Eri on the interwebIf I’ve learned one thing I’m sure of in the whole of my career, it’s that the most valuable thing you can do in almost any situation is to create shared understanding.
— Amy Hupe (@Amy_Hupe) April 8, 2020
So many inefficiencies in our work stem from wrongfully assuming we’re on the same page.
An article in today’s SMH about the Domino’s food chain struck me as quite significant. Customers’ increased use of mobile devices when ordering has resulted in efficiency gains and increased profits for the business. Customers’ use of devices when ordering has:
… although consumers were eating out less, they were visiting Dominos more often, increasing their order sizes and typically buying more side dishes such as ice-cream and garlic bread.
What does this mean? Apparently this translates to Dominos upgrading its “earnings growth for this financial year by about 20 per cent” and “By 2016 it expects 80 per cent of pizza sales to originate online.” So things are looking up.
The article hints at a deep digital strategy with apps available on the Android platform (presumably as well as the iPhone), social media integration and targeted marketing through one-to-one communication channels with customers.
While those of us enmeshed in digital know how addictive, convenient and effortless the channel is, this article could provide you with some pretty compelling numbers should you need to convince anyone to go mobile.
Read all about it over at SMH: Dominos has its digitals in the pie.
There’s efficiency and there’s experience. Last month I published an article for UX Mag on the subject of customer efficiency. It opens with a story about the Melbourne trams. It’s conductors were replaced by machines in an efficiency drive. However the efficiency of customers and of the service required consideration around tasks beyond ticket purchase. Conductors served a multitude of customer needs but in the narrow assessment of their use they were deemed redundant.
A reader of the article, Lisa Chow, cited an example from her own professional experience as a library consultant in the comments. A system to check out books replaced librarians doing the task but the self service model wasn’t necessarily efficient for users trying to achieve multiple tasks in the act of borrowing a book–like querying outstanding fines.
Customer efficiency is not about the streamlining of one or two tasks. It is about services anticipating the end goal of customers and providing resolution in a manner which does not increase effort for the customer. This must be a consideration in the design of systems, services and processes undertaken by customer facing staff. If you are curious to read more about the topic check out the article on UX Mag.
It was heartening to receive so many comments (after the hard slog of writing the article 😉 particularly one that provided another case study. The article is part of a series on “The 7 essentials of customer experience” by Different. The first was on predictability and the 3rd article on convenience will be published in coming weeks.
And thanks to my editors – Joe, Amanda and Mimi. It would have made no sense without you!