Nothing affects a drop in bottom-line profits like losing customers, and that's just what can happen if either they or your employees, struggle with the technology that is supposed to enhance your customer service or make end-users lives easier.
The world continues to shrink daily as everyone is more connected. As a result, increased expectation goes hand-in-hand with technology progression. For example, 40 years ago it would have been unheard of for a person to call up an 0800 number on a Sunday lunchtime and get a quote for motor insurance. But the ubiquitous 'Direct Line' opened its doors (or rather its phone lines) in April 1985; it was the first major player to offer its insurance services exclusively by telephone rather than via brick-and-mortar offices on the high street.
But now, even phoning an insurer for a quote is unusual, as almost everything is conducted online, 24/7, from proposals to claims. There's a downside to all this, which happens when the technology fails, or people are simply unable or unwilling to use it. This is where a Digital Adoption Platform, or DAP, comes into its own.
A DAP is a secondary layer of software, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), that sits as a teaching layer alongside the primary software package to which it is designed to serve. In short, it offers tips and can improve human/machine interactions, especially when people are adopting new software packages and practices. The crucial difference between a DAP and simple 'help' menus, is that the DAP is user-specific. When the user logs onto the software they use, the DAP 'remembers' the person’s competencies and workflow patterns. As a result, new employee onboarding is faster, with all the obvious attached money-saving advantages. Not least, a rise in the 'Gig Economy' where more short-term and part-time workers replace full-time long-standing employees, higher staff turnover means more necessity for digital onboarding and software training. Undoubtedly, employees who work faster and more efficiently are clearly more productive, processing customers more quickly or offering a better service.
Likewise, customers struggling to use new technology will quickly seek out a company's competitors if buying a flight, hotel room or product isn’t a smooth ride. Over-complex customer interaction dashboards can be intimidating to some people, especially the 'boomer' generation, who grew up before computers were ever in our daily lives.
Companies of any size can gain commercial advantages from a DAP, from corner-store SMEs to corporates. A DAP can be likewise bolted onto an airline's website, accounting software or an accommodation booking portal, so that when the customer logs on, the DAP already 'understands' their issues from previous interactions. For example, one particular customer might struggle because they are accustomed to American date formats (MM/DD/YYYY) as opposed to the European style (DD/MM/YYYY). When trying to reserve flights, the portal might keep rejecting date inputs. But a DAP would offer the user a tooltip stating: "Please remember to use the DD/MM/YYYY date format when looking for available dates".
Crucially, the DAP's AI would monitor the user's progress, and once the person had become accustomed to entering the correctly formatted dates, the DAP would cease to offer advice where it was no longer needed. But as soon as the user encountered a new page or facility, the DAP would see that the person was in virgin territory and be ready to help – it can even 'understand' when someone is struggling from analysis of how long a person hovers their mouse cursor or the time taken between phone screen taps. The DAP can enable the user to make their transactions faster and simpler, with obvious implications for customer satisfaction, repeat business and increased profitability.
Not only can employees' and customers' lives be made easier by the DAP, but managers too can use a DAP to extract a wealth of information in the form of business intelligence. For example, an online platform to gain an insurance quote might be analysed by the DAP - it becomes obvious that all users are encountering difficulty at a certain stage, perhaps entering their occupation into a free-text field. The DAP would show, on its dashboard, that all users were taking a long time to fill in their occupations. If that were the case, the company management could re-design the software UI (User Interface) so that drop-down menus offered pre-filled out occupations under categories such as blue-collar, managerial, professional, tradesman, artisan or whatever.
By using a DAP, senior teams can make solid commercial decisions for a website or portal redesign based on the graphs representing 'time on page' or 'back to previous screen' – when it becomes obvious that a certain type of UI is causing a friction point. Better still, at points where almost all users are providing identical answers, the DAP can allow site designers to pre-fill fields with the likely answer as the default on the drop-down selections available; once again enhancing and speeding smooth user journeys to increase bottom-line revenues.
There's little doubt that the initial investment in a DAP platform pays dividends in terms of ROI quickly. And the beauty is that the DAP itself can be used to monitor the increased efficiency of digital adoption, so the DAP can even tell you how much ROI you're receiving as it works!
The question is, can any ecommerce company that provides goods or services via an online portal afford not to have a DAP? There's only one way to find out…
Copyright 2023. Article made possible by Soprano.