The shift to digital is only one sided… but that’s all about to change

Businesses are racing to offer digital services

We can now order almost anything from the comfort of our sofa. We can even summon burgers and beers right to our pub table using an app and a QR code. We’re streamlining life. In theory we’re getting more time back to spend on the important things.

But the ugly truth is that this is all happening for *businesses*, not customers

We all now have hundreds of online accounts to manage. They’re all manual. Full of out-of-date information. Or more likely, full of fake data, with made-up dates of birth, gender and email addresses.

Our accounts are hacked daily. We reuse passwords everywhere because they are hard to remember. And we faff around with account resets when (not if) we forget our usernames, numbers, codes, PINs and what-have-you.

All because we customers don’t have our own digital tools - but that’s about to change

All we get today is SMS and email. And ever-more complicated apps and websites to visit. We don’t have our own digital tools that help us interact and get things done. At least nothing that isn’t just an extension of a business CRM system.

Customer tools are going to be the next big thing in digital transformation. Customers will finally have their own digital channel. One they own and control. We’ll use these tools first for digital identity and payments. Then we’ll use them to improve our digital interactions. But ultimately we’ll use them for our own personal automation. The best customer experience might just be ‘no experience’.

Ironically, it’s going to be customers themselves that challenge everything we think we know about customer engagement. 

If you like these ideas and want to hear more, then why not sign up!