In this opinion piece, Lucy Brindley (pictured below), mobile specialist for Salesforce in the JAPAC region, discusses the heightened importance of mobile in the customer journey.

If you needed a reminder why mobile must be at the heart of your customer journey, I urge you to look at the passengers on the bus or train on your commute home. The majority will be gazing at their phones – the question is: will your website or app be on that screen?

Collectively, Australians look at their smartphones more than 440 million times a day, according to Deloitte. If your mobile site or app doesn’t have the utility and ease of use your customers expect, it’s going to be a rough year.

The Salesforce Empowered Shopper Report showed that mobile has become the primary research tool for consumers and more than one in four (27 per cent) Millennials have purchased an item from their mobile while in a shop – either from that same retailer or another one. It’s never been more important to make sure your mobile presence stands out from the crowd.

How to avoid app dormancy on your customer’s smartphone

Research from Swrve found the average mobile user has more than 100 apps on their phone, 20 per cent of all mobile app installs are only used once and never again, and almost 80 per cent of app users are lost within the first week of install.

In a crowded app market, getting the balance right between navigation, genuine purpose and secondary features is critical to success.

Pizza Hut’s loyalty app development story is a marketer’s dream. Developed by Jardine Group, one of Asia’s largest restaurant franchisees, the goal of this dedicated loyalty app was to switch 200,000 Pizza Hut customers across the Asia Pacific who were using membership cards (and paper coupons) to a new loyalty app that would offer instant access to the latest deals and offerings. Smart data from the loyalty app would help Pizza Hut drive more targeted offers and increase sales, while also serving up an intuitive mobile experience.

At each step of the journey, Pizza Hut ads trigger new offers, alerts and coupons in response to events like membership sign-up, pizza orders, points sharing, and interactions online. This decreases the chance the app will be deleted or turn into an unused icon on the home screen.

The result? The loyalty app has been downloaded by 350,000 customers since its introduction in June 2015, helping to boost sales by 28 per cent.

Connect your app to sales and marketing

Mckinsey research highlights the importance of seamless interactions after finding two-thirds of the decisions customers make are influenced by the quality of their experiences.

In our recent e-book, Mobilise the Customer Journey, Australia Post is profiled because of its focus on improving its customer journey by disrupting the way it communicates with customers over its mobile apps, email and social media channels.

By integrating its contact centre with its channels, Australia Post’s service team created a single view of the customer by matching social personas to known customers, ensuring all communications were more productive. This meant the team was better able to handle spikes in mobile and social enquiries, and could deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels.

Today’s consumers don’t see their interactions with a brand on different channels as separate experiences. Instead, each interaction is just a step within a single journey, whether it’s on mobile, online, or in-store.

Now’s the time to change

The good news is there’s never been a better time to change your mobile approach to enhance the customer journey. If you put the customer at the heart of your mobile journey, it’ll make their public transport commute much more enjoyable.