I ordered a pizza yesterday. It gave me a fascinating look at the future of customer experience and where we're headed as a society.
Spoiler: I don't think it's good.
The experience went something like this:
My wife and I decided pizza was on the menu in our house last night. I did a quick Google search for reviews as we wanted to try a new spot. Settled on one and was about to call in my order - that's when things got interesting.
There was no phone number available anywhere obvious on the site. All ordering is done online. Fully-custom pizza, half-and-half, yadda yadda yadda. Paid online with a credit card.
The system spit out a number, which I assumed you would use to collect your order. Turns out the number is your passcode to open the warmer at the store, where your pie will be waiting.
En route to the store I get an email on my phone: your order is ready for pickup. When I get to the store, there's nobody at the front to greet me. At the counter there's a (locked) warmer, with a digital readout on a screen above.
The kind of setup you'd see at the DMV: "Now Serving #462".
Sure enough, there was my pie, waiting for me.
I input the code and the warmer unlocks. Remove the pie and exit the store, still no human interaction to be had.
From idea to order to payment to collection in under 20 minutes, and I haven't spoken to a soul (except my wife, who ordered pineapple on her half - a subject for another day).
Here's the thing: as an ex-consultant and champion of "digital", it was a perfect experience from front to back: easy-to-navigate UX on the site; quick payment; correct order; time efficient.
Totally seamless; they nailed it.
But as a human, it was profoundly lonely experience.
It was a stark example of the Uber-ization of society: anything you could want, available at the touch of a (touchscreen) button, no human interaction required.
Hyper-efficient but intensely disconnected.
I'm not the first to comment on this phenomenon - many much smarter than I have done so (this is a topical conversation, for those interested) - but it was a stark reminder for me, as someone who literally helps companies build new digital solutions, of what we sometimes lose when we gain new technological efficiency.
Remember that scene in Back to the Future when Marty goes back in time to the 50's and sees a Texaco gas station in action? Attendants running around, pumping gas, checking tire pressure and oil.
One customer interacting with 4 staff.
Feels like another era entirely. Because it was.
I'll think about that scene when I'm in the back of my self-driving Tesla Uber, scrolling my Twitter feed and shopping for my Amazon purchase to be delivered by autonomous drone.
Comments