You can reliably count on Apple to penetrate to the heart of technology’s impact on our life. So, no surprise that they named their introductory mobile app MobileMe (now replaced by iCloud).

In the ever-sloshing sea of hype around new technology, separating the ripples from the tsunamis is not as easy as it should be.  Of course, the mobile phone is reshaping daily life. If there was ever a global technology tidal wave, it’s mobile. But, the question remains: how important is the mobile phenomenon to customer service?

Assessing the impact of mobile begins with two basic questions:

• Is mobile a channel? No, mobile is a meta-channel. Your customers now hold, in the palm of their hand, the power to communicate via voice, email, text, your website and now, even Facebook and Twitter, at their whim.
• Is mobile just a set of channels? Believing so is likely a prescription for competitive disaster.

Mobile encompasses a thundering herd of channels. If a channel is defined as “a communication mechanism demanding unique experiential design and development” then the iPhone, iPad, Droid phones, Windows phones, and the BlackBerry (BB), to name just the leaders of the pack, are channels. Mobile makes a multi-channel philosophy mandatory; there is no longer a plausible way to manage service delivery in channel silos.

Mobile is a meta-channel. While mobile devices are mini-channels (the iPad experience is hugely different than the BB experience), Smartphones are smart because they are the Swiss army knives of communication.

Mobile is multi-sensory. You listen, talk, navigate, read and watch your mobile interface. This near perfect interface between human and machine means that service experiences will be, (must be), infinitely more compelling than before. Mobile is audio, video and tactile: a new dawn in the enterprise’s capacity to deliver rich experiences.

Multi-channel, meta-channel and multi-sensory are sufficient to insure that mobile marks a significant shift for every service organization. But, the real mobile experience revolution ahead is a consequence of Context. Mobile makes me a much richer proposition, empowering the enterprise to see me in a radically more complete way.

Managing service experiences is all about context. The context of an interaction (your brand goal, customer identity, customer mission, the interaction history, the nature of the enterprise-customer relationship and the medium of communication) defines the right experience.

Patently, mobile introduces where into the context equation. Now, me includes location. And, in today’s digital geo-spatial world, a geo-coordinate translates into complete knowledge of my neighborhood of the moment. The restaurants, shopping, transportation and (coming soon) the people at my physical fingertips can become part of the context of the service interaction.  But, where is not just a pinpoint on Google maps. Where is a condition largely inferable from geo-spatial data:  ”I’m traveling, I’m recreating, I’m working, I’m socializing.” Mobile morphs Context from just “who I am?” to “where I am and what am I doing?”

This is context with a capital C, but that’s just the beginning. Mobile and Social are twin revolutions. The mobile device could just as easily be called the social device. Our Droid is THE gateway to our network of relationships, and as such will enable service experiences informed by the context of whom we know and trust, and who is like us.

KANA has just introduced the first of many mobile apps to come: Connect2Tell for Smartphones. Connect2Tell enables citizens to report infrastructure issues, painlessly and efficiently. Now, a citizen can point the iPhone camera at a pothole, and register a geo-spatially accurate case in the 311 contact center in seconds.

No, Mobile isn’t a channel. Mobile is the new me of the customer/citizen, and as such will be the focal point of enterprise service experience delivery.

(Mark Angel is EVP and CTO, KANA)

Related posts:

1. That Was The Week That Was – My Customer Service Experience Hell