Another day, another mobile customer care solution announcement. May 7, Interactive Intelligence announced Interaction Mobilizer, their entry into the slowly populating mobile customer care arena. As described by the company, with Interaction Mobilizer when a mobile user needs assistance, a call-back request can be sent into the contact center along with the context of what was occurring on the device so the customer service agent has exactly what they need to help the customer.
On first blush, Interaction Mobilizer may sound very similar to the Genesys Mobile Engagement solution I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. One way then to explain the Interactive Intelligence release is to offer a few points of comparison to the Genesys solution.
* Platform availability: Both solutions are initially available for Apple iOS, Android and Windows smartphones. Each also supports one more platform; for Genesys that is Blackberry and for Interactive Intelligence it is Facebook. The connectivity to Facebook gives Interaction Mobilizer some interesting features, including the ability for the application to use Facebook for log-in and authentication instead of building its own. As seen in the graphic below, that allows it to provide the mobile customer care application with information that Facebook user privacy settings allow access to, such as location.
* Initial Target Market: While Genesys describes its solutions as targeted at companies that have created mobile solutions that are not connected to the contact center, in its initial release Interaction Mobilizer is targeting companies that have not yet created mobile applications. Designed for mid-to-large-sized companies that have not to date had the tools or resources to create mobile applications, Interactive allows customers to create mobile apps "right" the first time--connected to the contact center. Interactive Intelligence says that in a later phase they will likely enable customers who have existing mobile applications to build connectivity to Interaction Mobilizer.
* Decision Maker: As an enhancement to Interactive Intelligence's core solution, CIC, Interaction Mobilizer doesn't necessarily require involvement of corporate IT. Implementation could be driven by customer care staff working to enhance the customer experience. As discussed in the earlier post on Genesys Social Engagement, existing mobile applications have often been built outside of customer care. In that kind of scenario, adding Genesys Mobile Engagement involves getting the two teams to work together--something that Genesys successfully did at early customer American Airlines.
These kinds of differences and similarities are to be expected. Genesys and Interactive Intelligence approached the same customer problem and came up with similar but differentiable solutions.
