Just a few decades ago, if you were to find the way to reach the local restaurants, you would pick up the Yellow Pages Phone Directory, look up the Restaurant name and call – for any questions customers may have. If you were to order a couple Pizzas at the local Domino’s, you would call them and someone will take down the order on a piece of paper and get on with preparing the order.
That whole thing changed with the advent of the Internet. Digitization and digital storefronts become table stakes.
- Every Restaurant had its own website
- They all listed their Phone numbers on their site
- You could prepare your shopping basket by going through the product catalog
- You could even place the order and complete the payment for delivery or pickup etc.,
This illustration by Shep Hyken provides a very good view of how the evolution of food order has gone through generations – Online, FB messenger, Text, Mobile App, Amazon Alexa etc.,
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert and the Chief Amazement Officer of Shepard Presentations. Follow this article for additional details around this very topic.
Every new generation wants to use and has a preference to use a particular technology. If you ask a Senior how they want to order their Pizza, they would still make the call and be on HOLD for however longer it took to order their pizza. But if you ask a High School going Teen, the answer would be much different – they do not want to speak on the phone, let alone wait and be on HOLD indefinitely (even if it took just 45 seconds).
It doesn’t matter how you ordered, end of the day, it is an entry in some database and someone or something needs to prepare the food, pack it and get it to your doorstep.
This begs the question, WHAT NEXT? What is it that we can envision and build today that is ready for tomorrow, that the world needs, but doesn’t realize it.
At HUEX we ask these questions to ourselves very often. The fast changing world doesn’t mean we can rip away old communication infrastructure to introduce new ones. Instead it is always co-existence of newer platform and service offerings as add-on services to existing infrastructure.
- Is the newer generation interested in Sending a Text message to the restaurant for ordering their favorite Pizza
- Or would they shout out loud while playing Beat Saber on their Oculus VR Headset
- Or they want to log into Decentraland to visit their favorite restaurant location in the Metaverse to order their Burrito and mint an NFT
- Speak to their Car Assistant to pick it up on their ride back from work / study
These thinking shapes our product design and implementation approaches. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to reach out at info@huex.ai.
