The most obvious assumption on technology that is made by the product teams today is the need to be mobile first. A nice looking mobile app is built as the MVP in the spirit of mobile first. However, this mobile app fails to capture user attention. Familiar story?

There is a big realisation that I recently had while mentoring a startup that I am sharing here:

The goal of every business is to move customers to the Advocacy stage which enables a virtuous cycle to set in. This journey requires an important ingredient that is hard earned – Customer Commitment.

Here is a simple question – if you knew that there is a one time service that requires you to:

1. Download an app
2. Create an account
3. Then do your first task

Would you use that service? Probably too much for a single use, right?

However, if you knew that this service is likely going to be used repeatedly by you, there would be little hesitation in downloading and using a mobile application (think Facebook/ Whatsapp/ Mobile Banking).  You can see that customer commitment is directly indicated by the UI they use.

Most business applications are unlikely to have the virality of Facebook/ Whatsapp or the criticality of  a banking/ payment app. In these cases, UI customer’s choice is like a commitment they make to a service. The web interface requires the least resistance followed by a phone call and mobile app requiring the most commitment. There is an emerging capability that sits somewhere between  phone call and mobile app – bots running on other highly utilized platforms like Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype. 

The business would definitely want the customer to use its mobile app due to its sticky nature or the tonne of data it provides. The indirect assumption is that the customer is now at the Affinity/ Advocacy stage.

The user commitment needs to be gradually earned from least resistance UI by providing them value there and then moving them to the next level of UI. Business otherwise may have a tough time convincing a customer to directly download a mobile app.

If you are responsible for customer adoption, then think about this continuum and creating Aha moments with the website experiences itself. Graduate them to bot experience in the mobile app they are familiar with. Structure this bot experience to be more awarding for the customer. The heightened customer stickiness would result in the customer committing to your mobile application.

This approach would yield better commitment to your mobile app from your customers.