Mobile: Everything All the Time

I'm not a numbers guy but there are some numbers that shouldn't be ignored. Like these: Nielsen reports that 150 million smartphones will be in use by mid-2011. Somewhere in those numbers you'll find your prospects, your customers, your patients and/or your members. But, will they find you?

The smartphone is not a toy. In this age of over-programmed-living, devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android have become a vital tool for connecting with work and friends - especially among women. Nielsen reports that women have accepted the smartphone at a faster rate than men. They're using the phone to move appointments, get driving directions, and check email (the guy's favorite). But, they're also using it to download in-store coupons and make social posts. Actually the Nielsen survey reports that 9 out of 10 women use their smartphone to stay connected via social media posts. Not just connected with friends but with their preferred brands.

Ah, their preferred brands. That's subject to change. Smartphone toting consumers -- whether they're members of your association, volunteers in your sorority, patients at your clinic, shoppers in your boutique or any other form of prospective member, customer or patient -- will redefine your relationship with them using a new variable: convenience.

The Nielsen survey found that 83% of smartphone users never leave home without them. My own informal polling at meetings and presentations finds that number to be 100%. Not laptops. Smartphones.

How do you overlook a customer touch-point that is available nearly 100% of the
time?

The women in our survey said that they use their smartphone to make important brand connections (not just voice calls) in the moments between work meetings, PTA, carpool, volunteer work, the kid's piano practice and so on. They use it because it's convenient. And, they are inclined to browse their smartphone until they find an option (i.e. any product or service) that connects with their on-the-go lifestyle.

Am I suggesting that you build a smartphone app tonight? No. It's possible that a mobile app should be part of your strategy but until then create a mobile website with the on-the-go elements of your brand. By the way, our stats show that nearly 97%of attempts to load websites via a smartphone "bounce" or fail because the site doesn't support mobile browsing. That means frustrated prospects and customers who may try another option. STOP MISSING the CONNECTIONS available through the convenience of a smartphone. Mobile is no longer an option. It is everything.

Bigfish builds mobile websites and we recently launched our own. Visit it on your iPhone, Blackberry, Android or other smartphone.

You and I can connect on www.twitter.com/timbigfish or www.facebook.com/timcnicholson. Work it in while your waiting on that Peppermint Latte this holiday season :-)

Like It or Not It's All About Like

We started this year saying that someday your customer’s preference would dictate your company’s search engine relevance. That someday has come. The new Bing Facebook alliance makes “like” the new relevancy factor for search. So, what is "like"?

"Like" or not is the grade your business earned as determined by "the customer experience".

Your company and mine must be fully aware of the experience we create for our clients. We can’t cleverly weave our way through search engine formulas and hope to find some unsuspecting prospect who would become a customer. In the Participation Age your customers don’t care about some arcane search algorithm that revolves around keywords, referring links, dynamic content and other inane attributes. They care about what their friends think. Their friends are your recent and next customer.

Instead of “referring links” think “quality interactions”. Make each one count. Your customers will relate each of their experiences to their friends (your future prospects and customers) with a simple thumbs-up or down.

Perhaps, like Bigfish, you’re not in the gadget business. You don’t cook pizzas. You don’t rent cars. You don’t iron shirts. So what is there to like? Well, every day you and your employees make impressions. You create an experience. Your company and mine are in the customer experience business. It’s the quality of that experience as seen from the customer’s point-of-view that will determine the “like” count on our Facebook business pages long after our personal social acquaintances have tuned out of our news feeds.

My colleagues will attest that I am highly sensitized to the customer experience factor. It’s in our name. If I walk into the development room kicking over waste baskets and spilling coffee, it’s not because my folks have performed poorly. It’s because I’ve been enraged to the point of disgust having just witnessed a so-called collaborating engineer or developer use fear, uncertainty, doubt and downright arrogance to bluff a client into submission. Thankfully, Bigfish Developers are sincere in their efforts to deliver a “treat them like the big fish” level of service but we all have our moments and I may have seen a tiny bit of our worst selves in the other guy. It had to be kicked and spilled on. It wasn't a like-able experience.

We’re a service business. Whether we’re developing words to convey our client’s message, drawing pictures to illustrate their ideas, building websites to enable their objectives, or connecting them to prospects and customers through social media – each interaction with them is the experience.

For every gift card or thank you note from a client there are five others we might not hear from. What was their experience? Did they “like” us or not? Guess we’ll have to Bing and decide.

Let's talk about it. I'm on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timbigfish