The Mobile Channel

Condor Ferries has hired mobile agency Incentivated to provide a text service to keep passengers informed about any disruptions to their journeys this summer. The service will provide passengers on both sides of the Channel with SMS alerts about departure times and sailing conditions. 
Condor Ferries has been working with Incentivated to provide a text message service to passengers since the end of October 2008. Condor operates fast cat ferries between Poole and Weymouth to Jersey, Guernsey, St Malo and Cherbourg. Each year it carries some 900,000 passengers and 200,000 passenger vehicles.
The SMS service is used to notify customers of any changes to the schedule and updates about sailing conditions. It enables Condor staff to send out bulk messages to a target list of recipients from the customer database and complements existing telephony services and the Condor website.
“Condor Ferries contacts customers by SMS message and phone advising them of important changes to sailings which affect them personally to minimise any inconvenience and allow them to modify their travel plans should they wish,” says Condor Ferries’ Operations Manager, Capt Fran Collins. “These texts and calls are a key part of our customer service programme and a significant investment on Condor’s part in infrastructure and staff time: we believe we set an industry-leading standard in providing proactive updates to passengers.”

Incentivated and RAPP Launch Bowtime Loyalty Campaign

Cider brand Strongbow is launching a mobile loyalty campaign to reconnect with customers who took part in last year’s multiple award winning 6-month ‘Bowtime’ campaign. 
Bowtime is Strongbow’s new through the line communication idea which was seeded in through 2008 and integrated into the wider above-the-line campaign in 2009. In 2008, mobile was the core channel used, as the campaign was managed and delivered by RAPP and mobile agency Incentivated.
Over 80,000 customers signed up for the campaign, which included mobile barcodes and a pub locator, on-pack promotions, and a promotion on social media site Flirtomatic. All participants were entered into a 4-month CRM campaign, featuring free pint and festival ticket offers, MMS animations and ‘wind-up-a-mate’ promotions.
The campaign prompted a 39% response rate, and following the campaign, research conducted by Millward Brown among those who had received the CRM activity versus those who had not, showed that the campaign had a statistically significant impact on purchase. For the CRM group, claimed purchase increased by 44%, and brand preference increased by 8%. This compared with decreases in claimed purchase of 4% and decreases in brand preference of 10% for those who had not received the CRM messages.
This will be the third year that Strongbow has used mobile to connect with customers. The loyalty campaign, which launches on 10 July, integrates mobile, email and web elements. A series of text & win competitions invites drinkers to win 60 prizes a day for 60 days, including both high- and low-value prizes like JVC DVD Home Surround Sound Systems, Tangent DAB Digital Radios, iPod nanos, iPod docks and Sharp 19” LCD TVs, as well as Strongbow-branded merchandise.
Strongbow has been building a detailed CRM database, including customers’ interests, consumption behaviour, ages, mobile numbers, email and postal addresses. This information will be used as the basis for targeted outbound campaigns in 2010.  
“The Bowtime campaign proved that mobile is an exciting and effective way to connect with our customers, providing interesting and engaging branded content and competitions,” says Strongbow Brand Manager, Fiona Seath. “This creates a platform for us to deepen customer relationships and build loyalty throughout the peak summer months.”
Incentivated Commercial Director Robert Thurner says that in 2009, the company is witnessing a growing number of clients focusing on the rich data mobile delivers and converting it into highly targeted and relevant campaigns which keep their brands front of mind.
“I expect this will pave the way for more expansive, integrated campaigns as market conditions improve later this year,” he says.

WaaKao Launches Cool SMS Alerts

Web based SMS messaging gateway and enterprise service provider My-Cool-SMS has announced a partnership with WaaKao, an interactive information portal dedicated to the promotion of art and culture, political commentary, music and parties in Taiwan.
The partnership is based on a free SMS notification service that informs subscribers of upcoming events, such as music concerts, art exhibitions or political forums. After subscribing at the WaaKao website, users select event categories for which they will receive free notifications. The service will then automatically alert them via SMS when matching events are about to take place. Subscribers are also eligible to exclusive guest list invites and will even receive taxi directions on their mobile phone. Subscribers can change categories and events they are interested in at any time, and can also unsubscribe if they decide they don’t want to receive future notifications. The service is free to WaaKao subscribers.
WaaKao helps event organizers to promote their parties and events via SMS notification, email marketing and advertisements on WaaKao.com. In order to protect the privacy of subscriber data, information will not be shared with the event organizers but it will be managed by My-Cool-SMS using the company’s secure data facility.

Premier Inn Uses Mobile to Reduce No-shows

UK hotel chain Premier Inn has deployed Rapide Communication’s enhanced text service to send guests booking confirmations, reduce no-show rates, increase dinner bookings, and provide maps and directions. The service is an extension of the Booking Confirmation Service provided by Rapide Communication, which sends out reservation details to around 1 million customers every year. 
Since Premier Inn launched the Booking Confirmation Service, 3% of the message recipients have used it to book meals, while 13% of guests have requested and received maps and directions. The technology has also helped Premier Inn to reduce its no-show rate by almost 20%.
Premier Inn required a technology that provided a booking confirmation text message, yet also added value to their guest’s experience with the hotel. Hotel guests now receive a text reservation reminder on the day of arrival, which also offers directions to their hotel, and an option to book dinner.
Should a guest request directions, Rapide Communication send a text message to their mobile phone, including satnav co-ordinates. If the directions are insufficient, a second text message provides a colour map of the hotel’s location. The enhanced automated text service also provides the guest with an opportunity to book dinner at the local (parent company) Whitbread restaurant by text.
Rapide Communication’s automated SMS, mobile Internet and voice services allow companies to communicate with a large number of people with either one message, or a series of messages. The latest range of services also allow ‘conversations’ to take place, where message recipients communicate with the automated service to gain more information. The company’s technology automates processes such as bookings confirmations, reminder distribution, sign up, payment and feedback.

Dialogue Powers Community Text Service

Randwick Council in Australia has launched a community text service, with the help of mobile agency, Dialogue Communications. The service provides local residents with information on Council services, ranging from playing field status, local road works and events, instantaneously via the web or SMS. Residents can also report issues, such as potholes and illegally dumped rubbish, to the Council by sending a text.
Using Dialogue’s Mobile Applications Portal (M.A.P) authorities are able to create different mobile campaigns quickly and easily to keep local residents informed about what’s happening in their area.
“Our mobile applications allow authorities and institutions to quickly and easily communicate with their communities, whether it be residents or commuters, says
Dialogue CEO, Hugh Spear. “The other advantage is that the portal can be set up quickly, so changes can be made by the authorities without a large investment of time or money.”
Dialogue is currently providing community text services to more than 40 Councils and Police Forces in the UK. Customers include the Hampshire Constabulary, which is using Dialogue to enable the deaf and speech impaired to report emergencies via text messaging; East Riding of Yorkshire Council, for the reporting of benefit fraud; and East Dunbartonshire, for Youth Community services.

Carrier IQ Launches IQ Insight Experience Manager

Carrier IQ, which specializes in Mobile Service Intelligence solutions for wireless carriers and device vendors, has launched IQ Insight Experience Manager to its Carrier IQ suite of analytics products.
According to Carrier IQ, the solution gives wireless carriers and mobile device manufacturers “an unprecedented, objective view into what is actually happening on mobile subscribers’ devices”. This includes quality of service, application usage and the related experience, as it occurs, at the point of delivery and use. 
“A rich understanding of the overall customer experience is increasingly viewed as the key differentiator in the mobile market,” says Carrier IQ CEO, Mark Quinlivan. “Experience Manager gives service providers, device vendors, and application and content developers the ability to offer compelling products and services that customers truly value based on a vast amount of objective data. Experience Manager can directly contribute to enriching the overall customer experience and thus the mobile companies’ success in this extremely competitive market,”
IQ Insight Experience Manager uses data directly from the mobile device to give a precise view of how the services and the applications are being used, even if the phone is not communicating with the network.
The solution can be applied by Carrier IQ’s existing customers to their own deployed base of handsets which already have the company’s core technology embedded in the device, and it can also be applied to new devices as they are introduced. In total, Carrier IQ’s core technology is currently embedded on more than 35 million handsets globally.
Using Experience Manager, Carrier IQ conducted extensive trials over several months with multimedia devices across North America and Europe that included thousands of users across 40 operators. Some of the key findings of critical interest to different mobile market players are:

• Interest decreases in complex multimedia applications after as little as two days.  Thereafter, those applications had very little or no usage.
• Features that attracted the most extensive use throughout the trial period were Call History, Contacts, Camera, Internet Browser and Media Player. 
• During phone calls, the top features that were used simultaneously included SMS, Camera, Bluetooth and Calendar.
• Only 15% of camera use resulted in sending an MMS.
• The majority of users listened to MP3 audio and viewed MPEG-4 video files during the evening.

Nuance Study Finds Consumers Keen on Outbound Messaging

Nuance Communications has released the results of research carried out by research firm Harris Interactive. The study, commissioned by Nuance, surveyed 622 UK residents aged 18 or over who had received some form of proactive communications in the last six months. It found that consumers are enthusiastic to receive proactive communications, mostly by email or text message, from pre-selected companies to deliver “imperative information”.
Nuance says the findings illustrate that not all calls and messages, even at home or in the evenings are frowned upon. The Harris study found that over 80% of consumers surveyed wanted to be alerted when there is a threat of fraud, or a home visit from a service technician is cancelled. The most common outbound messaging services are order status and account information, but as consumers become more engaged with electronic communications, Nuance believes the applications for outbound messaging will grow, as other business segments want to keep their customers informed.
Research findings include:

• 87% are receptive to receiving a proactive communication from a company with whom they do business if they allowed you to opt-in to receiving this service.
• While the majority felt their permission is needed before proactive communications about  marketing or sales promotion are sent, a significantly lower percentage felt they needed to give permission to receive proactive communications about outage notifications, order status, and travel status updates.
• Most respondents would not pay for the convenience of proactive alerts.
• 48% had received a proactive alert by SMS or text messaging, reflecting a significant opportunity in the future.

Nuance says the findings indicate demand for a full end-to-end customer care solution from enterprises wanting to deliver a superior experience to its customers, adding that with inbound and outbound solutions, as well as an on-device mobile solution, its customer care products provide the customer tools to help drive a consistent, user friendly consumer experience at every touch point. With text messaging on the rise and the availability of automated customer service solutions to ease call centres and alert consumers of imperative information, Nuance says it is well-positioned to ensure that customer service evolves to meet and exceed expectations for consumers as well as the enterprise.
 “The private and professional lives of today’s always-on generation of consumers, is far busier and more complicated than ever before,” says Nuance General Manager, Northern EMEA, Ian Turner. “Proactive outbound messaging can make their lives easier through measures such as timely reminders or helpful information alerts. This service is not invasive, and it has been well received by consumers who have come to value its efficiency. From an enterprise perspective, the survey results from Harris Interactive are especially compelling for those companies looking to reduce agent costs, while still delivering an exceptional experience for their customers.

Mobile CRM Made Simple

Christian Wettre, President of CRM company W-Systems Corp, offers advice to businesses looking to choose a mobile CRM system for their field sales force 

Mobile CRM is rapidly becoming a must-have for field sales and service organisations as they realise the tangible ROI that can be achieved through reducing office-based administration and enabling personnel to manage routine tasks and real time reporting ‘in the field’. But with a growing number of mobile CRM solutions available, many organizations are in danger of choosing over-complex applications or irrelevant mobile extensions of existing CRM systems. My advice is as follows: Keep it simple, both for the mobile users, and for your IT administrators.
According to the Gartner Group, there are just under 60 million mobile workers who are away from their workstations for at least 20% of the working week. And with recent reports suggesting that mobile CRM will grow to 20% of total CRM revenues by 2010, many organisations are now revisiting their current CRM provision as the ‘virtualization’ of business processes and procedures draws ever closer.
The reality is that more and more mobile devices are able to access the Internet, and with an increasingly mobile workforce, flexible work patterns and a rise in ‘home office’ workers, it is clear that there is a demand even in small and medium sized companies for a new ‘virtual’ office hub, where information can be shared and analyzed across all channels of the organization in real time.

wMobile Version 1.8 Released

W-Systems Corp has announced the release of version 1.8 of its wMobile Mobile CRM product. wMobile is a mobile phone client for the GoldMine CRM system. The new version adds team-based graphical monthly, weekly and daily calendars to the application, displays equally well on any phone from BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone to Palm and, according to W-Systems President Christian Wettre, has “pushed the envelope of what is possible in mobile application”.
With the latest graphical team calendars, wMobile users can now interactively access any team member’s calendar via their mobile phone and with new dynamic time zone support, any user can specify the time zone they are operating in and have schedule activities translated on the fly to display in the context of their current location. There’s a short demo of wMobile’s group calendar functionality here.
“wMobile 1.8 illustrates a leap forward in the usability of mobile web applications,” says Wettre. “By offering a parity in user experience across all major phone operating systems, we are enabling our customers to freely choose the mobile phone device most suitable for their users, without concern for model and operating system obsolescence.”
wMobile recently completed its 200th customer installation last month. One of these customers, Kevin Reichley, Vice President of Sales for Ticomix Inc., says:
“With wMobile we have been able to fulfill a need for our small to mid-size customers to mobilize their CRM processes. The product sales cycle is very short because wMobile is inexpensive and provides great value, and implementation is quick and easy. I use wMobile to access my GoldMine daily, so it's a pleasure to endorse and sell a product that I really believe in.”
wMobile provides wireless mobile access to the popular GoldMine Corporation Edition and Premium Edition, and is compatible with Microsoft IIS Server 5.0 or higher, Microsoft .NET Framework and most mobile devices, including BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm Treo, iPhone and Symbian based phones.
The application provides wireless interaction without synchronization, meaning that no data resides on the phone should it be lost or stolen. wMobile includes a number of innovative features such Proximity Contacts, which offers the ability to quickly identify all nearby contacts, such as customers and prospects. wMobile reduces the burden on organization IT resources by deploying mobile CRM as a server based web application with no application or data synchronization between server and mobile client.

SMS Solution Targets Contact Centres

JAM IP, which specialises in contact centre consultancy and software development, has extended its OpenCONTACT suite with the launch of OpenCONTACT Mobile, which manages outbound SMS, MMS and WAP push communication for contact centres. JAM IP says the new product will allow contact centres to increase their use of outbound text communication, while cutting down on phone calling costs, and, the company says, provides the means for building sophisticated proactive contact strategies.
OpenCONTACT Mobile allows contact centres to harness the power of SMS, by combining voice and text communication into a single platform, providing contact centres with the same control over their outbound SMS and MMS messages as they have over their outbound calling. It also integrates with existing back-end systems and monitors contact centre activity and queues, then paces message delivery according to agent availability. These integration features are vital, according to research that JAM IP conducted with ContactBabel, as the major inhibitor for SMS uptake within contact centres is the lack of integration with existing applications.
OpenCONTACT Mobile uses complex and segmented list management, combined with templates, to automatically construct and send messages, and provides real-time reporting. It also allows customers to reply to SMS messages and receive an automated response back. JAM IP’s research with ContactBabel’s shows that two-way communication using SMS is not wide-spread – 55% of respondents stated that they do not allow customers to respond to an SMS.
The platform can be used for the delivery of a range of services, including appointment reminders; delivery confirmations; account updates and balances; tickets and barcodes for events and promotions; rich mobile content such as WAP sites; and marketing messages
JAM IP’s research with ContactBabel found that many customers are giving their mobile as their prime contact number. As a result, almost 70% of contact centres’ outbound calling costs will be the result of calls to mobiles by mid-2008, signifying the need to move to other communication methods. SMS is the likely choice, as it is as ubiquitous and personal as the mobile while relatively inexpensive - costing only 5 - 10p, compared to an outbound phone call that can cost £3.08 (The 2007 Contact Centre Operational Review, ContactBabel). According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, SMS is an effective marketing channel with 90% of SMS messages being opened, compared to 25%  for emails.
JAM IP notes also that SMS has cost-saving potential when it is used to provide proactive information to customers - the kind of information that customers would normally call into the contact centre to obtain, such as the status of an order or a loan application. According to ContactBabel, the average cost of an inbound call to a contact centre is £2.88. If an inbound call can be avoided by providing a proactive SMS message (costing 5 - 10p), the cost savings can be significant.
“SMS is a killer contact centre application,” says JAM IP Market Development Director, Suzette Bouzane Meadows. “You can genuinely improve your customer service, while at the same time reducing cost. The potential for service has long been talked about, but it was difficult to realise because of the problems associated with integrating it with existing contact centre applications. Now with OpenCONTACT Mobile, the industry has the opportunity to fully exploit outbound SMS to complement its other activities, especially in the provision of an unobtrusive, one-to-one service.”