The Anywhere Customer
Today, we’re demanding not just 24/7 connectivity, but 24/7 connectivity anywhere we happen to be.
With tablets, netbooks and even televisions providing ever-more connectivity and real-time interactivity on top of PCs and smartphones, the consumption of services from any application from any device from anywhere is rapidly increasing. I can even pay for a Starbucks coffee using my smartphone.
And the dynamics of our consumption of services and apps is also changing. Activities once largely reserved for “home” use, such as downloading and watching video, have increased significantly on the mobile Internet. Last year, according to Pingdom, 730 billion YouTube videos were viewed over wireless networks! And, Cisco just announced that they expect mobile video traffic to exceed 50% of the total mobile traffic in 2011.
We’ve truly become anywhere customers.
We, the consumers, are the real winners of this anywhere experience, but so too are the new players who have introduced these great new experiences, such as Facebook, Spotify, Apple, Netflix and so on.
At the same time, this anywhere experience has fragmented the traditional customer experience, creating a challenge for service providers that I intend discussing in future blogs.
[...] providing this “anywhere customer experience” is difficult for service providers who struggle with system silos that have [...]