Mark Bridge writes:

It was a relatively quiet time for tech news last week, with many companies taking a day off to celebrate Thanksgiving in the USA and then planning for a present-buying retail frenzy on ‘Black Friday’. Today the focus on Christmas shopping moves online; a day that’s called either ‘Cyber Monday’ or ‘Mega Monday’ if you work for a news organisation.

Yet it wasn’t an entirely newsless week.

Mark Bridge writes:

Would you like to be part of our Mobile World Congress coverage?

Mobile World Congress is Europe’s biggest mobile communications industry show. It runs from 24th - 27th February next year in Barcelona and is expected to welcome over 70,000 attendees and around 2,000 exhibitors.

Mark Bridge writes:

Earlier this month, London-based smartphone company Kazam announced seven new Android handsets. That's pretty impressive... and is an even more noteworthy feat when you consider the company didn't even exist at the beginning of the year.

Mark Bridge writes:

Imagine books that could automatically link with your tablet as you touched the pages. Or posters that reacted to your fingertips and displayed the results on your smartphone. It seems this kind of Bluetooth-enabled interactivity is just around the corner, thanks to tiny low-power processors and a patented printing process that doesn’t require specialised equipment.

The future of customer service is to bridge the gap between the smart consumer with the smartphone and the bank holding his or her financial assets. Even though mobile applications are becoming increasingly powerful customer touch points, many banks are failing to leverage them in order to engage with consumers.

Mandip Shergill, Account Executive at Genesys, looks at how banks can maintain and strengthen the customer relationship in the mobile channel.