My day starts with the alarm going off and an alert immediately pops up on my phone telling me that I need to leave in the next 45 minutes in order to make my 9am meeting. I go to the fridge to grab some milk and I’m notified that I’m running low, so it orders me some more. My weather app tells me that there’s a 60% chance of rain today so if I had an umbrella I’d probably make sure to take it.
On my journey, I catch up on the latest news on my iPad, before re-watching a series of 24. I tap out of the London Underground using a contactless debit card, and make my way up to the office, stopping by a coffee shop and pay for my order using Apple Pay. After work, I catch up with some friends and even the bar is looking to enhance my experience with its “press for champagne” button. Fortunately, I don’t like champagne so I save myself a fortune.
These small changes have now become integral to our behaviour, making life just that little bit easier than it would have been in our parent’s generation. In a world where we consume media in the palms of our hands, our morning commutes are mapped out with every possible route pre-calculated and even our weekly grocery shop has been transformed.
Winning the hearts and minds of customers largely comes down to one thing – making their life easier. Whether that is through your actual product or through additional services and communications, streamlining our lives is guaranteed to get customers on side and keep them coming back.
Take Starbucks. Its Mobile Order & Pay app enables customers to pre-order their coffee, walk in and skip the queue, and find their coffee ready and waiting for them. What’s more, loyal customers using the app also earn points are rewarded with free drinks. There is a huge opportunity for brands to capitalise on ensuring consumers have a seamless experience and can move from one aspect of their life to the next as effortlessly as possible.
What’s most interesting about new technology is the new behaviours it brings about. We become irritable if our devices do not load content, play music or connect to Wi-Fi in a matter of seconds. We’re all now impatient, demanding, and possess fleeting attention spans, which have decreased dramatically in the last two decades, now at 8.5 seconds – down from 12 seconds in 2000.
The paradox of choice demonstrates that more-is-less when it comes to consumer choices. We don’t want to spend time processing decisions, and it causes us unnecessary stress to do so. Therefore, the easier brands can make it, the more likely they’ll be chosen. Consider Tesco, which last year made the bold decision to reduce its product range by two thirds in order to increase profits and take the conundrum of choice away from its customers.
Making things easy for people is more often than not the quickest way to win. If we drill down to the fundamentals of human behaviour and the way our brains work, we all look for shortcuts in the decisions we make. Apps such as Handle to keep your calendar, emails and to-do list in one place, WordLens, allowing us to instantly translate text using augmented reality, or SwiftKey, which magically predicts your next word when typing messages, show where technology should be integrated into a brand’s customer experience in ways that make it seamless, quick and easy to find, and encourages people to choose and stick with them.
Right now, somewhere, coders and technology companies are finding solutions for everyday problems we don’t even know we have. Tirelessly obsessing over new ways to make our lives easier and less complex. Brands need to be one step ahead of the curve and anticipate what will become integral to consumer behaviour. That way they become woven into the fabric of people’s lives, and a more valuable and attractive proposition.
Geoff Gower is executive creative director at Field Day
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