps can provide access to key corporate data so people on-the-go can be effective and productive. Successful conversations are a combination of key data points and perfect timing. It’s okay to tell the client, “Let me get back to you,” but when that line is used too often it gives an impression of ineffectiveness and interruption to solving the client need. Eliminating delay in answering a client request is a strategic method to build customer loyalty. In most cases, the information is not hard to access from a PC, but add the variable of being at a client site or neighborhood soccer field, and it becomes more challenging. Mobile tools that give your users the power to see into corporate systems distinguish an organization from the pack. The speed to resolution of a client request is just as important as having a great product or service.

We all try to build the best products or services. Parity in the marketplace is an inevitable force given enough time for your competitors to catch up. Even if your solution is great today, we should always be looking at how to couple that great solution with great service…a dynamic duo of client success.

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