“The future is already here, just not evenly distributed” – William Gibson, Science Fiction Author

This is one of our favorite quotes, and we believe to be fully true – and in many cases – it’s your customer who is holding the future – while you aren’t. The traditional B2C relationship is becoming more of a C2B engagement model. Consumers have multiple options today for how they learn about and engage in dialog with or about a specific brand. Many companies are struggling to make the shift from the use of traditional engagement models to integrated cross-channel solutions for serving the customer.

There are various reasons why the transition is difficult for firms:

• Your IT infrastructure is not set up to be able to bring in new technologies as quickly as your customers can adopt them
• There may be security, privacy or regulatory reasons why you can’t leverage these new technologies
• You’re big, and while you’d like to immediately jump on new technologies, you can’t since it takes a while to turn a ship like yours

The focus is on controlling IT operating costs which misses the opportunity to increase customer attention, retention and ultimately customer satisfaction

When it comes to customer care, your customers are already holding the future in their hands. It’s pretty likely that most of your customers have more computing power in their current smartphones than your agents have on their desktops. The question then remains, how can you effectively and inexpensively provide care today and into the future?