How little things can make big differences

“If this sentence takes longer than a second to load, many citizens will have clicked elsewhere already.” Fast Company published an article that sourced its information from another website that gives the following mind-boggling facts:

• Google found that by slowing search results by just 4/10ths of a second would reduce number of searches by 8 million a day.
• 1 in 4 people (25%) abandon a webpage that takes more than 4 second to load.
• 50% of mobile consumers abandon a webpage if it does not load in 10 seconds. 3 out of 5 people would not return to that site. In the US 25% of mobile web users only browse on their phones, never using a laptop, tablet or desktop to access the internet.
• Out of the 79% of mobile web consumers who use their phones for shopping, 40% will abandon e-commerce sites that does not load in 3 seconds.
• Amazon.com could lose $ 1.6 billion per year because of a one second web page delay.
• Majority of Americans would not stay in line for longer than 15 minutes.

"Expectations are very, very high right now" said Abhi Ingle, Vice President in AT&T, in an article published by WSJ. He further added that "slightest glitch, people notice."

What are the implications of these increasing expectations?

• Companies will have to follow the model of N=1 to deal with increasing complexity than what is currently required. For example, as mentioned in the article published on Fast Company changing a particular algorithm can increase the speed of computing up to ten times faster.
• Loosing number of search results, a lag in the loading of the website or any technical glitch can decrease revenues by a huge amount This will not only affect their revenues but also the target market and CVP. Example- Blackberry's services were disrupted last year for a prolonged period of 2 days worldwide. Since Blackberry's target market is mainly the corporate people who are always on the go 24x7, disrupted services like the emails, instant messaging and web browsing affecting businesses daily communication with executives, suppliers, manager and consultants. Also, Blackberry's silver bullet in its CVP of providing durable and reliable service was questioned by its 70 million users world-wide.
• These increasing expectations from consumer have allowed companies to think out of box and innovate in order to provide value through an experience. For example, as mentioned above that majority of Americans would not stay in line for longer than 15 minutes. Apple Inc., understanding their customers expectations, changed the way cash counters work. I feel one reason why Apple's retail stores have done exceptionally well is the fact that there is no line. Meaning that there are more than 20 'moving' cash counters (employees themselves on their iphones that have an additional attachment to swipe credit cards). This has helped Apple to change their profit formula by adopting new technologies in order to increase transactions on a daily basis thereby increasing its revenues and decreasing its costs.

Conclusion

In this ever increasing speed of computing, expectations from consumers will keep rising to the levels that are unthinkable. The question is whether companies can cope up with these changing and rising expectations? I feel that the margin of error for companies is very low not only because higher expectations but also because of increasing competition. Given the low margin of error I am doubtful whether any tech company can maintain a 100% glitch-free level.
What do you think?