By Edwin Margulies

(Part III of III)

Feedback Essentials

Surprisingly most enterprise Smartphone apps have no real, inherent feedback loop. No way to tell how well you did on the last interaction from inside the app. The problem with this is that sentiment can fester if not treated. And this goes beyond simple surveying. I am talking about actually responding to sentiment, not just allowing for feedback. The trick is to respond and offer care before the sentiment goes viral. In-app sentiment feedback solves this problem because your are first able to capture relevant sentiment and then pipe it in real time to customer care agents.

There are several benefits to this approach. First, there is a link between customer loyalty and retention and sentiment feedback. Second, a real time sentiment feedback solution is kind of a “social early warning system.” In other words, you have first crack at responding and trying to help a customer before the issue gets posted on Facebook or Twitter or a blog.

The Holy Grail of Cross-Sell and Up-Sell
A lot of enterprises talk about cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. But very few examples exist in mobile care applications. Sometimes you will see a banner add or equivalent but nothing highly personalized. In-app secure messaging solves this problem by offering rich media transport that can be personalized. You can also take advantage of alerts and badges to let customers know if a new offer or other private message has landed in their app.

The benefit of the in-app secure messaging approach is that you can avoid the problem of  Phishing without forcing your customer to log in to the proprietary messaging system on your web site. That eliminates channel confusion right there and provides you the ability to deliver personalized communications right to the app. This paves the way for mobile cross-sell and up-sell.

The point is that there is hope for run-down care-clueless Smartphone applications. If you are ready to go beyond token “cool” and ready to embrace customer care you can do it with in-app enhancements to your current application.