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Mobile Messaging : Disrupting the Call Center

By Srikrishnan Ganesan

2015 saw a huge amount of noise being made about messaging. Magic, Operator, FB messenger, Slack, all made news, and people paid more attention to learn from WeChat from the East.

A year ago, we at Konotor posted about how Messaging is Eating the World, highlighting a key trend of user engaging with businesses over messaging (we’ve been evangelizing this since 2013). Through the last year, we saw some great posts emerge on the topic : one similar to ours from Intercom, The Futures of Text by Jonathan Libov, Messaging and Mobile Platforms by Benedict Evans, this one by Rodrigo Martinez, and many many more through the rest of the year.

2016 will be the year when messaging starts to really move beyond an experiment to seriously impacting how support and customer engagement works for mobile-first businesses.

Call centers now need to invest in evolving to “chat centers” as well. Here’s why you should prioritize engaging with customers through messaging:

Customers love messaging with your business for help

No waiting in Queue - they don’t have to be on a line for someone to answer the phone/live chat. Automated first-responses / bot responses can engage the customer, and the business can engage back at its convenience

Lower friction medium - Messaging is easy, conversational, natural right inside your app. It hence is a lot less of a chore for a customer to message you, than to find the customer care number or email id and make a call or send you an email

Asynchronous - customers can read your messages at their convenience and respond when they have a window, and are learning to wait for a response (as they see how this works well on Whatsapp/FB Messenger)

Richer - the medium lets them do more! Send a screen-grab, photos or videos of a product or experience or a problem to describe it better, for example.

Lesser questions asked - The business can usually have better context to engage back smartly with the customer, so the onus is not on the customer to explain who they are, or even what they were last doing

Businesses love this too!

Agent productivity - asynchronous nature of the medium allows for better multi tasking between active conversations than a medium like phone calls or web-chat, so lower waiting and better overall TAT

Strategic to mobile retention — we know users are up to 300% better retained on your mobile app if they believe it offers a convenient way to get support from the business

Pro-active conversations to up-sell users — Messaging allows you to engage the customer without intruding their personal communication space of email, SMS or phone calls. We all know its never a good time to get those marketing calls. But what if I could message back and forth to learn about a new offering, and within the contained contextual space that your app offers?

Private — Offer an easy way for users to engage personally, and more than 60% users will first give you a chance to fix their issue engaging privately before they outrage on social media! You business can keep your social media channels more positive as a result!

No “missed chats” or “call drops” - the engagement can just continue till resolution without having to worry about interruptions or users going away as you can always engage them back through push!

Canned responses over messaging are just so much more faster than reading out responses on calls

Easy Localization - Messaging doesn’t have accent issues that come with voice support. Your support team could be anywhere, have minimal training, and use canned responses in different languages!

Automation that feels natural - Wading through IVRs are long and boring, but instant to do the same over messaging

Minimum peak-time planning - an asynchronous medium lets you set expectations on how soon you will respond, and plan your support workforce accordingly

Better ability to resolve issues online - users being able to send you richer messages like screen captures or photos can help debug issues customers are facing

Happier customers - offering a low friction channel to engage builds trust with your users, and leads to higher customer satisfaction

If its good for the business, and good for the user, the move to messaging just has to happen! If you are thinking about how this will impact your increasingly mobile-focused business, message us on Whatsapp / FB Messenger, or Twitter DM :)

Invest in customer conversations!

By Srikrishnan Ganesan

I recently saw an entrepreneur tweet out the following on the topic of messaging as a medium to engage with customers: “until the chat customer execs are Amazon/Apple level, no use!!“.

One thing that differentiates Amazon from their peers is the excellent customer support they offer. Who else has dared to offer a “May Day” experience? So, does Amazon spend too much on support? Is such a cost warranted?

I heard the answer to this at an Amazon event by one of their Kindle team execs. And I believe him. He said “Amazon INVESTS in great support via May Day”. They really look at customer conversations via May Day or chat as an investment rather than a cost. And you should too!

Here’s how you INVEST in support to reap benefits:

1. Make it super easy for users to reach out to you. Messaging is obviously a great channel, especially for mobile :)

2. Get your team to respond to each customer issue - you would have a very good grip on the most pressing issues for your customers.

3. Prioritize and solve for the top 3 issues each month in a more structured way, so the user can help themselves with these issues (could be a change in user experience, FAQ, better on-boarding, or availability of information the user needs [refund status on a canceled order, for example])

4. Back to step 1 - listening to your users!

By forcing a discipline on attacking your top 3 drivers of customer complaints, you are immediately moving down a path of delivering a better experience for your customers - one that will keep them for longer with you. If you instead try to make it harder for customers to reach out, you won’t prioritize these with the same focus that you’d do if the message volumes are really high! Also, your customers will love you for being accessible, and for building a better product knowing how you help them.

So remember - support is an investment, not a cost :).

For Developers: Android M ready! New iOS SDK too!

Developers! Please update to the latest verison of our SDKs via gradle / cocoapods.

Android version 3.0.17 onwards is Android M ready. We have a bunch of new customization options added too including using separate images for the notification icon in the status bar and in the notification drawer.

iOS version 3.6.20 onwards now has options for custom fonts and tweaks to improve the keyboard text entry experience for the app user.

Also, we have a big new update coming that will blow you away :). Reach out ([email protected]) if you want to schedule a demo of what’s next!

Integrations! Want more?

We now have integrations with Slack, Freshdesk and Zendesk. Want more? Reach out to us at [email protected]!

How is your app doing?

Doing what we do at Konotor, we have friends in the app world — many of whom are product and marketing folks in the companies we engage with. We often discuss metrics they are tracking (or could be tracking) for their apps.

Here are a few key questions you may want to think about in relation to measuring your app’s performance.

1. Am I capturing all the key info?

This is the easier question, as there are many resources/guides (See here, here, and here for example) online to help you get started here. The picture at the beginning of this article gives you a framework to think about whether or not you are capturing the critical metrics — think in buckets to see what metrics you capture for each bucket.

Some of the retention and engagement metrics are unique to mobile apps. Which metric to focus on depends on the genre of the app. A game should measure D7, D30 retention actively, while a commerce app would rather look at conversion funnels and monthly cohorts. It is important to be aware of which metrics are key to your own business/app.

The way apps are evolving to focus on a single purpose, it also becomes important for commerce and utility apps to measure what percentage of users who start using their app are able to get to the key action or experience in their app, and how soon it happens from app install. Getting users to the first ticket booking, first invoice generation, first payment through the app, before they uninstall your app has become very important in helping users understand your value sooner. Don’t ignore this!

2. Am I analyzing the captured data right?

In terms of slicing your data, there are a few ways to segment data that have emerged as more useful than others.

For any app that does paid user acquisition or has varied sources of acquiring new users, it is most critical to look at ALL of your data by the source of app install. Your retention metrics, LTV, Engagement, Virality (k-factor, percentage users sharing, etc), all in a way are linked to the quality of user your campaigns are bringing in. Slicing data this way will give you the true picture of how well a channel is doing for you.

It is always important to measure how your new app is doing as compared to a previous version. We all understand the app has to improve on an ongoing basis — but how do you prioritize what new features/capabilities to work on or what bugs to fix if you don’t measure the impact of those changes on your key metrics?

Are users re-engaged by push notifications behaving differently from those re-engaged via social re-targeting? Is one campaign working better than another in helping users see your value and turn into more engaged users? It may be as simple as the first few words you use in your push notification being right, to help the user quickly realize the value of your communication. Measure this by tracking the source of the app session.

Are users from a certain geography or age group or gender more engaged, retained and satisfied using your app than others? Slicing your metrics by demographic info can reveal which groups are finding it hard to derive value from your app and also figure if indeed your marketing is reaching the right audience.

How different are your most engaged (top 5 percentile in number of sessions or those using the app X times a day/week, etc) or most active users in their behavior from the average or the worst engaged users? What percent fall under these buckets? If it is about moving more users into that most engaged user bucket, find out how by hypothesizing on how some users end up seeing more value and getting much more out of your app, and testing those hypotheses. If you have a growing number in the most engaged bucket, you are doing well. (You should also see if the most engaged users correspond to a specific demographic or install source/campaign)

3. How do I know if a number I see is good or bad?

There are some benchmarks available for some of the metrics that are published or shared by some of the SDK players such as flurry, appsflyer, etc. that help us understand what is the average number for certain categories of apps. This deck by @deepakabbot also contains some great resources, pointers, and benchmarks.

D1 of 40–50%, D7 of 20–30% and D30 of 7–15% is considered very good for a game, but might be bad for a “launcher app”(home screen replacement on android) or a “social app”(like twitter or snapchat). An app that is a productivity tool or a social app might have a lower D1 or D7, but you would expect it not to taper rapidly afterwards. A bi-weekly cohort after 2 weeks of using a utility should be pretty steady post the first time period.

Uninstall rates of 50% within a week are normal, though again this depends on the user acquisition methods in place.

DAU/MAU works well as a metric for games, social apps. 20–25% is great for games while the best social products may have numbers as high as 60–70%. I personally prefer looking at DAU growth at a steady pace of user acquisition, since DAU/MAU could be misleading when you have a varying number of users acquired on a daily basis .

One way to get around searching for benchmarks to hit, is to focus on the trend that these metrics show, rather than the absolute number. We always need to improve on these metrics.

Whatever number/KPI rings an alarm bell for your business, prioritize making that look better.

e.g.: If you see that only 4% of users who started using your app accomplished the key action (the experience or utility for which they downloaded your app) even once, clearly something is amiss — so figure out your onboarding funnels and slice them by your user acquisition channels to see if it was uniform across channels.

Find slices (by install source, demographic, etc) of users with the best metrics for usage, engagement, retention, etc and use that as the benchmark to aim for across the board. (It doesn’t mean you can achieve those numbers with all users, but it shows you the potential. Of course, you can’t expect all people playing your games to behave like the whales, but studying the whales can also give you insights. Maybe you need to look at the top 10 percentile rather than top 5 percentile to get more realistic benchmarks to work towards.)

e.g.: If you see that time spent in your app for your best users is 50x the average, then figure what are the elements of your app experience that make it better for the top users

e.g.: If you figure your virality, uninstalls, DAU/MAU are all different by user acquisition channel, calculate the real effective cost of user acquisition and LTV for each of these channels and use the best one as your benchmark (caution: maybe exclude your “whales”, and use different benchmarks for organic and paid channels).

Finally, remember that every app and every business is unique. You will still need to determine what metrics are most important to your business, what are the right ways you want to slice your data, and of course, whether you are comfortable with where the numbers show your business is headed.

Keep in mind, not everything can be captured by metrics alone. Doing monthly user experience sessions, and communicating with your app users, are critical to improving upon your product. You will be able to form new hypotheses and identify new data to capture from these exercises.

If you have other thoughts, benchmarks around metrics for mobile apps, do share with me!

Tech Post - Fixing Slow Writes on EBS

Here is a guest post Deepak wrote on DataDog's blog:

https://www.datadoghq.com/2015/03/datadog-wild-fixing-slow-writes-aws-elastic-block-store/

Here's why it's a no-brainer to add Konotor to your commerce app!

#cartabandonment #onboarding #mobileapp #conversion #engagement #re-engage #lapsers #promotions

Send picture messages to your users on iOS & Android now!

We now support sending picture messages to users - both 1:1 and as a marketing message to a well defined segment of users. Don't forget to add text to your marketing messages so users on your old versions of your app see your message! The images will also appear as part of the notification on Android - like this:

Reach out to us if you'd like to know how to make the most of this capability for your app!

Mobile Messaging is Eating the World!

We have a new post on medium on how messaging is likely to play a larger role in our interactions beyond communicating with friends, family, or colleagues. Check it out here.

Lets grow your app transactions!

Following up on our recent initiative to help you reward users transacting with you, we now have stepped it up a notch. We're launching some new partnerships that help commerce apps working with us reward their users with credits to use in their app.

Reach out to us at [email protected] if you want your app users to benefit!

Rewarding your customers through Konotor! Build loyalty!

One of the popular use cases of Konotor is for marketing: Our customers often reaching out to segments of users to get them to transact in their app - sending announcements, coupon codes, information on new products/offerings, and so on.

If you are a commerce or transactional app, you can also use Konotor to deliver transactional messages, including rewards for users transacting with you. These messages can be sent using our API right into the Konotor rich messaging inbox in your app. Its a great way to retain users and build loyalty!

We have a new initiative going, where we bring on a partner ready to reward your app users (only in India for now) and deliver the rewards via Konotor.

If you are a commerce app in India and wants to be part of our pilot for the same, do reach out to us at [email protected]!

Known issue: iOS 8 simulator bug

Deleting and installing an app on the iOS8 simulator gives rise to crashes on apps using Konotor. This is due to a bug in the iOS8 simulator and you can work around it by resetting content and settings on the simulator. Here's the bug that is leading to the issue: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24985825/nsuserdefaults-not-cleared-after-app-uninstall-on-simulator

This issue is "simulator only". So have no fear about this causing issues with your production apps on real devices!

iOS8 support

We have all our fixes in place to support iOS8. Please update your SDKs before you publish your new app!

Download the latest SDK here.

What kind of app are you?

By Srikrishnan Ganesan

Relax! This is not an online quiz that tells you which app you have a match with. The idea is to get you to think about what kind of app you are building.

From a discovery standpoint, we do see apps get slotted in different categories - business, productivity, entertainment, games, news, social, commerce, etc.

For those of us building mobile apps, it probably also helps to think about how to slot your app from a different angle - "what's the interaction / engagement model of this app?"

Here are some examples to help you categorize your app:

* Idle-time apps: Apps that just target being the go-to for your downtime or entertainment needs. Taking public transport and want something to keep you occupied? There's games, news, social time-lines (even anonymous social like Secret) which are all competing for your time here. You look for them and its all about which app pulls you back every-time you have this window to consume little capsules of information from time to time. Maybe it matters who nudges you at the right time - or maybe its about whether you are in the mood for fun (twitter for me!) or being productive (Flipboard perhaps).

Desirable experience: Focus on ease of consumption, suited for short windows of consumption

* Invisible apps & Contextual Apps : Invisible apps do their stuff in the background - you don't really have to interact with them or use them actively. E.g.: PhoneWarrior (blocks spam calls/texts), True Caller, Aviate, Swarm, Friday App, etc.

This class of apps also includes contextual apps that "engage with you" at the right time through smart notifications or other means, instead of you looking for them or using the app. I use Medisafe to remind me to take my pills (little more than a simple reminder for me, but has larger use behind the scene), Google Now brings me information at the right moment, Shifu prompts me to do stuff or return a call when I have time, Swarm tells me when a friend is around, Any.Do prompts me to add items to my todo list, etc.

Desirable experience: Doesn't come in your way, works reliably, optimized for low battery and bandwidth consumption, allows for great degree of personalization to suit each individual, learns and adapts to improve accuracy for context.

Read more about invisible apps here and here.

* Habitual apps: These apps make you form habits of using them for something regularly. This can be the news app you use, or even an app like Uber. Its either in your routine, or its the first thing that comes to your mind for a particular flow. In a way, even commerce apps that you use often could fit into this flow. I use Cleartrip for ticket booking by default, Foodpanda for ordering in, Google Keep for my notes, Scandid to check prices before I make a purchase.

This can also include apps like Instagram, InTouchApp, Dialapp that just replace one of the default phone functions (camera, contacts, phone, etc).

Desirable experience: Does one thing really well, optimized flow for doing your specific task, remembers your preferences/ favorite patterns

* Transient apps and Limited time apps: No I'm not talking about apps with transient content! I'm talking about apps that themselves serve a very specific one-time purpose or make sense in a specific time window. Why would I download an app for one time use? Because it helps you solve a problem that one time! Its just better done through an app than a mobile browser perhaps. Urban Ladder (buy furniture online) is launching an app to help you custom build your wardrobe - use when you are buying a wardrobe and then be done with it! Another example would be apps you install just to interact with other attendees at an event or during a season (say Football world cup app or a Wedding planning app). These apps have a defined life and don't seek to extend that and engage beyond.

Desirable experience: Solves a very unique / specific problem, small in size, does not require personalization

This is not an exhaustive list. Also, remember that there are different kinds of users of your app - power users, novices, etc and the usage expectations from them and of them would vary!

Interested in contributing to a more comprehensive study on app engagement mechanisms? Reach out to me at [email protected].

#uiz

Richness! Picture Messages & HTML-style Links with Anchor Text

We have had support for Picture messages on Konotor for over a month now. In addition, we also now support sending messages with links with anchor text (for both deep links and http links)!

Since this feature requires client side support as well, we haven't made the feature public to all. If you are a Konotor user, have upgraded to our latest SDK, and want to turn on this feature, please reach us at [email protected] and we will enable it for your account!

Thanks, Team Konotor

Should Mobile Commerce Apps use Deep Links? And Deep Link Tags?

By Srikrishnan Ganesan

I recently saw a stat (on URX's blog) - only 22% of the top 200 apps use deep link tags on their web sites (there may be more that use deep links, but only these use the tags on the website). What was more interesting in this was the split by category. It was very counter-intuitive to see only 3 of the top 25 commerce apps would use deep link tags on their site today. Why is this the case? What would it take to get them to start using deep link tags? Here’s a hypothesis on the current situation: Lets start with a question: What’s the starting point for commerce on mobile? Some options: (1) App as the starting point: The user already has a commerce app they trust, and goes to search there first (2) App store as the starting point: I know I want to buy furniture, I search for furniture apps on appstore and download the top 3 (3) Email, social, or advertisements as the starting point: User sees a re-engagement/marketing mail or tweet/fb post and clicks off of it to go back to the app (4) Search as starting point: User starts from web search or comparison shopping sites search for a product on the mobile, and clicks off the results to various mobile commerce sites or corresponding apps Option (4) is a case with very high intent, and is also the only case where tags on your site for the app deep links matter. From the web, one would also expect (4) to be a pretty huge driver for mobile commerce today. So what are possible arguments against investing in this effort? a. For a search across sites, people would still prefer to do this on the PC Web as they can open sites on multiple tabs, etc. b. Even if you find a product on a site, you're not going to install an app just to finish one transaction unless you believe it will be a repeat relationship. c. Shopping sites already pop the option to download their app - either it has good conversion, or product owners believe its not so hard for the user who installs the app to search for a product again. d. This is simply not yet become priority 1 given the mobile team is still focused on first improving their basic app experience.

BUT... tag or no tag, Deep-linking matters! Why?

1. Re-engagement / marketing : Whether you use advertisements, push notifications, email marketing, social media to reach out to your customers with a product/new offering, a deep link from the medium can take the user straight to a specific product in the app, or event to search result page / category (say you are running a twitter campaign for a new brand of shirts, just take them to a search result page!)

2. Rewards/ Referrals : You can use a deep-link mechanism to recognize a new user signing up or making a purchase from a referral program or loyalty initiative you run!

What are your other reasons to use Deep Links for shopping apps? If you are an online shopping app, we would love to hear your thoughts!

srikrishnang

3 weeks ago, I participated in my first hackathon - organized by Capital One in San Francisco. I really enjoyed the experience and would definitely do it again :)

The focus of the hackathon was to build for small businesses. One of the 4 major problem areas identified was “customer...

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