Mobile Capture: The Next Big Leap In Customer Service

We live in a world of instant noodles, home delivery and short attention spans. Customers have developed an insatiable need for products and services that provide instant gratification. It is not surprising then that companies around the world are tailoring their offerings to meet the needs of this dynamic, voracious populace. Customer service, therefore, cannot remain immune to these changes, especially since customer service in most verticals is highly document intensive and process cycle times take multiple days.

The primary challenge faced by customer service/field executives in delivering effective customer service, for e.g. in Banking, is getting paper documents from the point of initiation to the actual processing centre. Typically the information is captured on a physical application form. It then gets submitted to a branch from where it gets couriered to the processing centre and then finally gets processed. Improper filling, missing supporting documents, loss in transition add on to the turn-around-time for the process. Capturing information at the Point of Customer Contact and initiating its processing in real time is a challenge both in terms of time and cost.

There is a need for a tool or technology that can bridge this gap between service delivery timelines and customer expectations. One avenue that gives some reason to cheer about is the tremendous strides that mobile technology has made over the years. For the customer service industry, this opens up several opportunities, some of which if absorbed into its processes, can yield very encouraging results.

Mobile capture solutions available in the market today allow business executives to capture physical application forms and supporting documents along with the key metadata and initiate the process instantly. The advanced imaging capability of these solutions allows the field executives to capture documents remotely using their smartphones or tablets, and instantly initiate its processing at the back-office. The captured documents are compressed making it feasible to be transferred over a GPRS/EDGE/3G data connection. The applicability of this technology although at very nascent stages, has found instant traction in Banking, Insurance, Logistics and Telecom verticals. Given the potential this technology holds, it is bound to become pervasive in other verticals where quick retrieval and transfer of data and images are business critical components of customer service.

Mobile capture is a way to boost the energy level and excitement around a technology that has clear business value. For users such as banking/insurance/logistics executives and other on-the-move professionals, it will allow them to do their jobs better and more efficiently. The technology will give a major boost to the green initiative by reducing the demand on replication of paper.

Mobile capture will have many tangible benefits for organisations and add value wherever implemented. The growing stature of cloud services and more technical advancements in imaging/scanning tools in mobile devices will further propel the growth of this technology. Some of these benefits are:

• Drastic reduction in Business Process Cycle time

• Customer Delight of getting serviced at Point of Contact

• Better productivity

• Built-in rules to ensure First-Time-Right and no rework

• Secure data and documents

• Ensuring compliance

• Cost savings – eliminating scanning, reduced courier, duplicity and storage cost

The future of the mobile capture market, even from the most conservative of perspectives, is going to be big. It may not skyrocket to instant fame but slowly and steadily it will fulfill its vast potential. The growing affordability of smartphones and tablets will act as a catalyst for the adoption of this technology solution. Above all, it will depend on organisations that are smart enough to embrace and implement this technology and derive measurable business benefits.

The author is Vice President – Marketing, Newgen Software Technologies Limited.