FeatureFor the past 18 months, consumers in the UAE have relied on digital services across almost every part of their lives, from grocery shopping and healthcare, through to fitness classes and entertainment. For many of us, applications have enabled us to navigate through the most difficult period of our lives.
Our recent consumer study, The App Attention Index 2021: Who takes the rap for the app? found that people around the world are using, on average, 30% more applications than they were prior to the pandemic.
This huge increase in usage of digital services, combined with the seismic improvements that many brands have made to their online offering during the pandemic, has meant that millions of consumers have suddenly been exposed to the very best applications, across a whole range of sectors. They have been wowed by the most intuitive and personalised digital services and enjoyed the massive benefits these applications have delivered to them.
A recent consumer study found people around the world are using 30% more applications than they were prior to the pandemic
People have had their eyes opened to how digital services can perform in 2021 and, unsurprisingly, they now expect this same level of quality each time they use an application.
Our research found that people in the UAE have become more sophisticated in how they use applications and more discerning about the digital services they use. Consumers now want the total application experience every time — a high-performing, reliable, digital service, which is simple, secure, helpful and fun to use. And they want these services to be personalised to their own individual needs and preferences and to genuinely enhance their lives.
Expectations around digital services have risen across the board, in areas such as data security and privacy, personalisation, communication and loyalty. Interestingly though, the single area where UAE consumers are now demanding more from brands is around performance, with 98% of people in the Emirates reporting that their expectations for consistent and reliable performance have risen over the last 18 months.
Consumers now want a high-performing, reliable, digital service, which is simple, secure, helpful and fun to use
For application owners who now find themselves in a never-ending innovation race, to deliver the next compelling digital experience to customers, this is an important point to note. Yes, consumers now demand exciting digital experiences, and they want these experiences to be tailored to their own individual requirements, but more than anything else, they just want applications to perform as they should, each and every time.
In a world where people have come to rely on applications as a lifeline to normality, performance and reliability should never be overlooked as the cornerstone for the total application experience.
Application owners need to approach performance in its broadest sense
They want these services to be personalised to their own individual needs and preferences and to genuinely enhance their lives
The stakes around digital experience has risen inexorably during the last 18 months. On the one hand, where businesses have delivered a high-performing total application experience, consumers feel hugely grateful and loyal towards these brands and are more likely to engage and transact with them again in the future.
However, where brands fail to meet these new, heightened expectations, consumers are now totally unforgiving. 75% of UAE consumers, 14% higher than the global average, state their expectation of digital services has changed forever and they will not tolerate poor performance any more, and 73% of people, 16% higher than the global average, say brands have one shot to impress them and that if their digital service does not perform, they won’t use them again.
Application owners are living on a knife edge — one slip-up and they risk seeing more than half of their customers turning their backs on them.
The single area where UAE consumers are now demanding more from brands is around performance
But if this isn’t worrying enough, what should really be ringing alarm bells in IT departments today is the fact that UAE consumers no longer have any regard as to why an application is not working as it should. When they encounter a problem, customers are not interested in the root cause of the issue; they just automatically point the finger of blame at the application — and the brand behind it.
In some cases, this might be justified, when performance issues are directly related to the application, whether that is pages loading slowly, poor response times, downtime, or security failures. But consumers are now also blaming application owners when digital experience is affected by external factors outside the application — such as bad internet connectivity, 4G-5G mobile network issues, slow payment gateways or technical issues with third party plug-ins.
For application owners, this will seem an unfair and impossible situation, but this is the reality they need to face up to, where 69% of UAE consumers believe it’s always the responsibility of the brand to ensure that the digital service or application works perfectly.
98% of people in the Emirates are reporting their expectations for consistent performance has risen over the last 18 months
In order to respond to this heightened level of expectation and to manage the business risks of performance issues, technologists need unified, real-time visibility of IT performance across their entire IT estate, including cloud environments. Without this genuine full-stack observability, they simply do not stand a chance of being able to quickly identify and fix performance issues before they impact end users.
But even with full-stack observability in place, technologists can find themselves overwhelmed by the deluge of performance data that is continually coming at them. This is why it’s so important to link IT performance with real-time business metrics, so technologists can immediately understand which issues could have the biggest impact on customers and prioritise their actions accordingly.
Full-stack observability with business context enables technologists to move beyond the constant firefighting and take a more proactive and holistic approach to application performance. And this is absolutely critical in this new consumer landscape where performance and reliability are the essential foundations for digital experience and brand loyalty.
People have had their eyes opened to how digital services can perform in 2021 and now expect this same level of quality each time they use an application.
