Mobile Moments: Humanizing the Mobile Experience

And so today I want to talk to you about what it looks like to humanize the experience in mobile apps, and in general, for the consumer in the digital age. Now, what do I mean by that, humanizing? It means that software for many years has taken the tasks that we do on a regular basis and automated them. But in automating them, we’ve created distances between ourselves and our customers. Our customers used to show up in our storefronts. We used to have a conversation face to face. We would know their name, we would know their children, and they would know about us. And that relationship was part of what we’re selling. That experience.

But today in software and primarily in mobile software, we’re not doing that, we’re not connected. And that’s really unsatisfactory given the fact that we carry these devices in our pockets all day long. They’re with us all the time. So as a result, we at Apptentive and our customers talk a lot about something that’s really important us. And that is thinking about people as people not users. In fact we wear it on our shirt. We talk about this so often that we had to make t-shirts to go to conferences and share this with other people who really pick up on it. And the reason it resonates is again that you have this personal device that is actually just about the person who owns it. And when you have that personal device you can reconnect, you can recreate that inner-connectedness that you had when people came you’re your store.

That opportunity create a human connection, to really listen to them, it’s never existed before in software and now you have this with the mobile device. And what we think is really powerful about this is that we all make mistakes as companies, as people. And when you actually create emotional connection your consumers, your consumers will go to bat for you, they will forgive your mistakes. They will be loyal, and loyal customers are 10 to 20 times as profitable as the average customer that you have. And when you think about mobile, what you should really be thinking about is the opportunity to accelerate your growth and increase profitability through making connections at scale.

So here’s one really simple piece of advice for all of you out there who are trying to figure out the mobile business and how to humanize it. Make your app your central point for listening. What I mean is this. When somebody is using your app, that is an opportunity for you to reach out and understand what else you can do for them, what else you can make better for them in their lives. Turning your app into that listening point, huge advantage. So use mobile to humanize customer experience. Use mobile to humanize the relationship and to actually treat the people on the other hand as people, not users of your software. And if you do that, your business will grow faster and more profitably. Thanks.