On your bike
In his latest column, Jason Dunderdale, Global Director of Sales at Blacklane, says app developers need to pull their socks up or get on their bike
Tech and I are not best friends at the moment. In particular, an electric bike app that seems to fail me when I need it most.
Picture the scene; I have a train to catch. I have my trousers tucked into my socks ready to race but I’ve been logged out of the app. I cannot remember my password, because honestly who can. So I reset it, and try to book the bike
The payment won’t work. I add another card and still cannot book the bike. And I miss my train. Not only am I fed up, I’m also standing in Waterloo station having forgotten about my bike-friendly fashion choices telling my wife I will be home later than promised.
Apps shouldn’t be this complicated. I’m especially irritated that I tried to make a sustainable choice – and one a little better for my heart health – and it was simply too difficult.
I also like to test apps in our industry to keep abreast of the tech platforms used by the corporate partners and agencies Blacklane works with.
While there are certainly some brilliant ones out there, my interaction with an expense management and travel booking tool was haphazard and annoying.
The travel booking element had been shoehorned as an afterthought into an app built for something else. There was no real consideration to how corporate travel is booked. It took me so long to try and make a booking that I never made it to hitting confirm.
Despite all my tech dramas, the last thing I was going to do was call the companies in question to complain. After all, I have this column for that!
In all seriousness, there are transactions that we view as simple, and we don’t crave any human interaction. We want to be able to achieve something on-the-go with a few fast clicks.
But based on the amount of badly-worded AI generated sales emails I receive, I worry that our profession is at risk of losing its softer skills. The ability to pick up the phone and build a rapport, to focus on personal engagement.
Right now the Blacklane sales team is engaged in an outreach campaign, taking time to personally connect with our valued agency and corporate clients to thank them for the important role they’ve played in our growth. We’re measuring success based on phone calls and face-to-face visits, not emails or sales targets.
Yes, tech is integral to huge areas of business, and it certainly helps me to go faster, but so do my industry friendships. So I look forward to seeing you in person soon, and I promise not to talk about ebikes.
