Customer service in the palm of your hand

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Aug 2001 by Tehrani, Rich

Healthcare. Doctors, nurses and other healthcare personnel were the first people to universally carry pagers, so it's no surprise that this segment may be the first to universally carry handheld computers. In addition to using the device to stay in touch with an office for messages and emergency alerts, healthcare professionals can use them to make notations to patients' charts remotely, send prescriptions to pharmacies, look up a drugs side effects and potentially dangerous interactions on the Web, keep in touch with a patient's insurance company's policies and most importantly, schedule tee times.

Banking. Yes, most banks today have a Web site on which customers can do online banking, and all have toll-free numbers customers can use to interact with an IVR and receive account balances, monitor checks cleared, etc. Imagine the convenience for a bank customer to use his or her PDA to view all aspects of his banking, from account balances, IRAs and check status to mortgages and loans, all in a customdesigned Web page, delivered to a PDA.

Stock trading. While a WAP-enabled phone can deliver stock prices and changes, the broader memory, functionality and better graphics of a PDA could deliver predictions, analyst reports, graphs and news reports about a particular company in a much more complete way than a WAP-- enabled cellular phone ever could.

Real estate. Imagine how much easier it would be to maintain real estate databases and current financing info if an estate agent could carry a wireless enabled PDA? Appliances that turn handheld computers into digital cameras (such as Handsprings EyeModule2) could allow an agent to take a photo of a house newly put up for sale, and the agent could than post the photo, along with a write-up and pricing information, to the real estate company's main database instantly, allowing other agents access to selling information on the house from the road, eliminating the need to return to the office. Along the same vein, real estate agents might benefit from some of the new Internet-ready digital cameras, such as Ricoh's RDC-i700 (www.ricohzone.com/cameras), which gives users the ability to send and receive images via e-mail, and to browse the Internet. With such technologies, an agent meeting with potential buyers could call up mortgage rates from competing companies for the benefit of the buyers, retrieve insurance quotes, town statistics and tax information, historical details about the house, etc.

Location-Based Targeted Marketing

Let me say from the get-go that this technology, which enables a marketer to determine when a customer is in a specific geographic location and send a promotion to his or her Web-enabled PDA or WAP-enabled mobile phone, should be conducted only on an opt-in basis, and not sent to customers who dorA wish to receive such messages. But imagine that you operate a chain of successful coffee shops. Your loyal followers, who prefer your double-mocha half-caf latte to anyone else's, could opt in to your wireless, location-based marketing program, and voila, each time they're in a new city they can receive a message from you that lets them know you have a shop nearby and that, if they buy a cup of coffee today, they get a free almond biscotti. You could even let your coffee-hungry customers "download" an e-coupon to their PDAs, and then give them the ability to beam the coupon directly to your cash register via their handheld infrared synching capabilities.