Real-time Customer Engagement with Mobile Apps

 Monday 9th June, 2014

By the end of 2014, the total number of global mobile internet users is expected to overtake the total number of desktop users. Organisations are facing the reality that the preferred engagement channel of their customers is no longer the traditional routes like landline, web portals or snail mail — it’s the smartphone. Static mobile apps—those allowing consumers to locate stores, check order statuses and review account information will have to make way for the next wave of mobile customer engagement apps for banking, insurance, healthcare and government.

For example, in 2014 the UK the government is begining consultations on new legislation to permit the use of smartphones for remote cheque deposits. Under the proposals, UK banks will be able process cheque images for the first time, suspending the current requirement for banks to physically see the paper version before agreeing to honour the payment. The Treasury says the new rules should cut cheque processing times from six to two days.

As the  adoption of mobile-based customer interaction continues, deploying a platform that can support a customer consistently across all channels will be essential. And tools to create a mobile app in weeks rather than months will be a distinct competitive advantage. Key mobile app platform capabilities need to include:

• Real-time, dynamic integration with back-office business processes
• Image-enabled apps for automated capture of the customer's document content
• Image “perfection” - correcting a mobile-captured image to the quality needed for use in a business processes
• Automatic document classification and OCR data extraction
• Data validation by matching OCR-captured data with existing customer data records
• Advanced usage analytics to provide actionable insights into overall performance

Solutions like the Mobile Capture Platform from Kofax support each step in developing and deploying a mobile-based customer-facing app, including image capture & processing, document classification, data extraction, validation, and process orchestration. By levering a proven and open mobile capture platform, organisations can quickly build and deploy customer engagement solutions such as bill payment, remote cheque deposit, customer on-boarding, mortgage origination and new account opening — all using the same development platform. For a more detailed look at image-enabled mobile application development take a look at the Kofax white paper at http://go.kofax.com/LP=3275?ls=direct.