The bridge between the Physical and Digital world, is clear communication

Why a lack of clarity and communication can plague digital and physical solutions

Navigating the world right now, during these uncertain times in Covid and Lockdown can be confusing. An example of this is how businesses are handling the response of re-opening and being socially distanced, in particular restaurants.

The economy has taken a hit, and businesses are struggling to operate in this wildly different landscape, but the ones that are surviving are trying different approaches.

One of these is implementing a digital queue system with the aim of alleviating the stress of queuing for a restaurant while practicing social distancing for the customers.

A well know London and Italian based pizza restaurant is one of the businesses to use this approach.
The idea is that, when you visit their website, they have a section explaining when their pizzerias are open and a CTA to join their virtual queue.

A new browser webpage opens up and a pop up appears asking if the site can access your location. If you allow this, the page will be able to detect you are within a 500 metre radius of their restaurant. This is an impressive piece of technology, but it’s only half of the journey.

You have to keep refreshing the page to see when you’re near enough to enter the virtual queue, but when you are you’ll be able to click a Join CTA, enter your details (name, people for table) and you can opt in to receive text message updates when your table is ready.

This is where the issues started. By this stage, I was at the restaurant, and there was a physical queue of people. There was no information outside the restaurant, or on the sign (showing the menu and social distancing rules) about the virtual queue, and there were no further instructions on the page where we had joined the virtual queue, about what to do next. There wasn’t a person available to ask about the virtual queue either as the only staff member around was dealing with the physical queue.

This is where their approach to managing a socially distanced queue fell apart. There was no information at this awkward in between stage of what users should expect/do. An extra message on the virtual queue page, a sign printed on the ground where the social distance queue people could wait, or a message on the menu sign that sits at the front of the restaurant. An extra step added to what they had already implemented would have helped round out the experience. This issue felt like something that hadn’t be considered when suggested, because if it would have been tested with users they would have encountered this friction point earlier.