Never heard of technographics? Well Dan Krigstein, director of The Growth Intelligence Centre and The Growth Distillery, is here to open your eyes.
In our day 2 opening session “Technographics: The most valuable view of your travel customers… that’s hiding in plain sight”, Dan explains how this ground-breaking study can shift the travel industry’s relationships with their consumers, and positively impact where, how and why they buy.
Krigstein has spent a long time getting under the hood of why consumers do what they do. It is his job to help the government and policy makers to build a better country for consumers. He advises on “new versions of success, new iterations of the future that we’re aspiring for”. And he believes that the most influential views of our customers are hiding in plain sight.
The way we interrogate decisions has been forced to adapt to a new ‘cognitive context’. We have more choices to make, and more access to information to make those choices. So the internet and technology have more sway over our consumption than we think, shaping consumer behaviour. Our relationship with technology shapes much more of our buying behaviour than traditional lenses like age or gender. It’s increasingly a better predictor of how we’ll seek, what we’ll choose, and importantly… where we’ll shop. Yet we remain wedded to outdated, often ineffective, demographic views of our travel customers in designing experiences that delight.
“As your customers shift digitally, you risk knowing less about them, not more,” Krigstein said. This is partly because as customer spend more time with technology, they tend to create an online avatar of themselves, and brands end up trying to speak to these filtered versions of ourselves rather than our real selves.
Krigstein emphasised that we aren’t logical, we’re emotional and irrational beings. So getting close to the ‘real’ customer has never been more important.
Gen AI is already reshaping how consumers book in the industry. Different algorithms promote different products and services, all of which is creating an alarmingly tech-governed shopping paradigm, without us even realising. And Krigstein thinks this is something that we should be having more conversations about within the industry.
For 18 months, Krigstein and his team have been studying this paradigm. They have found a growing rhetoric around the risks associated with technology and AI, with 80 per cent of Aussies worried about being hacked.
But although people are increasingly aware of the social and economic impacts of algorithms, the echo chamber effect we all experience has an impact on how we feel about ourselves. According to Krigstein, this is resulting in several things:
- 81 per cent of online purchases are being elbowed. This is the highest figure in the world.
- Loyalty has been harder to find and retain
- We are seeing a higher rate of consumers switching product than ever before.
- As a result, marketing effectiveness is plummeting.
Consumers are seeking new sources of influence, and new nudges for reassurance. “Tech is becoming the architect of how, what and why we choose,” Krigstein said.
Consumers are rewriting what they want and when at a pace we have never experienced before. But we haven’t evolved the way we talk about the subject. We still use ‘tech-agnostic’ traits to architect the where and how brands show up. Not all young women or all young men like the same thing, and by ignoring the broader rhetoric we discount ‘hidden frictions’ – cognitive frictions like unease, mistrust, anxiety. These are harder to size up than ‘tactile frictions’ such as the ability to tap and pay, but they are more pervasive for consumers. In fact, not everyone wants a fast, frictionless digital ecosystem, and the result is pushing customers into journeys that don’t delight. And as Krigstein points out, when there is less joy there are fewer bookings.
As a sector, travel was the first industry Krigstein did a deep dive into as part of his study because he saw the highest benefits of adopting a technographic view of customers within this industry.
“Travel is our most essential good,” Krigstein revealed. “Above day care, school, pets.” Travel is no longer just a hobby. 80 per cent of us are always ‘on’ travel. If we’re not actually travelling, we’re booking it or thinking about it.
But what people don’t like is the booking process. If the enjoyment of the booking process is low, customers are twice as likely to abandon their basket, 1 in 2 will walk away, and 1 in 3 will defer their purchase. But Krigstein showed that once a technographic approach was adopted, the number of customers who commit to their purchases drastically improves.
Technographics is increasing our most potent customer signal to curate joy for better outcomes across the board. It’s our ‘posture’ towards technology: our behavioural engagement, how enabled we are by technology, and how much we trust in tech-governed decisions. Krigstein explained that adopting and understanding technographics will show us where consumers want technology to intervene, and when they prefer it to take a step back.
Krigstein also set out the different types of technograph – A, B and C – who have different dependencies on technology. When the industry becomes more aware of the different types of technographic and understands their different needs and preferences, we will be able to target them in different ways.
What Krigstein is asking for
Towards the end of the session, Krigstein laid out four things that the travel industry could be doing to gain the most valuable view of their customers and utilise it to the best effect.
- We need to widen our aperture on travel experience design: “Design for diverse entry points,” Krigstein advised.
- Stop worshiping at the false altar of ‘frictionless’: Digital is not frictionless, and additionally friction not always a bad thing. “You wouldn’t tap for a house,” Krigstein said.
- Decouple your thinking on product and experience design: “Adopt a second profile”.
- Get back to the business of sparking and measuring joy: “More joy means more bookings,” Krigstein concluded.
