Multimodal functionality is one of the “it” tech trends as of late. Having the ability to perform an activity on a variety of mediums and via an array of technologies is exciting for consumers of a vast majority of products.
Case in point, Plum Voice offers IVR survey users the option of deploying their surveys multimodally, which is to say that surveys can be administered telephonically, via the Internet, via text messaging and via social media programs like Facebook and Twitter. For companies, the ability to reach consumers through multiple channels and methods translates to both higher quality customer interactions and a greater quantity of customers.
The trend is seemingly extending beyond enterprise level products like IVR, and has become popular within mainstream technology mediums like television. NBC has just recently released data on viewership of the London Olympics, and it demonstrates that viewers accessed content in myriad ways utilizing an assortment of devices.
So what did researchers uncover? Per Amy Chozick for the New York Times “eight million people downloaded NBC’s mobile apps for streaming video, and there were two billion page views across all of NBC’s Web sites and apps.” Viewer engagement was at an all-time high during these Olympics, and this is due in part to the fact that viewers were able to access content not only via network television, but because there was a vast array of options available for those seeking Olympic information.
Consumers did not limit their Olympic engagement to television (although they were accessing content across all television channels owned and operated by NBC Universal). Users were downloading mobile applications, streaming content on myriad devices including smartphones and tablets, engaging in live event monitoring via social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and receiving updates via text message and the Internet.
As the New York Times points out “the results signaled vast changes from just two years ago in Vancouver, when tablets and mobile video streaming were still in their infancy. The two most streamed events on any device during the London Olympics, the women’s soccer final and women’s gymnastics, surpassed all the videos streamed during the Vancouver Olympics combined.”
Now that the 2012 Olympics have proven that a single television broadcast is neither the only nor (potentially) the best way to reach viewers, content will see a rise in the diversification of the distribution process.
