Nowadays technology changes so fast that to some people it seems that it's all just happening for its own sake. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?
There seems to be an assumption that all this tech makes it easier for people to live, work and play, but often this isn't the case. Until only a couple of years ago, coffee shops used to provide loyalty cards. These took the form of physical cardboard the size of a credit card, and when you bought a coffee you either took a sticker off the cup and placed it on the card or the vendor would give you a rubber stamp as proof of purchase. After x number of coffees, you could redeem a freebie by simply handing in the card.
But nowadays it's all on your phone. As if we didn't spend enough time with our faces welded to these devices, now the simple act of getting a discount off coffee is dependent on your battery and a Wi-Fi or data signal.
Tried buying a paper train or flight ticket recently? Same issue. Can we do anything about it? No. So, we're stuck with it. But there is help at hand, and you'll be pleased to learn it isn't one of those tortuous YouTube videos! Ironically, it takes the form of even more technology through a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP).
A DAP is an AI-powered teaching assistant that offers help to people using new tech; it runs as a secondary layer, alongside the primary software to which it's attached. The best part is that a DAP uses artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate when a user needs help, offering tooltips when they struggle with any aspect of learning new software; but when the user has learned that particular technique, the tooltips no longer appear – for that individual user; the output is therefore personalised on an individual account basis.
DAPs also provide some other valuable features and benefits:
- Quicker onboarding of new employees,
- In-app guidance without having to seek external assistance, therefore:
- Less trouble for IT help desks,
- Fewer complaints from employees, and less resistance to adopting to changes in tech,
- Extra benefits to those working from home – who would otherwise be on the phone to colleagues and helpdesk regularly,
- Automation of repetitive tasks can be setup by users to one-click instead of several steps,
- Priceless business intelligence for management.
Take an example of all the above in a fictitious but real-world scenario. Let's imagine that Sarah, a contact centre employee for Acme Insurance Underwriters, returns from her one-week holiday in Ibiza. She works from home, and at 09:00 on her first Monday back at the desk, she logs on to her company software remotely from her laptop as usual.
The first thing she sees is an unfamiliar screen with a load of new fields asking for customer information to input, when they call to enquire about a policy. Sarah takes her first call and tries to input the customer's first name, but the field remains stubbornly inactive. Flustered and annoyed, Sarah asks the customer to stay on hold, while she calls IT support. Two minutes later, Sarah returns to the call to find the prospective customer has given up and gone away. Result, one frazzled employee and Acme has lost business.
Had ACME installed a DAP however, when Sarah was trying to input the caller's first name, and the field wouldn’t accept any input, the DAP would have produced a tooltip stating 'Please input customer title (e.g. Mr, Mrs, Ms etc) before inputting their name'.
The DAP would then offer the same advice again the next time Sarah went to the name field but would stop doing so after she had learned the procedure after a few more calls.
Extending that help facility also shows managers the common mistakes that employees might be making with new (or established) software, via a dashboard that displays all employees' common friction points. If everyone is making the same mistakes, it's clearly a problem with the UX of the software design, not the people operating it. In this instance, the management can reach out to their software vendor and ask for a review of issues at the next scheduled update.
So not only does the DAP help employees to do a better job but helps managers to understand the problems those employees are having and can fix those problems at the root cause when necessary.
Digital adoption isn't always a troublesome thing, often the problem isn't the software's functionality, but people's understanding of it. Some folks pick up new things quickly; others, especially the older generation, find technological change more challenging, if not simply annoying! Using a Digital adoption Platform can smooth out these creases for everyone concerned, and that has to be a win / win for everyone.
Copyright 2023. Article made possible by Soprano.