Altimeter Group in its latest report  “The Inevitability of a Mobile-Only Customer Experience” provides hints that will let Your company find itself in the evolving marketing reality.

New experience
The expression ‘customer experience’ is a sum of customer’s individual experiences, at every touchpoint with a given brand during the entire purchasing cycle. Changes in the way a customer contacts the brand make companies transform their current communication strategy. The thing is, it’s not enough now to create a responsive website that adjusts its size to a smartphone or iPad screen. Mobile devices should no longer be considered one of the available communication channels. They should be treated exclusively and transformed into tools, which by themselves can respond to all the needs of a new user.

Brian Solis, contributor to the report and chief analyst at Altimeter Group, emphasized during a webinar about the report mentioned  above that one should not think about mobile devices as isolated tools, but as the user’s broad-based experience. The user who wants to have access to all the possibilities offered at any time and in every place, regardless of their choice of a device. “We live in times that let us be in all places not actually being anywhere,” Solis said.

The new dimension of customer experience thus translates into designing the communication strategy and functionality through mobile devices in such a way that allows to meet the user’s expectations and make him go through the purchasing cycle with a result positive for the company.

Attention divisibility vs content deficit
When mobile communication has not been adjusted to users real needs, they need to jump from one channel to another. Do not mix this up with the ‘multiscreen’ media consumption type. Using many screens at the same time is intentional and results from the need to supplement or compare information, or from the user’s attention divisibility (e.g. watching a TV series and describing the plot for friends on Facebook at the same time). But when a user is not satisfied with content offered by a given medium, then we talk about jumping between channels. Unfortunately, in most cases this is the moment when a purchasing cycle ends. According to the report “The Inevitability of a Mobile Only Customer Experience” as many as 51 percent of users declare they abandon shopping when any problems with the mobile application appear.
What’s there to lose?
The number of mobile devices owner is growing very rapidly. According to eMarketer, in 2014 as many as 1.75 billion people were actively using smartphones. It’s been estimated the number will grow to 2 billion in 2015. In Poland we can find 12.7 million owners of smartphones. This is a huge purchasing power that shouldn’t be ignored.

The mobile market is a new, separate ecosystem, requiring customized efforts. As Jamie Szymanski, research contributor and junior researcher, noticed during the webinar – “Companies still don’t understand that and devote their time and money to general development, i.e. developing several channels simultaneously. As a result, the mobile technologies sector remains low-budget and ineffective. Technology innovations are mushrooming, and they need to be followed by changes in the attitude to customers. It is key not to focus only on technical development, but to provide for the real needs of users” – emphasizes Szymanski.