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I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear that I’m sticking with the UX theme for the second week as well.
If you do not onboard correctly, you will not be able to proceed to the next part
This time, before we get protection, I’ll argue that UX is more than acceptable, and unless it’s more acceptable than usual, it fails.
How dramatic?
What do you mean? read.
I love Apple Pay with passion and vengeance. I love leaving home without my purse (on the rare occasion I don’t carry my suitcase and laptop case).
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I found a woman who hates handbags.
we exist
I like that I can pay with my watch. I love that I can do almost everything I need while going about my daily life on my phone (and now that my Greek ID is digitally available, I’m really on fire).
My friend Andrew Vorster has been declared blind because of his smart ring.
He said it would take less effort.
Works like magic. No additional charger needed. You don’t even need to carry another kit. Just wave like a Jedi. he should be on duty. He is very persuasive.
A few weeks later, randomly, but perfectly symmetrically, I received a smart ring as a speaker’s gift at an event.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t thrilled.
Yes, this is a pre-Covid story.
why am i telling you now
I found it by chance and put it in my desk drawer.
still in the box.
unused.
And the reason it’s not used is that while Ring’s UX is magically seamless as Andrew showed, user onboarding was not.
Observe the disaster in three parts.
1) I received a smart ring as a gift. Open the box. Comes with a booklet. So i read the instructions. The instructions say how great the ring is, but they say nothing to get you started.
See website for details.
Failure. You get everything you need in a paper booklet or just a box with a QR code or website. Don’t give some instructions here and some instructions there.
But OK, anything is salvageable.
2) So go to a website that actually has a “getting started” section.
All you need is your invoice number to get started.
What if I use my receipt to throw out my used gum? What if I can’t remember which card I used to pay for this ring? Need to start looking at every deal?
What if, like in my case, this was a gift?
inquiryis the only option.
3) So I will contact them.
And they are baffled.
I had no idea this would be a problem when they gave away so many rings.
Now for two fun facts. I wasn’t the only person to gift a ring at this event, and this exchange took place a week or two after him at the event. This is either by the time I got to them, all other recipients of the gift had already given up on using it after steps 1 and 2, or the team compared notes on this edge case/obvious mistake. (How charitable do you feel?)
yes.
I reach out. I will explain the situation. Have we spent hours going back and forth about obvious things that don’t apply to our situation and using our bill number?
I’ve tried a few.
Try this number… oh no it didn’t work. Please speak to the manager and let me get back to you…it’s been a few hours…try shipping details…didn’t work…try something else.. It’s been a few days… try this order number… it didn’t work either.
Three were attractive.
A third attempt was to generate an invalid invoice for my use.
By the time they fixed it I was the only one traveling so by the time I started using it it had expired… had to create another one… It took a few days…and when I got on and managed to get to the activation with enough information to identify the actual ring in my hand, the information I needed, and the format I needed The page meant that the time allotted to do this task ended before it could be completed.
But nothing about it. I had to call and the post must have arrived, piled up on the box, waiting for me to return to it. It’s still in the box and I can’t even remember at what stage I gave up hope and effort, so I have to start over.
Given that a small percentage of my readers, followers, and friends work in wearables, why am I telling you this?
I am telling you because we are all in the service industry.
In any case, we all design products in the form of services for consumers. option.
For consumers who expect their digital encounters to continue uninterrupted without the need to reset.
Those who expect digital dating to be quick and real-time.
And no one will make a financial promise until the experience is experienced.
Maybe if I had paid for the ring, I would have done my best.
However, the reality is that your consumer Choose to integrate your pension pot in the app, move your savings to the platform, open an account with a neobank or open a brokerage account and you won’t part with your cash until you’ve reached a fairly advanced stage in your journey.
Abandoned baskets on this journey are a testament to what you did wrong, an accusation pointing to everything you missed in a world where UX is purely about experience, not design.
This is not a narrow definition of design.
Bad UX can still be very beautiful.
But no one cares if it’s not smooth, or fast, or designed to interrupt (I think I’ll have to repeat it about 10 more times, but only one more Digital journeys should be designed to be interruptiblethey aren’t really digital journeys, they’re just beautiful screens that your boss likes and approves of.)
And this is important. It should be designed to compete to grab the attention of a multi-bank audience that has a choice. and many of them.
Whether you’re a retail customer, an (increasingly) small business customer, or an institutional customer… If you don’t get your onboarding right, you’ll end up with a great product, an amazingly smooth in-app experience, and your team will be working all the time. and focused energy.
In my banking days, onboarding was called the “hairy beast” and everyone tried to delay it or hoped another team would be tasked with working on it.
There’s a reason for that.
Finding the right balance between regulatory requirements, special cases, speed, and customer usability is difficult.
It’s really hard.
But it really matters.
In a world of options, you can’t move on to the next part without onboarding right.
#LedaWrites
Leda Glyptis is a resident thought provocateur at FinTech Futures. She leads, writes, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.
S.He’s a recovering banker, unemployed, and a long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. She is Chief Customer Officer for her 10x Future Technologies.
All opinions are her own. We can’t have them, but discussions and comments are welcome!
Follow Leda on Twitter @LedaGlyptis When LinkedIn.
