Everyone is recognising the growth of Digital, it is slowly taking a grip in one way or another of almost everything we do. Don't get me wrong the world is still 3-Speed based and there is probably still more Operational than Digital speed out there. Digital though is growing fast and many solutions are benefitting from Digitalization which changes how we interact with services.
Having just returned from my latest and very productive India trip I had plenty of airport time to consider my Digital interactions. With so much time on my hands it did lead me to question if we fully trust the new Digitalization we introduce. Here's a few examples:
Pune, like most major cities in the world has Uber. Hail a cab, tell the app where you want to go, let your location guide the driver where you are and get a price that you pay via your card. Simple, Google map and searching combined with geolocation making your point to point incredibly specific and your payment (and expenses receipt) all handled Digitally without the need for any other intervention.
So why then when you get in the car does the driver ask you where you are going ? His phone has the map up and you can see it has the endpoint you so carefully selected. Trust the phone my friend !
On Thursday evening I met with a friend in a bar in the Vashi Inorbit mall in Navi Mumbai. Its a bar I've been to before, nice ambience, massive screens for the cricket and best of all a Digital ordering system. You sit at the table and the waiters bring your an iPad, browse the menu of beers, spirits, wines and food then select what you want into you basket and commit the order to the bar. It's great Digital experience and you don't feel the pressure of a waiter stood over you with a pen and paper waiting politely for you to make your mind up.
So why is the process then for the waiter to come over to the table and repeat what you just ordered via the iPad and ask you to confirm it ?
Final one that I had time to reflect on was the process to board the plane from Mumbai to Paris. It was great to see a Digital gate as opposed to staff taking your ticket, ripping off part of it and then letting you go onwards to the plane. I walked up to the gate, scanned my ticket and hey presto the gate opened and through I went. I was really pleased with the experience especially given I'd just spent several hours pondering the above and dissecting why Digital wasn't trusted in a use case/process. I walked 200m through the gate and down the chute to the plane only to be met by 2 staff taking your ticket and passport, checking it then ripping off part of the ticket.
So why don't they trust the Digital gate they installed, left me feeling a bit Digitally deflated.
I have been working on Digitalization solutions since 2010/11, in that time I've gained masses of experience in building business cases to support the move away from Operational (often paper or people process or even both) to Digital by default solutions. I know that the business case only stacks up by taking people out of the process or at least reducing people. There are always other factors (such as Customer Experience) but people generate the biggest cost saving so its in some ways really surprising to see people process retained when a Digital solution is provided (eg. gate solution at Mumbai). From the customer experience perspective (bar and Uber examples) you get frustrated when you have to explain yourself so its a surprise when you have to repeat to the driver where you are going or say yes it was me that ordered that quite girly cocktail.
We have to implement Digital solutions than trust in them, let them usher in the new way of interacting with services. I do of course recognise that there is always the transition stage (the Bridging speed ....See Atos Ascent blog on 2 becomes 3) but I'm aware the bar in question has been doing the same thing for 18-months, Uber has been asking me to repeat my destination for 2 years and as for Mumbai airport......I'll update you in July when I go back.
