Customer care is mostly regarded as an ‘after sales’ function for businesses that is aimed at providing seamless user experience, be it for a product or a service. It is undoubtedly the most important function that can either win hearts or kill prospects through bad or negative word-of-mouth publicity by users depending upon their personal after sales experience.
In today’s digitally wired world, businesses are moving from traditional customer care centres that were manned by phones to sophisticated technology based applications that can be operated through smart devices with only a few clicks. The objective is to reduce human dependency at contact centres through automation and provide customers with seamless user experience.
Further with multiple social media platforms, companies are more conscious in capturing consumer response by categorizing them depending upon the nature and intent of comment (read content). Of late we have been witnessing that the online retail industry in particular is far more active in this domain as they are mostly apps based. It is also complex in the sense that ‘logistics’ forms an integral part of end-to-end delivery.
Businesses across services like telecom, logistics and transport, banking, retail, media to mention a few have been leveraging technology based mobile applications and thus getting more direct with their customers. That was the beginning when we witnessed the boom in development of mobile apps.
The future is likely to be more sophisticated where we will see more and more aggregator mobile apps being downloaded by users wherein they can categorise based on nature of service or products. Aggregator mobile applications can be across product or service domain that are merged into a single application platform or on a single domain like health and fitness, online retail, food and beverages, etc.
The challenges for an aggregator application lie in developing a custom application that suits the industry standards and requirements. But of course these challenges can be addressed through integration of technology platform making it compatible for users in a single mobile application. This is all about taking the user experience of customers to the next level by providing flawless execution and delivery.
For brands to be a part of an aggregator app is more about user acquisition followed by user retention. So now the question that remains to be answered is what is so unique for consumers to go for aggregator apps. Well consumers might prefer a single app that allows them to access multiple brands and reduces the time and effort to shuffle between multiple apps. Once the user is able locate the desired product or service, the aggregator app will lead the user to the product or service provider and close the loop. The end result is all required information in a single screen with only a few taps on the smart device.
Recently we are witnessing a lifecycle where companies with their branded apps are competing with aggregator apps primarily because of the richness in terms of offerings coupled with seamless user experience. And market trend suggest that only those will survive that are delivering compelling value in terms of engagement, sophistication and ultimately superior end user experience. An aggregator app uses algorithm that defines and drive their success ratio in comparison to branded apps and it will continue to evolve by addressing consumer interests. The future lies for the aggregator apps which we can call the next generation revolution in apps development.
