ben brown

December 2, 2022

Business

Why Digitizing Self-Service Will Help Your Business

ben brown

December 2, 2022

Business

How much time do you have to spare in a day? Likely not a lot, which means that every minute you do spend is on something productive for your business or your well-being. Now let’s consider this: how much of a time saver is it to have tools like self-service banking, self-check-in options, or electronic contract signings?

Your average customer doesn’t want to take the time to come see your brick-and-mortar location. The standards of today's consumer market have an emphasis on the individual through digital strategizing. This means that the changes needed in companies are primarily motivated by the ease of access and have to be people-oriented.

The majority of businesses today understand the importance of providing a variety of solutions for issues their customers may run into, yet many lack execution of this on all fronts. Take for instance the fact that 75% of people today want live chat for customer service. Yet not even a third of businesses offer it. What does that say about the level of companies' market intelligence today?

The fact is that self-service can be however big or small you need it to be for the unique service you offer. Creations like ATMs, movie ticket machines, or airport self-check-ins, all were created as an answer to the demand for the convenience of self-service. This goes to show that the principle lives on and offline, but as we know, online is the key to scalability.

As a starting point to meet these expectations, companies should have implemented on their website a 24/7 accessible self-service portal. This should allow users to communicate with the platform by, for example, being able to input, access, and have personal data secured in the portal. For instance, insurance contracts can be electronically signed with the user's saved signature in the portal.

Self-service is increasingly becoming mainstream, pushing the need for representatives out. Brands that utilize this will be adding value for their customers that the company couldn’t get from anything else. There’s a lot that can be done with digitizing self-service, but most businesses simply need to know where to start to make it viable.

Here are 4 ways your business can do that:

Understand the importance of self-service for your customers

It’s hard to implement something without completely understanding the need for its implementation. For this reason, you’ll want to look at your self-service product from the perspective of your end user.

Some businesses make the mistake of thinking that they already know everything about their prospects and can just implement a system. What they fail to recognize is that the self-service journey goes far beyond payment methods. You’ll want to know:

Why they’ve come to your website
What will keep them engaged online
How the process can be as clear & simple as possible

Content navigation and accessibility

A lot of businesses don’t store all relevant information under one section. Typically, the information is broken up among product manuals, silos, support sections, or the intranet.

The difficult part about this step is creating an interface that connects all these sources into an easy-to-navigate platform.

Consider UX design and how it collaborates with search

The portal you build should allow users to do 3 things: get in, get help, and get out. The design of your portal will dictate how simple it is for the user to navigate. By keeping UX design a top priority for self-service, you’ll be setting your platform up for success.

This can be as simple as having a search bar but with additional features such as text prediction or previewing answers.

Use AI to enhance your product

AI has changed the customer experience especially when it comes to issues in customer service. AI can resolve issues efficiently by analyzing customer data and using it to make predictions about what they’ll want. Sounds great, doesn't it? AI will help your platform build rapport with customers by being custom tailored to the needs of your business.

What’s next?

Self-service is a never-ending project; it will require consistent innovation. Custom software development will help you but it won’t decide to implement itself for you. If you’re going to revolutionize the experience of your platform, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got a clear vision and the right team behind you.

Written By Ben Brown

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ISU Corp is an award-winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost-effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.

Our unique owners’ mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Contact us here.

ben brown

November 29, 2022

Business

Super Apps: What are they? How can you use them?

ben brown

November 29, 2022

Business

We talk a lot about adapting to change and how change is an inevitable factor when running a business. One of the biggest changes to ever hit businesses and the world as a whole is the integration of technology which we have to remember has not been around for that long in retrospect. People are still finding new ways to utilize technology at its maximum potential which does not come without its unique demands.

Applications are a great example when considering the changes technology makes in people's lives on a day-to-day basis. A good user experience is the focal point of any application or website which means variety in your product or service has to be a staple. When it comes to customer retention in the digital market, having a platform that is multi-function is a huge bonus. These are known as Super Apps, which essentially act as a hub for companies to interconnect various applications in one spot.

The term “Super App” was originally coined by the founder of Blackberry Mike Lazaridis. Lazaridis saw this as a way to enhance the user experience of applications and it has since become a viable option for many businesses globally.

A Few Reasons Companies Might Use a Super App Include:

Branding: When organizations have a wide variety of products and services that are delivered through one app, their credibility and recognition grow among consumers.
Access to a bigger audience: When using a Super App, the types of offers a business provides can easily be catered to a variety of consumer niches. In contrast to a singular focused application, this provides more of an opportunity to have a diverse audience.
Revenue streams: Thanks to APIs and savvy software engineering, the amount of services a business can offer is seemingly endless in a Super App. In addition, the cost of customer acquisition is next to nothing.
Increased engagement: Super Apps provide touch points and lots of them. This helps the interactive aspect of your application and will increase the duration of user visits.
Low costs: Taking one solution and using it as an umbrella to add more services are going to save companies in the long run. This is because one app is more inexpensive and easy to manage than multiple applications (which would become pits to throw money into and a headache for software developers).

Software innovation and engineering are always centered around the consumer. For brands to make a name for themselves today, they understand application programming and functionality are crucial to creating a great user experience.

How it Works:

So what kind of services would a Super App help a business deliver in one singular application? Financial services are the best place to look if you want a glimpse of Super App technology in action. A financial Super App will let users view account balances, make transactions, make investments, track/manage subscriptions, and much more. All of these functions in a Super App are now in one place as opposed to users having to go to different websites or platforms for different services.

Developing a Super App

Since a system like this is highly complex, there’s a variety of components you’ll want to ensure go into the application:

Service interaction: Since there are numerous channels of service and users bouncing from one to another, their effectiveness and operating speed have to be consistent. What this means for software developers of the Super App is that performance should be high even with spotty internet, screen transition must be seamless, and no errors should impact users from accessing multiple services at a time.

Promote data sharing: Unlike your typical mobile app, the user's data such as delivery address and ID should be easily accessible to them across all in-app services. Additionally, prior actions and sessions should carry over from service to service to have consistent performance.

Exceptional UI/UX: This is a focal point for Super App development. The visual landscape and experience of using the Super App have to be consistent regardless of how many actions it’s performing.

Security: The convenience aspect of having access to multiple services in one spot is great, but it puts Super Apps in a position of major liability since they are now in possession of sensitive information on their users.

This becomes tricky for Super Apps since there is no margin for error in this area. In comparison to traditional mobile applications, this process is far more complicated. However, this merely puts more of an emphasis on security for software developers which means it’s a good starting point to sort out logistics during the planning process.

The Market for Super Apps

The amount of internet users has grown to over 5 billion people and last year around 230 billion mobile apps were downloaded. The demand for technology that enhances the efficiency and experience of using applications is growing with these numbers and boosting revenues for companies making it work.

Think about your day-to-day; there’s likely less than a handful of apps you use regularly. How do these apps help you? How do you think they help others? Would it be easier to have all of them in one application?

Of course, Super Apps aren’t going to put TikTok, Instagram, FaceTime, and your mobile banking apps in one, but you get the idea.

The Takeaway

Super Apps still have a ways to go before they can dominate North American markets. Right now, they are dominating markets, particularly in South America and Asia where the market size for mobile service is still hundreds of billions of dollars. Soon enough, we can expect this technology to enter the western markets, and when that time comes, businesses will be preparing to dominate with it.

Written By Ben Brown

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ben brown

November 25, 2022

Business

The Benefits of API Development for Businesses

ben brown

November 25, 2022

Business

How has the internet supported your life? Is it how you can run your business? Stay in touch with friends and family? Maybe you use the internet in your leisure time. No matter what the case may be, the internet you know today doesn’t exist without Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). This term may seem intimidating if you are unfamiliar with the concept, so we’re going to have to break it down.

In simple terms, imagine trying to talk to someone in another country without any method for transmitting messages (video calls, phone calls, instant messaging, pen and paper, etc). You’d just be talking to yourself. The API would, in this case, be the devices that make this communication possible. It is software that lets applications communicate. You ask the API for it, and the API goes and gets it for you.

How do APIs help businesses?

Imagine you want a website for your business that’s going to provide an amazing and unique experience for your users, lightyears from what your competitors are using. You’ll need software that can materialize the concepts through various features in your website and allow it to perform at a high level. For this reason, you’ll look for a web developer who can create an API for your website.

You’re likely seeing the pattern here. APIs expand the potential that businesses can tap into when it comes to scaling the business. Disparate systems are holding back the worthwhile investment for businesses that are currently spending nearly $600 billion annually trying to crack the code.

Create and Innovate

So with the idea of innovation in mind, let’s consider the ways that API technology makes expansion possible. When it comes to change in an organization, especially digital transformation, APIs allow people to contribute more and more to the success of the organization by breaking the barriers instilled by traditional methods. As well, monetization is far easier to implement by allowing companies to own real estate on multiple platforms (where more ad space can be sold).

For services that are driven by advertising or that are “transactional”, having various interfaces will continue to enhance that exposure. With that in mind, have your APIs directed towards a variety of platforms such as browser extensions, Meta, iPhone, and more.

How can you prepare?

What kind of API is your business developing? Is it meant for developers? Or is this something that’s going to help the third party? Like any software implementation, you need to identify the important aspects that will cover logistics. In the case of APIs, these areas include:

The functionalities you want your API to perform and how many. Is there anything you can automate to assist with maintenance and use?
How will the API be accessed and who will access it? Are you going to integrate it through an already-established platform? Will it only be available to partners or the public?
Is your API going to offer support? If so, how much? (This will dictate some of the decisions you make with development so ensure it is taken care of beforehand).

What to do during execution

There’s an abundance of tools to assist in your API development journey, but before you search for them, you need to know your app. The type of data and information you plan to use in the API is fundamental, which means the developer will need to know it or else they’ll be overwhelmed by the app's requirements upon release.

How APIs have helped businesses you know

APIs give businesses the chance to expand into new markets. There are strategic partnership opportunities and technology changes that can bring businesses to the next level. Take Uber for example. Rather than going through the process of creating their own communication, navigation, and transaction methods, they took the top programs for all those aspects and used APIs to link them.

Also, if you recall the start of Twitter, you’ll remember that it wasn’t perfect. Specifically, their user interface (UI) was not up to standard which required attention. TweetDeck came in and created a far better UI than Twitter's original engine which led to a much more smooth user experience.

What to expect in the next decade

You’ve heard it over and over again: “technology is the future”. This article has certainly spoken plenty of its potential in overtaking traditional methods. Businesses need to be pragmatic when it comes to changes like API technology. Traditional methods involve paperwork, a big sales staff, and many other outlets where companies will invest time and money while seeing little to no reciprocity from today.

The Takeaway

Software solutions is a broad term, but APIs are a very good example to consider when evaluating what it will mean for your business. There’s a variety of opinions on how to “future-proof'' your company, but the fact of the matter is that every business is different.

At this point, there is almost no business that operates without digital solutions and everyone would’ve had to evaluate and identify their own needs and logistics. This is important, but you’ll need to consult with professionals at some point to get ahead of the competition.

Written By Ben Brown

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