Future transformation

How do we get things done?

• In the 1960's we filled in forms, often in post offices and banks
• In the 1970's we filled in forms, and sometimes called contact centres
• In the 1980's we filled in forms and posted them off and called contact centres
• In the 1990's we filled in forms, called contact centres and used the early web
• In the 2000's we filled in lots of web forms (and still called contact centres)

In the 2010's people came along and called something "digital transformation" which sadly often meant doing the contact centre process but online through a browser. We tried to put public services online and had limited success, not really helped by legacy thinking or hanging on to waterfall process when agile was more suitable.

Since the early 1990s we've tried to get certain groups of people to do things online but have encountered challenges. Early websites weren't disabled friendly. Around 2000 we had appalling design often assuming we all used IE6. I reviewed a few disasters. Then we struggled with effective mobile design. We still struggle to get certain social groups online, the elderly, people who can't afford technology and sometimes websites are just hard to use if you are dyslexic or have disabilities affecting your hands. A primarily visual medium is also going to be a challenge for blind people. To top it all we have unneccessary registrations, the "forgotten password?" dance and an unnecessary need to gather data. When my mother was dying I had a race against time to get from my workplace to the nearest airport, get on a plane fast and see her in her dying hours. I absolutely did not have the time or inclination to go through a long registration process on an airline website and think of a password including an upper case letter a lower case letter a number and a special character "for my convenience". No. Utterly inconvenient and probably more for the airline's benefit rather than mine.

This isn't the way we should be doing things.

• Banks now have voice based security
• 20% of mobile queries use voice
• Google and Amazon sold about 20 million voice based units (Alexa and Google Home). Siri, Cortana and Bixby also exist.

So where could voice take us?

• We build services that use voice, after all it's probably faster than typing (it's also convenient for certain disabilities)
• We use the existing installed base of Alexa, Google home and smart phones to develop services
• Then we deploy these voice-authenticated services in what used to be a contact centre.

Then without needing a smartphone, a computer or the money to buy either you can pick up your landline or use a simple number to dial a central number for public services (sort of a gov.uk on the phone) and I can interact with a Google home equivalent which sits in what used to be the contact centre.

The call might go something like this

Hello I am Craig Cockburn, (voice authentication happens)

Please book me a doctor's appointment for tomorrow afternoon after 2pm and send me the confirmation by text.

Hang up.

No computer required.

Isn't that a more inclusive and simpler future?

Craig

p.s. We might even be calling the council less about bin collection days if the bins put themselves out, a bit like this!

Craig Cockburn is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. He invented an early browser, wrote the UK's first guide to getting online and is listed in the acknowledgements for HTML. Full profile at www.craigcockburn.com