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.
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I often ask customer care practitioners if they really know what their Smartphone app is doing. For example, is there a likelihood that chances for cross-sell are getting blocked? Or chances for retention of an angry customer falling away? How about the “contact us” page? Is it nothing more than a speed dial? Can customers communicate with you without having to dump out of the app and go to a discrete communication channel? All of these questions and more are often answered with a knowing nod: “Yes it’s a mess and we have to figure out how to make it better.” 
On the other hand, the enterprise is able to more evenly spread its demand throughout the day. Agent productivity and service levels are improved by shifting calls from busy periods to the slowest periods. Idle time in the call center is reduced. Callbacks also reduce the number of abandoned calls which can increase sales and revenue.
We can attribute much of the shift in customer service expectations to the smartphone and its precious app offspring. Apps, apps, and more apps! They entertain, teach, narrate our lives, inform, and most importantly, help us. A 2012 study by ClickFox found that “over 78 percent of consumers surveyed use mobile apps for customer service purposes such as billing, account status/updates and interactive chat.” The same study revealed, “over 90 percent of respondents would replace some or all traditional customer service channels with a mobile app if available.” 
