Reality Check

The Wireless Wonderland
Urgent Action Item: Prioritizing incoming calls from mobile customers who can't afford to wait

By Paul Stockford

As I write this I've just returned from the Call Center/CRM Solutions Conference and Exposition in Dallas. It was, as usual, an excellent event with lots of memorable moments. Perhaps the most memorable was former Sen. Bill Bradley's keynote address. Bradley has led a life more interesting than most of us can even dream of. From Olympic competitor to NBA hero to serving his country for 18 years in the Senate, hearing the ruminations and reminiscences of this remarkable man was, for me, unforgettable.

The keynote session was also memorable for me because of the number of times my enjoyment of Bradley's talk was interrupted by the ringing of some thoughtless yabbo's mobile phone. It is irritating and downright rude for people to let their mobile phones ring while attending a speech or presentation. I have the same problem in restaurants when the guy at the next table's cell phone is constantly ringing while I'm trying to eat, forcing me to listen to his critically important conversation: "Hey," (pause) "Not much, how about you?" (pause) "Eatin' lunch with Frank. How about you?" (pause) "A hamburger, how about you?"

Many years ago, while moderating sessions at European telecommunications conferences, I learned to ask attendees to turn off their mobile phones during the presentations and the Q&A session. During a session I moderated at the Dallas conference, I requested that if anyone in the audience was equipped with a mobile phone, please turn it off. Someone in the audience replied with a sarcastic "If?" and it suddenly struck me that everyone in the room was more than likely sporting a mobile phone.

One Billion Mobile Users

There's no doubt that mobile communication is here to stay. Ray Jodoin, the wireless guru at Cahners In-Stat Group, told me that at the end of last year there were 107 million mobile phone subscribers in the United States and 697 million mobile phone users worldwide. According to Ray's forecast, the number of subscribers worldwide will break the 1 billion mark during the third quarter of 2002.

I guess I'll have to get used to the pointless mobile yammering in restaurants, although I hope I never have to hear another cell phone ring during a conference session.

But the thought struck me that, if I were a contact center manager, I should be giving some serious thought as to how I will be handling the customers who call my contact center from their mobile phones.

Up to this point, I think most contact centers handle incoming mobile calls the same way they handle incoming wireline calls: put them in the queue and answer them in FIFO order. However, think about how you use your own cellular phone. If you're like me, you use the mobile phone when you're on the go. You don't have the patience to hold a mobile phone up to your ear for several minutes while you wait to get connected to an agent. You want to conclude your transaction quickly and move on to the next task. If the call requires a wait before reaching an agent, you'll hang up and call back at a more convenient time.

No Solution Yet

But what if you forget to call back later and that business is lost? That's what call center executives should be thinking about. Unfortunately, there aren't too many systems out there yet that address the unique needs of mobile phone callers to the contact center.

A random check of vendors didn't net many exciting ideas. Rockwell seems to have the best solution, in that its routing capabilities would allow someone identified as a mobile user to be moved to the head of the queue.

The caller would, of course, have to identify him or herself as a mobile caller, or there would have to be some sort of database lookup of every mobile exchange in the country (or worldwide?) in order to properly route the call and make this application work efficiently. There are some major obstacles to overcome.

I don't have an answer to this problem, but I think it's a situation that should be addressed, and addressed soon. Think about how many potential customers could be lost otherwise. Oh, the challenges might be frightful, but the rewards could be delightful, when you're walking in a wireless wonderland.

Paul Stockford is president and chief analyst at Saddletree Research (saddletreeresearch.com). Readers may send comments to CIrespond@advanstar.com.