In a digital-first world, businesses shouldn’t forget the digital non-natives

One of the most obvi­ous socioe­co­nom­ic effects of Covid-19 has been the way it has boost­ed the ascent of ecom­merce. Online chan­nels now account for about £3 of every £10 in retail sales in the UK, com­pared with £2 before the pan­dem­ic start­ed, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics. To match this increase in dig­i­tal spend­ing, retail­ers have been work­ing to enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence they pro­vide online. Yet a laser-like focus on ecom­merce can come at the expense of the many con­sumers who still shop the ana­logue way.

Research pub­lished by Deloitte in August 2021 revealed that 21% of UK con­sumers don’t have access to a lap­top PC and 8% of con­sumers don’t own a smart­phone. Com­pa­nies that dis­re­gard the needs of this group risk alien­at­ing many poten­tial cus­tomers. 

“This could be a prob­lem in the medi­um term if brands make choic­es based pure­ly on eco­nom­ics with­out con­sid­er­ing their impact on cer­tain stake­hold­ers,” says Ross Sleight, chief strat­e­gy offi­cer at Somo Glob­al, a dig­i­tal prod­uct agency. “Such con­sid­er­a­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in key areas of the high street. For instance, the clo­sure of a local bank branch can evoke high emo­tion among those in the com­mu­ni­ty who feel dis­en­fran­chised and on the wrong side of the dig­i­tal divide.”

He con­tin­ues: “One of the biggest bar­ri­ers to a company’s suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is how to change cus­tomers’ behav­iour. Con­sumers who are so accus­tomed to under­tak­ing cer­tain tasks in a par­tic­u­lar way can­not be expect­ed to change them imme­di­ate­ly and embrace dig­i­tal meth­ods.” 

Sleight sug­gests that, to ensure that no one is left behind by the trans­for­ma­tion, brands should work with cus­tomers to help them devel­op dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy skills.

More than 1,200 of the 2,000 con­sumers who respond­ed to an online poll by YouGov for Metro Bank in August 2020 agreed that British banks had giv­en up on hav­ing a high-street pres­ence. Just over half of those sur­veyed said that they still liked to speak to some­one face to face when mak­ing a bank trans­ac­tion. Among respon­dents aged over 55, the pro­por­tion rose to 62%. 

“There’s clear­ly been a huge accel­er­a­tion towards dig­i­tal chan­nels through­out the pan­dem­ic,” says Kat Robin­son, Metro Bank’s cus­tomer expe­ri­ence direc­tor. “The dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in ser­vices could be felt most pro­found­ly by old­er peo­ple, who tend to be less dig­i­tal­ly lit­er­ate. Falling on the wrong side of this dig­i­tal divide could be a life-chang­ing wor­ry.” 

Dr Ange­li­ka Strohmay­er is a senior lec­tur­er at Northum­bria University’s design school, where she stud­ies inter­ac­tions between humans and com­put­ers. She observes that “the pan­dem­ic has taught us that dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion can be a huge asset in reach­ing new peo­ple, but also that it leaves many oth­ers behind. For the lat­ter group, it’s not only a ques­tion of hav­ing access to an inter­net-enabled device such as a smart­phone or com­put­er. It’s also about hav­ing the abil­i­ty to use them.”

Katie Thomas, lead at the Kear­ney Con­sumer Insti­tute, agrees that the dig­i­tal divide is not only a func­tion of the “grow­ing income and wealth gaps across the UK”, although these are clear­ly a strong con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tor. Peo­ple who are get­ting left behind by the online rev­o­lu­tion may well be able to afford the lat­est smart devices and high-speed access to the inter­net. It’s a mat­ter of choice too, she stress­es. 

Some peo­ple sim­ply shun dig­i­tal tech, choos­ing not to par­tic­i­pate in online trans­ac­tions because they pre­fer a tra­di­tion­al, in-per­son retail expe­ri­ence, which could include using cash instead of card pay­ments. A brand may take a cal­cu­lat­ed risk, know­ing that these con­sumers are gen­er­al­ly old­er and will even­tu­al­ly be replaced by a new gen­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal natives. But mak­ing the deci­sion to ignore their pref­er­ences could dam­age its stand­ing, Thomas warns. 

“Rac­ing towards the future but los­ing cus­tomers’ loy­al­ty on the way is not a sus­tain­able strat­e­gy,” she says. “If a business’s moti­va­tion to be inno­v­a­tive is mak­ing the firm out­pace the slow process of con­sumer change, it’s time for it to slow down.”

More­over, while com­pa­nies may have a strong desire to race ahead with their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions, cheered on by their most tech-lit­er­ate cus­tomers, they need to remem­ber that the lag­gards whose needs they’re ignor­ing are being left a long way behind. Accord­ing to research pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2021 by Com­da­ta, 29% of Britons “have very low dig­i­tal engage­ment”. Peo­ple in this group aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly lack­ing an inter­net con­nec­tion. Many of them have online access and dig­i­tal skills, but they sim­ply don’t want to use them. They’re the type of high-street shop­pers who, when asked at the till if they want to be sent a dig­i­tal receipt rather than a paper one for envi­ron­men­tal rea­sons, will decline to share their email address.

An inde­pen­dent poll of more than 2,100 UK adults by YouGov in Jan­u­ary 2021 found that 8% had shopped sole­ly at bricks-and-mor­tar stores over the pre­vi­ous 90 days. While that was half of the num­ber who’d shopped exclu­sive­ly online dur­ing that peri­od, this find­ing indi­cates that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of con­sumers remain tied to a non-dig­i­tal world. 

The study found that con­sumers’ inabil­i­ty to inter­act phys­i­cal­ly with prod­ucts was the sec­ond-high­est bar­ri­er, after their unwill­ing­ness to pay deliv­ery charges, dis­suad­ing them from shop­ping online: 45% of respon­dents said this was a deter­rent, com­pared with only 5% cit­ing a lack of inter­net access. In the medi­um term, the emer­gence of tech such as vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed real­i­ty offers a poten­tial solu­tion. But, as busi­ness­es look for­ward and start adopt­ing these new tech­nolo­gies, they also risk widen­ing the gap between the dig­i­tal natives and the ana­logue hold­outs, fur­ther alien­at­ing a sig­nif­i­cant cohort of poten­tial cus­tomers.

“At Metro Bank, we see a lot of peo­ple who want to use both chan­nels – and there are cer­tain cus­tomer expe­ri­ences that I’d still rather have in per­son,” Robin­son says. Keep­ing that in mind is cru­cial, as is not get­ting car­ried away by the end­less promise of tech­nol­o­gy. 

“In this busi­ness, we always start with our cus­tomers. What kinds of cus­tomers might come through the jour­neys we offer? Can we put our­selves in their shoes? We need to know how these jour­neys look from their per­spec­tive,” she says, adding that the online and offline expe­ri­ences offered by the bank ide­al­ly offer the same qual­i­ty. “This is about how organ­i­sa­tions stand up their capa­bil­i­ty and ensure con­sis­ten­cy across their dif­fer­ent chan­nels.”