User Misexperience #1: The Great Receipt Deceit
As a customer I want to provide my email address so that I may eventually regret everything.
Recently I visited a general goods shop to purchase some bathroom accessories, the shop utilises self service kiosks allowing the customer to browse and purchase items virtually before collecting the physical item at the Collection Point. The experience provided some challenges and frustrations, in this article I’m going to describe the problems I experienced and what possible measures could be implemented to alleviate those issues in the future.
Problems
Virtual Keyboard
At the self service kiosk I opted to provide an email address in which to receive my electronic receipt. what appeared was a familiar on-screen keyboard, I began typing my email address but this experience was hampered by the uncomfortable amount of finger pressure I needed to apply to the screen in order to register a key press. Pandemic living had conditioned me to avoid using my index finger on a public screen, opting for a less utilised little finger, this hampered the task further.
Upon reviewing my typed email, I discovered I had missed a letter near the beginning of the address, instinctively and applying my mental model of how such an interface should work, I pressed the screen near the location of the missing letter as to change my cursor position. Whether through error or lack of such feature there appeared to be no way to change the cursor position beyond immediately after the last letter typed. This resulted in me having to press backspace multiple times, deleting the majority of the address, in order to correct my mistype. Perhaps something which contributed to my error was the lack of feedback received from a successful virtual key press. When contact is successfully made to the screen, a small light grey circle swells from the location of a user’s finger, the key pressed on the virtual keyboard however does not stylistically react in any notable way.
A minor point, but something which caught my eye was some of the copy within the summary page. I was informed the product was in stock by a line which read:
“This product is in stock at our Bridgewater Avenue store (This store)”
The wording of which struck me as a repurposing of their location ambiguous web experience as opposed to one crafted for in-store customers. Would simply “In Stock” communicate equally as well to the person who has travelled to and is currently shopping within the Bridgewater Avenue store?
Surprises
Finally, I waved my bank card in front of the contactless card reader, the machine bleeped to confirm my payment was accepted. My phone vibrated to confirm that the electronic receipt had arrived in my inbox. Then to my surprise, a receipt was automatically printed from the kiosk. It turns out that I actually NEED the paper receipt in order to collect my item from the Collection Point as the store staff check and stamp the paper receipt to confirm collection. So one must ask what the purpose of the optional email receipt is, the confirmation of purchase which graced my inbox did not contain any new information relating to the transaction.
Likely the value of the electronic receipt becomes apparent in situations where an item needs to be returned and one cannot find or no longer has the paper equivalent. Given this, perhaps relocating the occurrence of the email field in the journey to appear once the paper receipt has begun printing would allude to it being optional.
Even in the above situation, where a returning item is without a receipt, a customer who paid by card would be able to produce a bank statement as proof of purchase. Producing the bank card alone may hold enough details for the transaction to be verified by the shops records.
Or, why not have the Collection Point staff invite customers who have purchased certain items, items which have a higher chance of being returned, to take a photo of their receipt using their phone. Either way, an email address is personal information and likely people will weigh up the transactional value of providing such information for a receipt.
As we become increasingly tech savvy as a population, likely our collective weariness for email misuse and data breaches grows.
Email Misuse
Three days later, I receive an unsolicited email from the store titled “Rate your recent experience”. The email was sent to the address I provided to receive my e-receipt.
Six days later I receive another email: “Reminder: Rate your recent experience”.
Why was I not asked for consent or at least informed that the email would be used for additional means or user research? Where is the email now stored? If not locally then where was my email address transferred to and by what means? Were they secure means? If you’ve stored my email address without my consent, what other information might you have collected?
Fortunately (or rather, unfortunately) I was able to answer one of these question based on information contained within the footer of each email. The “opt out” link was provided on behalf of another company, a “customer engagement” firm whose headquarters resides in another country.
Additionally these emails contain a tracker. Email trackers can be used to inform the sender whether and when the email was opened, however they can also be used to transit information about the recipients computer such as operating system and approximate location.
This breach of trust is a disappointing finale to a poor stream of events, all for the sake of wanting an electronic receipt.
Solutions
Better Feedback
Let’s start with the virtual keyboard. A successful keypress should be acknowledged with clear feedback to the user, that feedback should go beyond a mere colour change from both an accessibility viewpoint and from the perspective that a customer’s digit may entirely block the sight of the key once pressed.
A range of options could be tested with customers, such as the popular behaviour on smartphone virtual keyboards where the pressed key protrudes upwards, maintaining visibility above the user’s tapping finger.
Privacy Aware
With increasing the visibility of key presses comes an interesting privacy question, would more visual feedback prove beneficial to snooping bad actors? The current system displays the customers email in its entirety, so albeit an unlikely occurrence there does perhaps remain a present vulnerability.
Some mitigation techniques which could be trialled:
- Apply privacy screen filters to each kiosk to greatly limit the horizontal viewing angle of the screen.
- Apply privacy guards to the edges of each kiosk to impede snooping.
- Arrange the kiosks so that none appear side-by-side
- Arrange the kiosks so that none have their screen facing high traffic areas, like the queue to the Collection Point.
Meeting Mental Models
If a user is introduced to a touch screen device in which to input data, and that data is collected and displayed within a common text field, it may be anticipated that users would expect to interact with that text field in the manner they would on their phone.
Giving customers the ability to relocate the text cursor with a tap will provide a time-saving, error correction tool for those who are already tech-savvy enough to attempt to invoke it.
Progressive Disclosure
If I am to have a paper receipt regardless of my desire to have an electronic one, perhaps pose the question to the customer once the impending paper receipt has manifested.
A customer doesn’t need to decide upon whether to have an e-receipt before purchasing their product.
One possible advantage of not having the email address prompt appear last in the journey is the scenario where a customer leaves the kiosk early.
A bad actor may take advantage of a customer abandoning their kiosk while the option to provide an email address remains on screen, allowing them to input an address they have access to and collect customer information from.
Some mitigation techniques to explore:
- Ensure e-receipts don’t contain personal or complete customer information.
- Don’t request email addresses at the kiosk, defer this question to the staff at the Collection Point.
- Have a different, optional final step in the process which is clearly communicated to the user (perhaps via progress bar), a step which the customer can safely walk away from, like a simple “Rate your experience today” prompt.
No Deceit
The unauthorised use of a customer’s email address is quite unforgivable. It shows contempt for customer data and brings about many questions on data practice and integrity.
If the pursuit of customer feedback remains a high priority it may be worth trying less direct avenues first. Take the example I mentioned earlier, employing a simple “Rate your experience” or “How did we do?” prompt at the end of the customers kiosk experience could indicate which stores are problematic for customers.
At a minimum, absolutely any other use of a customer’s email address beyond the scope of the task at hand should be opt-in only.
Conclusion
My customer journey should have concluded on a high note, with the successful purchase of new accessories for my bathroom. But here I am, searching for the details of the overseas “customer engagement” company so that I may submit an information erasure request.
This is a prime reason why consumers unfortunately need to protect themselves with a burner email account.
