How brands can preserve customer ‘digital patience’

As the common phrase goes – ‘patience is a virtue’. The ability to endure, wait and yield to time without complaint is widely seen as a positive personality trait. Yet patience is situational, and everyone has a limit.

In a customer service context, people will wait longer when the stakes are high, or when they trust that delays will lead to better security, accuracy or care. If they’re dealing with another human, they also tend to be far more forgiving.

Alongside that limited patience, customers are also increasingly distracted. The average Brit now sits on over 1,000 unread emails in their inbox, according to recent research, alongside juggling around 25 non-work notifications a day.

People are not short of communication, but saturated. Attention is at a premium, and anything irrelevant is quickly deprioritized or disappears entirely.

Director of Executive Engagement for EMEA and APJ at Twilio.

This is particularly acute for the 36-55-year-old cohort, which boast the highest unread email counts, and the greatest pressure to stay online for work. Two-fifths of 36-50-year-olds say they feel more disconnected than ever, despite increased digital interactions.

Balancing careers, caregiving, mortgages and performance metrics, the attention and mental load on this group is significant. If brands are adding irrelevant noise and difficulty into these environments, tolerance is low.

This simultaneous feeling of burnout and impatience is heightened by the fact that the instant nature of the attention economy, and the incentives of digital platforms, has rewired expectations.

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

If there is no sense of progress or urgency conveyed with a digital service, then reassurance falls away and the chances someone will give up on the process rapidly increases. Clear, proactive explanations, combined with customer experience design that maintains continuity across every channel and interaction are vital.

Setting clear expectations

Digital saturation and the attention economy have also meant that first impressions are decisive. If in those initial moments of engagement there is any sense of delay or stalling, people will reconsider if they need the product or service in the first place.

These early moments are therefore a critical opportunity to build seamless customer journeys, closing these ‘patience deficits’ by finding and fixing areas that cause frustration. When there are unavoidable moments where waiting is required, brands must turn these into opportunities to strengthen loyalty and trust.

Customers want assurance that every click, confirmation or verification step serves a purpose. Uncertainty is the true enemy of patience, so give customers better visibility and control to help build trust.

Other industry research found that 25% of consumers there think ‘transparency about what’s happening and why’ is one of the most important things to them in a digital customer experience, with 45% valuing clear instructions and easy-to-follow steps. If there’s an action they don’t need to take or unnecessary duplication, remove it.

Poor design can lead to digital impatience, and exacerbate the overload of digital admin. Ensure that digital and automated channels are fast, reliable and transparent when it comes to waiting times. Competitive advantage will come from being the most considered, not the loudest.

Turning impatience into opportunity

At the same time, when customers know brands are protecting their data, there is an opportunity to earn patience through careful application of friction. Digital speed bumps like two-factor authentication, framed in the right way, can become symbols of care, not inconvenience – so in designing the customer journey, brands should take advantage.

The reality of digital patience is made more complex by the fact that more people are interacting with machines for customer service than ever before. AI agents, designed and used effectively, have raised expectations – but when AI gets stuck, misunderstands intent or is otherwise poorly designed, it backfires and becomes counterproductive. In those moments, many of us prefer to just talk to a human.

The purpose and context of interactions matter, so organizations must take care to match automation to the complexity and stakes of each task. Examine which tasks are best for AI agents to take on, and be clear about when AI is in use, explaining its role in plain language.

For those tasks which require more reassurance, empathy and accountability, human alternatives may be preferable. In these situations, we tend to be slightly more patient – 84% will stay patient on the phone with a real person, perhaps because we know we’re more likely to be able to connect on a human level, and get some understanding and reassurance in response to our enquiry.

If a service is too slow, however, then more than half of consumers say that delays lead them to think less of a brand, leave negative reviews, or warn others to steer clear.

Brands should provide the choice of human support and digital self-service tools in a way that reflects these dynamics. When switching between the two, brands should also carry context over, so that customers never need to repeat themselves.

Digital patience is a precious resource. Poor design which frustrates and builds impatience can see it easily lost, but with care, it is equally easy to earn. When brands anticipate frustration and design for reassurance, they convert fleeting attention into enduring trust, and find opportunities to strengthen relationships and loyalty.

We've featured the best ecommerce platform.

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

Director of Executive Engagement for EMEA and APJ at Twilio.