If the rosiest estimates are to be believed, there could be as many as 4 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, according to a recent white paper from IVR solutions provider Voxeo (News - Alert).

The majority of these users have Short Message Service-capable devices and an increasing number are adopting Web-enabled smartphones. Consumer expectations for speed, convenience and on-demand information have skyrocketed, but as the report finds, “few companies have adapted their communication and support strategies to take advantage of the widespread adoption of additional interaction channels such as SMS, IM, video, the mobile Web” or even Twitter.

A 2009 Nielsen survey found that the average American teenager is sending and receiving more than 2,800 text messages per month - and this isn’t even the highest average of a country’s teens. ABI Research (News - Alert) forecasts mobile messaging revenues to grow to $212 billion by 2013, and more people are incorporating messaging services like SMS, IM and mobile IM into their daily personal and business communications.

By supporting messaging services and the mobile Web where applicable, the report concludes, “businesses address two conflicting customer support goals: improving service and keeping costs as low as possible.”

Take SMS alone. In-Stat (News - Alert) reports that more than 2 trillion mobile messages are sent per day globally. While teens account for a large portion of SMS usage, Voxeo’s white paper notes, “they are not alone. A study by Limbo, one of the largest mobile social networks, reported that SMS continues to transcend the generational divide, with 50 percent of SMS users age 35 or over.”

SMS, as those who’ve used it find, is “a killer call center application. It is ubiquitous, user-friendly and personal, yet relatively inexpensive.”

And for Instant Messaging, Gartner (News - Alert) predicts that by the end of 2011, “IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat with 95 percent of workers in global organizations using it as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013.”

Customer self-service via Interactive Instant Messaging is accomplished with intelligent IM “bots,” or automated agents, that provide real-time responses to customer inquiries. IM bots let customers bypass menus for real-time access to information, including package tracking, emergency notifications, interactive games, customer surveys, identity verification and more.

So the question remains: Why aren’t you using them more than you are now?