This week saw the 40th anniversary of the first call from a mobile phone made by Martin Cooper in 1973 whilst he was General Manager at Motorola. 

Four decades on, the global telecoms industry is now worth around £800bn – much of the growth as we know, is now with smart-phones which accounts for between 50-60% of all mobile devices in use in the UK alone.  Who could have imagined 40 years ago that we would now be carrying out so many ‘everyday’ tasks, across so many different channels, on a device we carry in our pockets when the initial invention was to allow us to ‘walk and talk’. 

A quote from Martin Cooper truly resonates with our industry.  We should all take a moment to consider what this means for our own businesses:

"People want to talk to other people - not a house, or an office, or a car. Given a choice, people will demand the freedom to communicate wherever they are, unfettered by the infamous copper wire. It is that freedom we sought to vividly demonstrate in 1973," said Martin Cooper.

This ‘freedom’ allows us each and every day to contact organisations across multiple channels and multiple devices.  This ‘freedom’ also results in an extremely challenging environment for us to respond to customer enquiries. 

With mobile predicted to totally replace the PC in the future, CCA are working this year to get an understanding of what the future might look like.  We’ve been working with Kcom for two years now on ‘The Future of Customer Service’ and this project is running for a third year but with an added focus on particular sectors so expect some very interesting results towards the end of the year.

Who knows how we might be communicating in 40 years time.........