By Mark Atterby – Senior Staff Writer

In the last few years smartphone applications have emerged as another channel for organisations to interact with their customers. Smartphones and Tablets have evolved into a major computing platform. As such BPOs who manage the customer experience for their clients, need to have a strategy when it comes to developing mobility applications.

More and more consumers are using their smartphones to help them shop and many are walking into retail stores armed with their mobile device. While in store trying a product out, they can receive product and pricing information from other online or physical retailers. They can quickly share and obtain information with their friends, receiving feedback and reviews about the products they are planning to purchase.

Once they’ve bought the product or service their smartphone is increasingly the main vehicle for them to interact with the organisation for support or advice whether that’s via SMS, email, Skype, web chat or a traditional mobile phone call.

Retailers have tried to tap into this with mixed results. Research from Retrevo (http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2011/10/retailers-not-providing-smartphone-equipped-shoppers-what-they-need), highlighted how most consumers who use their smartphone for shopping are happy to download a retailers app, but most say that it had no impact in helping their purchase.

However, the development of apps for mobile banking has seen phenomenal growth, where concerns developed about growth outstripping capacity. Mobile banking is used in many parts of the world with little or no infrastructure, especially remote and rural areas. It is estimated that there is 1.7 billion people with a mobile phone but not a bank account, where as many as 364 million unbanked people could be reached by agent-networked banking through mobile phones.

BPO largely evolved from the outsourcing of inbound customer service calls as well as outbound telemarketing in an age when people wanted to talk to someone. In an age where people increasingly prefer the speed, comfort and anonymity of self-service, BPO providers need to incorporate mobility applications as part of their service delivery and technology investment.

Not just customers. SmartPhones and tablets are popular with employees and management.

Executives and managers hate being chained to their desks, and they love the power of tablets and smart phones. According to Datamark BPO providers are planning to provide clients with mobile apps for monitoring and auditing outsourced processes. Features will incorporate business intelligence, dashboards, analytics and instant messaging with the provider.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is expected to take off during 2012 [1]. Essentially companies will be encouraging workers to use their own mobile devices to perform work related functions. BYOD, while reducing hardware costs for the organisation, also increases employee satisfaction. People prefer to work on the devices they own and like using, rather than the slow or antiquated devices handed to them from the IT department.

These days people want everything at their fingertips, regardless of their location. Most leading providers have taken significant steps to adopt smartphones and mobility into their service delivery. BPO providers who do not take on the development of smartphone technology and mobility apps, will lose business and struggle in a market where the phone call is no longer as important as it once was.

1. http://www.globalservicesmedia.com/IT-Outsourcing/Enterprise-Applications/BYOD:-The-New-Me-of-IT-Consumerization/22/3/11825/GS1201239010447

• Korn/Ferry’s global RPO division Futurestep recorded revenue of $US28.6 million for the quarter, up 29% (cc) and operating profit of $US2.3 million, up from $US1.2 million last year. The company predicted that revenue in the next quarter would be between $US183 and $US203 million.
• Panasonic releases TDE/NCP Firmware Version 5 for its top selling IP PBX systems – the KX-NCP500 and TDE200/600 – offering enhanced capacity and upgraded features. The firmware is available now free of charge from Panasonic Certified Telecommunications Resellers. The firmware allows NCP Series IP PBX users to almost double handset capacity, allowing for business growth and staff increases without needing to replace the system. The upgrade also brings enhanced features to call centres using the popular TDE Series IP PBX, allowing the number of callers that can be accommodated in an ICD group to increase from 30 people to 100 people. Furthermore, these callers can now choose to leave a message and exit the ICD queue, rather than being cut off if the number of callers in the queue exceeds capacity.
• Jabra today announced the release of the Value Pack 3 firmware upgrade containing three key new call handling options that make daily call handling even more intuitive on the popular Jabra PRO™ 9400 and Jabra GO™ 6400 Series. The upgrade allows users to dial directly on the touch screen of their headset base through the new dial pad for mobile phones and softphones. Users can make calls directly from the base without having to access their mobile phone or keyboard. This function is particularly useful to users who do not have a traditional telephony handset as they are using a hosted or cloud telephony network. The user can use the touch screen on the Jabra headset base to make calls on their corporate network or mobile phone. The dial pad provides the user with a standardised way of making calls.

By Hayden Walles
Photo by Chris Harrison

It’s not unusual these days to see virtual keyboards on the touch screens of portable devices like tablets and phones. These devices lack a physical keyboard but make up for it by displaying a picture of one on the screen and letting the user tap away on that.

But virtual keyboards are not just constrained to the screen. Today almost anything can become a keyboard – from a table top to the palm of your hand.

Korean company Celluon has been developing virtual keyboards for several years and their latest product is the Magic Cube, a small box that fits in your hand yet provides a full-size keyboard when needed.

Switch it on, sit it on a desk and it projects an image of a keyboard on to the surface in front of it. Tap the virtual keys and the corresponding characters are communicated wirelessly to any compatible device, from a laptop to a smartphone.

The principles involved are very simple. The projection of the keyboard is just that – made by a tiny projector at the top of the box. At the bottom of the box beams of infrared light are emitted just above the surface of the desk. As your fingers tap the surface they cut through these beams, which are reflected up to a camera in the middle of the box. The camera sees the reflection and works out from its position which key you have “pressed”.

Though the Magic Cube is clever it is essentially just a very portable replacement for a real keyboard.

More radical possibilities are on the horizon. Microsoft researchers Hrvoje Benko and Andrew Wilson, along with Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, recently showed off a system they call OmniTouch, which turns any surface into a touch screen.

OmniTouch is made up of a shoulder-mounted projector and depth-sensing camera combination. The projector displays interactive images on any nearby surface – a wall, a table, a pad or even parts of the user’s body.
The camera tracks the user’s fingers, working out where and when they touch other objects.

Putting it all together allows the user to, for example, dial a phone number on a keypad displayed on the palm of their hand, or draw projected pictures on an ordinary paper pad.

Pretty much anything, in fact, that you can do with an ordinary touch-sensitive display, except that the display itself can be any suitable surface.

We take it for granted that the size of portable devices is a compromise between compactness and usability. But if the display and controls need not be physically part of the device, all bets are off. It’s too early to tell whether systems like OmniTouch will take off. But in a few years they may virtually replace their physical counterparts in many situations, in more ways than one.

The Press, New Zealand