Does 'digital first' mean 'people second'?

Does ‘digital first’ mean ‘people second’? Of course not. People are never second. A company’s front-line employees are the fundamental representation of the firm’s brand promise to the marketplace. In fact, one could argue in a digital-first world, employees have never been more important given the coming change in mix in how customers will interact with brands. As more technology mediated interactions take on more tasks, those moments with the front-line increase in importance exponentially.

In my new book, The Digital-First Customer Experience, I point out that digital-first refers in part, to the fact that the initial interaction a customer will have with a brand will most likely be digital. Even in retail settings. Google research reports that:

"83% of U.S. shoppers who visited a store in the last week say they used online search before going into a store."

As digital becomes more conversational, personalized, and predictive, that statistic is only going to go up over time. Secondly a study published in the Harvard Business Review revealed that:

“Employees who develop digital mindsets are more successful in their jobs, have higher satisfaction at work, and are more likely to get promoted.”[i]

So, we need to understand the role of both front-line staff and digital technologies in designing the experiences that will win today and into the future.

Starbucks in an instructive example of this reality. The introduction of mobile ordering and the change in product mix toward cold beverages made it difficult for baristas to keep up with demand. Former CEO Howard Schultz came back to guide the firm’s Reinvention Plan which includes putting the value of their partners (Starbucks' term for employees), front and center, in their growth strategy.

This includes a $1 billion dollar investment in everything from more flexible shift scheduling, to increased training, and benefits as well as overhauling production processes to make it easier for baristas to prepare both hot and cold beverages, along with food purchases. For example, their new Siren System reduces the time to make a Frappuccino by about 2/3rds. They also introduced the Thrive initiative that includes support for helping partners grow at work, individually and as a team.

Hudson Non-Stop is travel retailer found in airports across North America which have piloted Amazon’s Just Walk Out? technology in their Love Field location. The project has proven to be quite a success as the technology has positively impacted both the customer and employee experience dramatically. It in effect, changed the cashier role into a customer service associate to engage with customers. It is an airport after all, so getting some help to quickly find what you are looking for and being able to just walk out creates a lot of value for the customer and a more satisfying role for the employee.

Implications

The implications are perhaps obvious. Not understanding the impact that digital channels will have on front-line employees is pursued at your peril. $1 billion is a lot of money, even for Starbucks and one could argue some of this might have been avoided had more attention been made to the impact of mobile ordering and the product mix changes earlier. But hindsight as they say, is a ‘perfect science’ and the added complexity of COVID 19 mandates, challenged every organization’s playbook in ways that would have been hard to anticipate.

However, the fact remains that technology, and more specifically, generative AI, provides the opportunity to design emotionally satisfying experiences at scale, 24/7 – on demand.

This is honestly the issue I see many organizations struggling with as they balance human versus technology mediated interactions. In fact, a recent McKinsey study reported that 54% of respondents believe that the number of employees in their service operations will decrease in size over the next 3 years due to generative AI.[ii]?

Perhaps this is the elephant in the room. But this fear of the unknown is not new, and history is filled with examples of this, from the riots that erupted in the UK with the invention of the weaving loom to what I personally observed around resistance to manufacturing automation not that long ago.

A group of economists looked at 140 years of data in England and Wales dating back to 1871 and found that technology created more jobs than it destroyed.[iii] But whatever side of this debate you land on, the fact of the matter is, generative AI is going to change the way organizations deliver value in the future and standing on the sidelines to wait and see, probably isn’t a winning hand.

Takeaways

Three takeaways from this digital-first question include:

1. When determining how to improve a customer experience, always map the customer journey and the employee journey at the same time as they are two sides of the same coin.
2. Although now, especially with generative AI, digital channels are becoming more capable of producing relevant, empathic experiences, at some point, as my friend Jeanne Bliss is quick to point out, “everyone likes self-service until they don’t”. Be careful designing digital interactions that are so focused on achieving containment metrics that you lock the customer out of being able to easily connect with a front-line agent.
3. Many brands have learned digital-first design strategies create the opportunity to design better roles for frontline employees. Technologies like Just Walk Out? by Amazon have turned cashier roles into customer service associate positions to engage with customers and help them with their shopping experience.

To watch a 5-minute video version of this article, and eight others on the topic of digital-first experience design, please visit our video channel at: CX/Digital.

[i] Neeley, Tom; Leonardi, Paul – Developing a Digital Mindset, Harvard Business Review, May – June 2022

[ii] The state of AI in 2023: Generative AI’s breakout year – QuantumBlack AI by McKinsey

[iii] Allen, K. (2017, November 29). Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed, says 140 years of data. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-created-more-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census