You might think you don’t compete against Uber. The reality is you do.

We live in a world where we all need to continuously become more efficient.

Doing the same or more with less resources is the reality we all live with and the challenge is to make your service as valuable and attractive as possible – year in year out.

Customers and your staff are expecting more and more in terms of service.

They want their interactions with your service and brand to be a delight, not just adequate to their needs.

Recent leaps mostly revolve around apps and services that focus on user experience, but the world of digital is not about technology – it represents a new way of doing business and engaging your customers.

People expect excellence

Companies like Uber set the pace for their use of digital, ease of use and user interface.

The Uber experience is seamless and everything you need is at your fingertips – time to arrival, who and where your driver is and an estimated fare.

Your driver knows exactly where you are and what you look like. He can see whether or not you have been well behaved for previous drivers.

Finally, when you get out, you say “thanks” and walk away, the payment handled automatically behind the scenes.

As people get used to this level of service in their consumer life, they want it in all interactions. People are demanding a digital experience and intelligence from the systems they use at home and at work.

Intelligence is about taking unfathomable volumes of data from various sources and using it to provide you with what you need at precisely the right time to make a decision.

Intelligence is working its way into a number of industries like agriculture, emergency management and government as it moves into the digital space.

A mapping app delighted me recently: I was in the city and wanted to see if the bus was a viable option to get to my destination on time.

Not only did it show me the possible buses to take and indicated the route on the map along with walking directions from the stop to the destination, it offered me another option: Uber.

The Uber suggestion was at the bottom and told me how far away the car was in minutes and what it would cost to get there using that option. I could also book the car direct from the mapping app.

It might seem simple and obvious now that we have it in a free app, but that level of complexity simplified down so I could get recommendations for my exact journey complete with pricing on a five-inch screen is very difficult to achieve. It is also the new normal.

Digital is not an IT issue

Bringing this level of customer service and efficiency to your business or department through digital technology is not the job of the IT department: it is primarily a customer service challenge that needs to be driven by user experience.

When faced with difficult challenges, we need to use intelligent technology, including maps, to deliver the exact piece of information decision makers need at the time to make the best data-driven decisions as possible.

The good news is that we can slipstream behind giants like Uber, Apple and Google who are developing the consumer intelligence paradigm.

They are paving a road you can benefit from.

Learn how your business can make the leap from laggard to leader. Get in touch with us here