Digital customer expectations are increasingly shaped by experiences that are immediate, convenient, and available around the clock. As smartphones, mobile services, and cloud-based technology become more deeply integrated into everyday life, consumers may begin expecting the same level of reliability and responsiveness from payments and other financial services.
The challenge is that even sophisticated digital experiences ultimately depend on systems, organizations, and processes operating in the physical world. When a payment fails, a digital coupon does not work, or another promised service breaks down, consumers accustomed to instant digital interactions may have little patience for delays in resolving the problem.
To begin the year, let me take a few moments to consider the collision of digital expectations and analog reality, and the tension between the instant gratification of the consumer versus the time it takes to respond when something breaks or just goes awry. Digital is instant, unequivocal, and lives in its own domain, unaffected by the physical world. Analog evolves, comes in shades of gray, and dominates the physical world we live in.
The Twitterverse was unkind to New York’s Mayor Bloomberg last week, excoriating him for the time it has taken to remove two feet of snow from city streets. In an age where so many of our needs are satisfied digitally—we work online, take and store pictures, watch movies, and socialize via digital means—the analog reality of a blizzard confronts our digitally-trained expectations in a big way.
Smartphones Bring Digital Expectations Into the Physical World
As smartphones become ubiquitous—and they will given what will be a steeply declining cost curve over the next three years—we’ll have that digital world with us 24/7, augmenting that analog reality with data and digital interactions. Consider Google Goggles. Take a picture of the Empire State Building and Goggles will display the Wikipedia entry on your smartphone. As this blending of the digital and analog/physical domains becomes even more important, those responsible for managing that experience—merchants, mobile operators, financial institutions, and no end of service providers hidden in the computing cloud—are going to confront the same Twitter-fed ire that hit Bloomberg when something goes wrong. That will be especially true when a payment fails, a digital coupon doesn’t get accounted for, or some other promise gets broken.
Digital Natives Could Have Less Patience for Technology Failures
Those of an age straddling the analog to digital transition are accustomed to computers crashing and unexpected results. There were killer bugs galore. But as computers turn into appliances (from PCs to tablets and smartphones) and they go into the hands of digital natives, there’ll be precious little patience, born of prior experience, to draw on.
Payment Providers Must Prepare for Digital Service Failures
So, as everyone in the payments chain looks toward this all-digital, all-the-time future, plan for what to do when something goes wrong. Digital breakdown can turn into analog outrage way too quickly.
A postscript of sorts: I can’t resist pointing out that those expecting instant or at least swift removal of two feet of snow from highways and runways should, besides getting a grip, take a cue from the line in a great movie that goes, “get used to disappointment.”
Or maybe the better advice is to savor the intrusion of that physical reality into the digital world. We aren’t digital beings. Our minds inhabit that digital space but our physical beings crave the grounding of the analog. Before the snow melts and the holidays get too far behind, turn off the computer, leave the smartphone at home, and go make some snow angels. Or throw snowballs in the mayor’s direction if it makes you feel better. Go analog, some of the time.
The growing intersection between digital customer expectations and physical reality creates an important challenge for the payments industry. Consumers may increasingly expect payment systems and digital services to work instantly and consistently, even though the infrastructure and organizations supporting those experiences cannot always respond at digital speed.
For merchants, financial institutions, mobile operators, and technology providers, delivering a strong digital experience therefore requires more than making transactions fast and convenient when everything works properly. Preparing for failures—and resolving them quickly when they occur—could become just as important. In an increasingly connected world, a small digital breakdown can quickly become a much larger customer experience problem.
