We can all relate to the frustration felt when an application is difficult to use and we are unable to complete a purchase or finish a transaction. Websites not loading, passwords unrecognized or an unresponsive web page — these are common pains which we all face on a day to day basis. But as we become increasingly reliant on applications to complete everyday tasks, brands risk losing customers at an alarming rate if they fail to address poor application performance and bad digital experiences.
In today’s connected world, our demand for applications leaves no room for failure, and these expectations are only set to increase. According to the AppDynamics’ App Attention Index 2019 — a global survey of consumers — just over half can only go without a mobile device for up to four hours before they find it difficult to manage tasks in their everyday life. And one third admit they reach for their smartphone before talking to another person when they wake up.
For consumers across the Middle East, modern technology has transformed the way we live, work and play. And the challenges of home working, home schooling and social distancing in the last few months have likely made us even more reliant on the digital services that are a deeply fundamental part of everyday life. We have entered the Era of the Digital Reflex and brands need to understand how to manage consumer expectations and deliver the incredible digital experiences that many of us take for granted.
The use of digital services has evolved to become an unconscious extension of human behaviour — a ‘Digital Reflex.’ While consumers used to make a conscious and deliberate decision to use a digital service to carry out a task or activity, they now happen spontaneously.
Consumers also admit that digital services are so intrinsic to their daily lives that they don’t realise how much they now rely on them. As these digital reflexes become habitual, consumers are becoming increasingly dependent on devices and digital services, relying on them to complete many of their daily tasks.
Businesses need to pay attention as consumers now have a zero-tolerance policy for anything other than an easy, fast and exceptional digital experience. The research shows that in the event of performance issues, consumers will take decisive action such as turning to the competition (49%) and actively discouraging others from using a service or brand (63%) without notifying the brand and giving them a chance to make improvements.
With an increasing intolerance for poor digital performance, what impact does this have on brands, and how can businesses remain competitive in a digital world?
In the Era of the Digital Reflex, consumers will no longer forgive or forget poor experiences. A great digital performance is now the baseline for any business, but the real winners will be those that consistently exceed customer expectations by delivering a flawless experience.
Many businesses are already investing heavily in digital innovation to drive customer loyalty and revenue, but failure to monitor the performance of those applications and digital services puts brands at significant risk of unhappy customers, or even losing those customers to a competitor.
However, there are steps that brands can take to address these challenges and begin to achieve incredible digital customer experiences. Firstly, manage your application performance by implementing a robust application performance management solution. This enables you to monitor digital performance, safeguarding those mission-critical applications and user experience.
Secondly, align digital performance to your business outcomes. By analysing your application performance in correlation with business performance you can ensure that digital services are always aligned to business objectives, such as customer experience and revenue. Finally, consider how you can use insights to take action. For example using an AIOps approach, turning the monitoring of data into meaningful insights quickly or automatically using machine learning and AI, allows you to deliver exemplary digital experiences, by real-time monitoring the full technology stack, from the customer’s device to the back-end application to the underlying network.
In the ‘Era of the Digital Reflex’, a great digital experience should be considered the bare minimum for any organisation. The real winners will be those that consistently exceed customer expectations by delivering a flawless digital experience that goes above and beyond the consumers’ expectations.
