We have gone from “Wow! You have a fax machine!” to “Oh, you don’t have a fax machine?” to “Haha, you still have a fax machine?!”
Now replace the words fax machine with car phone or Blackberry or Myspace account. We are constantly evolving, and the gaps between these three phrases are getting shorter and shorter as we exponentially advance.
Now apply those phrases to Facebook or Tiktok accounts, crypto wallets and self-driving cars. We are somewhere in between those phrases for each one of these developments. We don’t know how long each will last or what they will evolve into, but we do know they will change. And our expectations as consumers will change with them.
There is so much technology that we’re using on a daily basis that will probably be defunct within a few years. There are things that you’re using right now that your kids are probably already scoffing at.
Your business needs to evolve to meet the expectations of your ever-changing customers.
As technology is adopted and evolves, so do our expectations. Mobile-friendly used to be a nice-to-have. Now if your website isn’t designed for mobile, you’re losing customers. I can guarantee it. The benchmark for what is considered the standard, is constantly shifting. As your consumers change, so do their expectations in terms of product and service. Their experience with your brand depends on how well you meet their needs in terms of delivering said product or service. Sometimes it’s the little things, like which platform they prefer to be communicated with (on). But sometimes it’s deeper than that…
The only way to know what your customers expect is by asking them. Sounds obvious I know, but you’d be surprised at how few businesses actually do this (or do it properly for that matter). You not only need to understand what they expect, but you need to understand why. Deep, qualitative research is how you uncover this. It’s not rocket science, but it is an art. The art of empathy. Asking the right questions and listening.
“If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic.” – Elon Musk
If you’re not creating the magic, you need to at least be keeping up with it.