Customer Service Goes Mobile

With financial advisors and other account managers using smartphones and tablets outside the office as part of their lifestyles, they increasingly need access to information on the fly to better service their clients.

Last week, Vivisimo, a Pittsburgh-based provider of information optimization, launched a mobile version of its enterprise-wide customer experience platform aimed at the customer facing professional within a financial services firm.

CXO Mobile is aimed at sales and customer service teams that want to have access to the same information on their mobile devices as they usually have at the their office.

In the digital age, Vivisimo contends that Big Business and Wall Street need to revamp the way that customer service is practiced at a mobile level. It cites a study by analyst firm Ovum, which found that U.S. enterprises lose $83 billion a year due to poor customer service. Also, an IDC study found that the average sales person spent 14 hours per weak searching for marketing collateral and customer information to prepare for sales meetings.

In the company’s news release, John Kealey, CEO of Vivisimo, said, “Research tells us that 32% of employees globally now rely on more than one mobile device during a typical workday.”

The new CXO Mobile product provides wireless access to enterprise-wide information from multiple applications pulled by Vivisimo’s Customer Experience Optimization (CXO) platform, released about a year ago. In order for customers to use the mobile product, they must have the CXO desktop platform, according to a company spokesman.

While interacting with an investor on the phone —who wants instant answers — a customer service representative or sales professional may need to access many different sources of information from multiple systems. They may need to log onto a CRM system, email, Wikis, content management, notes Mark Myers, director, product marketing for Vivisimo. What CXO does is provide a workspace for optimizing the customer experience, which is built on top of a search engine that Vivisimo previously released. Instead of associates having 10 windows open on their desktops, says Myers, CXO aggregates an activity feed for any products, accounts, industry news and support incidents – “much like Facebook updates,” notes Myers.

This activity feed keeps the customer service or account manager engaged as it filters information they are following, explains Myers. “It is all contextual since the feed is customized to everything they’re following,” adds Myers. The activity feed could be about a person or a product— such as a bond fund. If the sales person is on an account page, they will see things relevant to that account.

Colleagues can also move comments from a blog post or a support incident into a so-called “collaboration space” to discuss and resolve the matter with colleagues. If someone notices a commentary in a social media site that is negative and needs to be responded to, it can be dragged into the collaboration space. There also ways to make information sharing easier, says Myers. A widget to follow Twitter is a standard feature of the product.

While CXO Mobile is geared to optimizing the customer experience, it also makes it easier for customer service and account managers to address problems. “You have employees who are used to handling those handheld devices. They can be at lunch and answer a situation,” says Myers. “It’s more accustomed to their lifestyle,” says Myers. “This is really taking Web 3.0 into the mobile world.”

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio