The increasing use of mobile phones for a wide range of activities beyond voice calls is being extensively written about at the moment. A report from the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) and Cap Gemini, for example, has found that the proportion of mobile based online shopping in the UK has jumped by more than 800 per cent over the past year.

 

Over the same period in the US the mobile social media audience has grown by 37 per cent, with more than half of mobile social networkers accessing sites almost daily according to researcher, comScore.

 

So mobile internet use is expanding rapidly, which means that mobile customer service is fast becoming a key channel for companies. Which is why we’re keen to highlight the innovative things that Eptica customer - and this year’s Social Media Experience Award winner - AirAsia, is doing in this area. 

 

The airline has created a mobile phone app that lets customers ask questions through the mobile channel, while integrating it with its overall customer service infrastructure.

 

The iPhone app, which gives users an optimised experience when asking customer service questions via their phones, has proved incredibly popular.  It has generated 2 million downloads, making it the No 1 selling app in the iPhone App store for Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

 

What is critical for the consistency of answers is that the mobile app shares the same knowledgebase as the rest of AirAsia’s customer service channels. So whether you ask a question through the web, Facebook or mobile you receive the same answer, through the channel of your choice. This obviously reduces the risk of separate silos of information being created and brings down cost. In fact, by using Eptica Air Asia has been able to achieve a 40 per cent reduction in contact centre costs, despite dramatically increasing user numbers.

 

When Zaman Ahmad, Customer Experience and Technology at AirAsia, presented at Eptica’s International Customer Service Summit he also stressed the speed of integration between the mobile app and the overall Eptica solution, due to the straightforward APIs that Eptica provides.

 

With more and more consumers switching to smartphones, the need for mobile customer service is only going to grow – and as AirAsia shows, creating your own mobile app delivers real benefits when integrated with your overall customer service infrastructure.