Tealeaf: Visibility. Insight. Answers.

Mobile Customer Experience:The 2011 Results Are In

If you're reading this, I am going to make a couple assumptions. For starters, I'm going to assume that you've tried to shop or book a vacation online, or even conducted banking or insurance-related transactions from a computer. My second assumption is that your experiences have, at times, been fraught with struggle and problems. And my final assumption is that you own a mobile device and have tried to make these same transactions from your phone or tablet—and if you're like some 84% of the online US adults who use their mobile devices that way, you've experienced a problem while trying to do so.

Recently, Harris Interactive conducted a survey on behalf of Tealeaf, and it was all about mobile customer experience and the struggles that consumers encounter when trying to transact on this new platform. This is the sixth year that Tealeaf has commissioned an online consumer behavior survey, so we have the data to prove that despite the hyper-growth of the mobile Internet, one fundamental truth remains: whether the platform is a mobile device, tablet or computer, online customer experience still leaves much room for improvement. The lesson for ebusiness? How successful companies are with their mobile channels will depend largely on their customers' ability to complete transactions and their willingness to return.

Other highlights from our 2011 Mobile Transactions Survey include:

Harnessing the Power of the Pizza Customer

Domino's is completely bought into the power of the customer. The quote that got my attention was in their new commercial. "How would you feel if your boss rated your performance based on a nationwide response?" Then the CEO gets on camera to say, "I'm listening to every single customer." That's how all businesses should perceive the customer experience.

Wondering if they're listening to their online customers that way, I paid a visit to their website. At first glance it seems very easy to use but then the navigation got really complicated. I went to Twitter to search see if anyone was tweeting about the Domino's online experience. (By the way, it seems people are fascinated by being able to track their delivery person. Funny thing is, it's kind of like Tealeaf session replay!) Anyway, when I put in domino's #fail, this came up in the first 10 tweets: "RoxieKat: Was going to order Domino's Pizza but can't get menu to load after 2mins...#Fail Local Pizzeria it is then..."

If you’re going to listen, you better listen to everyone.

Leader or Laggard? How Do You Rate in Online Customer Experience?

Of course, we're biased here at Tealeaf. As close as we are to the organizations that are making strides in their online customer experience, it's interesting to hear the less-biased perspective of someone like Bruce Temkin—Customer Experience Transformist and Managing Partner of Temkin Group.

Temkin Group recently conducted research on the maturity of customer experience at large organizations and came up with some eye-opening results. Turns out most companies are not yet very good at online customer experience. For instance, in a recent Temkin Group study of more than 140 large organizations...

• Only 10% said they're in a leadership position relative to others in their industries
• Worse yet, a Temkin Group evaluation found that only 3% of these companies are mature in their online customer experience practice.

So while a rapidly increasing number of organizations see online customer experience as something they have to do, there's still quite a lot of room for improvement. The good news is that these conditions present a very good opportunity for companies to establish a competitive edge through superior online customer experience.

How do you rate compared to your competition in this area? Many companies don't even know. To hear more from Bruce Temkin on this subject, have a listen to our recent podcast with him on the subject of Online Customer Struggle.