Jadu Blog

Jadu's strategy workshop for senior management provided a valuable environment for interactive knowledge and experience sharing on how online customer expectations are changing due to the growth in adoption of smartphones and touch screen technologies. The main discussions quickly focused in on the mobile channel and the challenges and benefits that organisations face if they are to take advantage of the exponential growth being experienced in mobile technology adoption.

Everyone recognised the need for a robust and 'customer driven' mobile strategy. There was also general agreement that mobile needed to be positioned as an additional channel to customers, not just a channel shift. However, to be able to deliver against this major opportunity, a number of hurdles needed to be overcome and the following interesting questions were raised:

• Are we all in our comfort zone with mobile technology? Is current understanding of customer mobile usage, sufficient to enable a meaningful mobile strategy to be developed?
  
  
• Does the IT department really understand the potential of mobile technology?
  
  
• How can the difference in broadband coverage across the UK be tackled in the mobile strategy?

The challenge with developing an effective mobile strategy seemed to revolve around the need for a better understanding of customer current and future usage. Whilst Higher Education Institutions knew their 'customer' (the students) well, in terms of their demographics, profiles and usage, this was not the case for local authorities where a diverse 'customer base' existed. Local authorities typically support a wide age range and location with great variation in broadband coverage. Attempting to develop a mobile strategy is therefore more challenging.

At an operational level it was recognised that a good 'self service' model is a must to get customers to use it. It was also recognised that mobile is not suitable for all forms of contact/transactions - e.g. reporting an issue such as pot holes, checking events and car parks is fine but it is not suitable for complex form completion.

All participants concluded that there was a lot to be gained from the further sharing of experiences and approaches to mobile and mobile apps, particularly in the areas of developing the business case to deliver tangible savings. 

Thank you to all those who took part in this session.