I love to study studies. There is something about research studies that just excites me. Of course, life, as we know it would have been a lot more different, were it not for the many research works that have provided us with so many answers to life’s questions. But beyond its great importance in advancing life, research studies hold a lot more intrigue and excitement.
I find it interesting that someone will make an observation and then the one will decide to find out what is causing that phenomenon. That really intrigues me. Think of it. A thousand others might have made that same observation but none decided to find out what was causing it. Some might wonder but will never go to the extent of finding out why that observation is so.
One of the first things I find interesting about studies is the results that some studies unveil. Some results can be downright shocking. One may live with a phenomenon for years and then out of the blues, one study will come out that what you had assumed all along was totally wrong. But, I guess, that is what makes studies even more intriguing.
Even when an individual or a team decides to investigate a phenomenon, the methodology to adopt is another challenge that must be tackled effectively and efficiently. The ingenuity that some researchers use to land their results can be quite impressive. It takes deep minds to fetch deep things.
Sometimes, what really blows my mind is the sheer scale of the study. We all know that the closer the sample size is to the universe of the studied population, the more credibility the results have. Like the study, I am engrossed in at this very moment. This November 2012 study involved 6.7 million unique viewers from around the world. It also involved 23 million videos that took 216 million minutes to watch. What such staggering figures regarding a study do is that they make you take a second look at the results. And the results of this particular study, by S. Shunmuga Krishnan and Ramesh K. Sitaraman of US-based Akamai Technologies, prove to be quite revealing.
According to this study, the average user will abandon an online video and leave the site if the video does not open within two seconds. Two seconds! One. Two. And the individual is off to do something else. That is shocking if you ask me.
The study also asserted that after those two seconds every additional second that the video does not open causes approximately 6% of viewers to abandon the video. This means if after ten seconds, that video has still not opened, more than 60% of viewers would have been off.
The study additionally revealed that people would wait a bit longer for long videos to open but they have no such patience for short videos. It was also revealed that when the viewer has good internet connectivity, the one will abandon a slow-opening video even sooner. The results also show that, when watching an online video, viewers will watch for fewer minutes, if that video froze for even just 1% of its duration. In other words, if a 10-minute video froze for just 1 minute, the average viewer will reduce the number of minutes he or she would have spent watching the video. Finally, the study revealed that, a viewer who left a site after failing to play a video was 2.3% less likely to return to the same site within a week.
I found the results of this study quite interesting because I can really identify with them. But what the results of this study tell me is that the latest technology has really made humankind an impatient bunch. We have become such an impatient bunch!
Unfortunately (or fortunately), this impatience is not only related to opening of videos online. It has eaten into every fibre of the customer’s interaction with a business. If a customer sends an email, that mail must be responded to there and then. Otherwise, the customer would become frustrated. The same customer who would have waited for days to receive a response post will not take it lightly if he has to wait a few hours for a response to an email. Social media has even made the impatience even worse. With social media, a customer’s post must be responded to within seconds. Anything less, and there is a problem.
Today’s customers are mostly on the go and so businesses must ensure that their service catch the always-mobile customer. This is why news organisations are ensuring that they are providing real-time updates to customer, literally by the minute. This is why restaurants offer drive-through services. It is also why banks have ATMs sitting outside their branches.
The importance of speed to the customer’s experience is really not a recent phenomenon, per se. As far back as 1990, the RATER Model had been propounded, which included Responsiveness as one of the five dimensions of Service Quality. Responsiveness is defined as the quality of reacting quickly and positively. In other words, even before super-fast Internet access and powerful hand-held computers, customers had always considered speed to be an important component of customer service. However, it seems the need for speed has become more acute in this day and age.
Studies are showing that consumers are demanding speedier service by the day. A February-March 2021 study by global measurement and data analytics giant NielsenIQ showed that 61% of online shoppers would like to have orders delivered as fast as possible. Other statistics show that 56% of online shoppers expect same-day delivery with 61% of customers willing to pay more for same-day delivery. Another study found that 96% of customers consider “fast delivery” to be “same-day delivery”. There was another study that stated that 61% of participants wanted their deliveries done within 1-3 hours of placing their orders.
There have even been a couple of research studies where respondents have placed “a timely response” above other qualities such as “efficiency, professionalism, first call resolutions, effective follow-up and knowledgeable agents.” There are other studies where respondents have ranked speed above ease of use, price, and even quality. Evidently, speed is king for the impatient.
But is it so surprising that today’s customer is so impatient? Did humankind not see this day coming long ago? When we yearned for speed and started producing supersonic jets, photocopy machines, 3-D printing, fast food, instant coffee and microwave ovens, were we not prepping ourselves up for the day when everything has to be done “super-fast”? And to top it all up, we placed some of the powerful computers ever into the hands, literally, of today’s customer. So right at the point of purchase, a customer can get on to the Net and find out everything she needs to know about the business, the service or product as well as even any individual in the organisation. That information is literally at the customer’s fingertips within seconds.
This is what advancement has done to today’s customer—and there is pretty little businesses can do about it. The best any business can do is to align with the times. I believe commerce has survived all these years because of the ability of businesses to always get in line with the times they find themselves in. These times call for speedy service and so that is exactly how business should structure their operations—to deliver speedy service.
Business managers must accept the fact that “patience is a virtue” does not apply to the customer of today. Businesses must therefore factor this phenomenon in every single decision regarding dealing with customers. Speed must be factored into everything from the design of the product or service all through to the physical or virtual set up of the business. Customers must not spend time waiting for a website to open. They must not be made to wait for responses to email messages, social media posts, etc.
Even on the premises of the organisation, speed of service must be considered. Visitors’ car park, reception areas, the placement of staircases and even the arrangement of furniture must be done with speedy service in mind. Anything that will delay a customer, even if for just a few minutes, must be done away with. One way to ensure speedy service is to simplify all the business’ processes. Automation of the processes is another way to ensure that the business is nimble and agile enough to serve customers with speed.
It is important to note that today’s customers are not just calling for more speed. They are also not ready to sacrifice quality to receive speed. Businesses can therefore not use speed as an excuse for poor quality. A business cannot say it made mistakes in a customer’s order because it was in a hurry. Today’s customers will not forgive such a business. By extension, the successful organisations of our times will be those that are able to combine speed with high quality.
A post-COVID-19 study conducted by California, US-based firm, Hiver and involving more than 1000 respondents revealed that close to 60% of respondents wanted services that were more responsive. At the peak of the pandemic, when human-to-human contact was almost non-existent, it was understandable that people wanted service that was very quick. I guess the effects of that period have carried on even after the heady days of the pandemic.
I have more to say on this matter but I better stop writing at this juncture. As a reader of this column, you are my customer. And if today’s customers do not have too much time, today’s readers will also not have too much time to spend reading a lengthy piece. I am even lucky that you have been patient enough to read all the way to this very line. I am grateful. I better stop writing before I lose you. You are too important to me.
