Oh, we're half-way there
Oh, oh, livin' on a prayer
Take my hand; we'll make it I swear
Oh, oh, livin' on a prayer
- Bon Jovi
No, I'm not reminiscing about my junior prom. This Bon Jovi song came up in conversation at work today, as my friend Ilene and I were chatting about some recent experiences as customers. We were simultaneously excited and discouraged as we tried to take advantage of some really forward-looking customer service options. Problem is, they were more forward-looking than they were customer serving (hence the "half-way there" reference). I'll tell my quick story here, and then Ilene will chime in with a post about hers.
One of the reasons I joined Nuance was because I believed in the power of the telephone as more than just a way to keep in touch with my mother. I can't wait to live in a world without dial tones, in a world where people can zap dollars back and forth with a push of a button, and so on. In that world, my phone is a passport to many great things...including a boarding pass at the airport.
We're there! It's now! I hear readers saying it now. Sure, the rare VoIP startup offers voice dialing. Certain people in Africa can transfer money via cell phones. And customers of an airline on which I traveled last month can use their phones as a boarding pass. Yep. I checked in via my Blackberry, chose the appropriate option for delivery, and was so excited when I got the link to my official boarding pass via email that I actually gloated on Facebook about it.
Then I went to the airport. I was a little giddy as the TSA identification checker waved my phone past a nifty scanner device. Yes, I was aware that I wasn't the first person to do this...it's a feature available in some major airports for some common routes, just not the ones I tend to fly...but I still looked around to see if people were watching, impressed. (Nobody was.) But guess what - it worked! I made it through to the security lines without a hitch. However, when it was time to board the plane and brandish my boarding pass again, something happened: I couldn't access the internet. Since the email included a link and not a downloadable image, there was no way I could display my boarding pass without it. I was sent to the end of the line to get a paper version, defeated.
The lesson I take from this is simple: people like me want to use cool new customer service features that leverage the power of the mobile phone. However, people like me are just that: people living in the real world. And if the rollout of these features doesn't anticipate some predictable hurdles like the not-so-uncommon loss of phone service, then we'll never be more than half-way to the world I've been looking forward to.
My hope is that companies will continue pushing the envelope - get rid of my dial tone, convert my phone into currency, and let me hop on a plane with a wave of my magic Blackberry. But hire a usability team in the process, develop and test realistic use cases, and make sure it works before getting me all excited again.
Let's go all the way
Let's go all the way
Ah, ah, ah, let's go all the way
-Sly Fox