For anyone unfamiliar, User Experience (UX) is a term referring to the interaction that a user has with a website, application or product. The goal of UX design is to create an easy, efficient and smooth experience for the user. A happy user is a returning user and customer retention has never been more critical.

But there is also a ‘dark side’ of UX design. There is a practice of creating a pattern or practice that will cause a deceitful effect intended to trick the user into doing something they don't want to do, or not even tell the user that they are engaged in an action. UX is supposed to be about people, and the users, and about creating delight in exchange for loyalty. That is the exact opposite of dark UX.

The most famous example of a dark UX pattern was used by LinkedIn and resulted in them being fined $13 million dollars as part of a class action lawsuit in 2015. As part of the LinkedIn sign-up process they asked users to give them access to their email account, on the premise that it would improve your career network. The malice came into play as they really wanted the access to be able to secretly send invitation emails to everyone on your contact list, falsely claiming to be sent by a user rather than by LinkedIn.

These are some common types of dark UX patterns so you can be sure you are not inadvertently creating a bad user experience or developing a reputation for using deceptive lead generating or handling processes.

Trick Questions

While filling in a form a user responds to a question that tricks them into giving an answer they didn't intend. When looked at quickly the question may appear to ask one thing, but when read carefully it asks something else.

Sneak into Basket

A user attempts to purchase something, but somewhere in the purchasing journey the site sneaks an additional item into their basket, often through the use of an opt-out radio button or checkbox on a prior page.

Privacy Zuckering

Users are tricked into publicly sharing more information about themselves than they really intended to. Named for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Price Comparison Prevention

The retailer makes it hard to compare the price of an item with another, so a user has a harder time making an informed decision. In example, there are a lot of price-comparison applications that have been created. However, most of them require a user to scan a barcode of the product using the application. In order to avoid losing a sale to a competitor, many retailers have their own bar codes for most products and stick THEIR barcode over the manufacturer’s thus preventing the price-comparison applications from identifying the product.

Hidden Costs

A user arrives at the last step of a checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared, e.g. delivery fees or taxes.

Confirmshaming

The act of guilting the user into opting into something. The option to decline is worded in such a way as to literally shame the user into compliance.

Disguised Ads

Adverts that are disguised as other kinds of content or navigation, in order to get a user to click on them.

Earlier in the month, I wrote a blog that mentioned how consumers noticed and objected to the way businesses were using technology to grow business over using it to provide better service. This leeriness came about in the 60s and 70s as retail began adopting technology. Dark UX is that fear come to life 50 years later.

How a dealership uses their website and the tools they choose to offer for customers need to stay focused on those needs. If a widget is being used simply as a lead generation tool and not giving the customer anything in return, then the dealership might as well not have it at all. The dissatisfaction of that experience is not going to fall onto the widget at the end of the day it always falls on the dealer. The tool won’t lose a customer for life.

The dealership who uses “tricks” to lure in customers rather than providing the information that they were looking for or creating customer journey’s filled with friction and information collection without fulfilling promises made will only end with an upset customer who will probably end up choosing a different dealership.

Anyone not responsible for vehicle inventory management may think it an easy concept but it is a stressful and labor-intensive endeavor normally bestowed upon one person: The Used Car Manager. This individual has an encyclopedias worth of knowledge in their heads about profit/loss margins of every vehicle on the lot - a figure that can change at the drop of a hat in the automotive market. They are in and out of meetings with dealership management, they are going to and from auctions, they are dealing with wholesalers, they are evaluating trade vehicles and adjusting inventory prices on an almost constant basis.

There is no other dealer employee whose time is more in demand. As a result, these individuals need to spend nearly every waking hour working. Most of them wish there were a way to clone themselves or literally add hours to the day. Technology may be able to do those things. In a way.

The most time-intensive and least profitable use of time for the Used Car Manager is evaluating potential customer trades as 75% of these evaluations don't end up in a sale. Using technology that can empower other people to be able to perform the initial vehicle appraisal would free up the Used Car Manager to perform more brain heavy tasks. At the point that a deal is solid, then the Used Car Manager can get involved in order to finalize a vehicle’s value with the Sales Managers. The other 20, 30 or 50 (or more) customers that the sales managers cannot come to an agreement within the box, are going to walk anyways if the trade evaluation isn’t even close.

Consumers, salespeople and business development personnel have been using technology to gather vehicle details and prepare estimates, but it all has to be finalized by the used car manager. This may alleviate some of the pressure, but it would be better if other dealership staff could get a more consistent market value prior to the Used Car Manager being involved regardless of whether the customer is at home or at the dealership. Technology that includes market data would be ideal.

Consumers usually use dated technology to get estimates on their trades before they even contact a dealership. These standard Q and A style tools are all void of detail and salespeople and managers are put in an awkward position where they have to fight against a phantom value from a tool that could just as easily been one that the customer went to on their own or the one that is on the dealership’s website. Designing an experience where the consumer can be more involved with the evaluation process would be the ultimate ‘next level’ for these evaluation tools.

Something that allows salespeople or BDC agents to process trades before the visit would be beneficial as well because it would design an experience that would help the salesperson build better customer relationships and provide a more seamless and timelier sales experience in combination with the Sales Managers or Used Car Managers. In addition, it avoids one of the biggest things that creates dissention in your organization – the Used Car Manager versus the Sales Manager. Take this for an example that I’m sure everyone reading this can relate to: the Used Car Manager manages to “steal” a used car – whether that be from auction or a trade-in – and is just waiting for that car to be sold with a great front end. The Sales Manager certainly also wants that huge front-end gross but sometimes they will deep discount the used car because there is a large front end just to sell a new car. Maybe it’s because the new car is an aged unit, maybe it is because there is a stair step program or maybe it is the OEM pushing certain models. The bottom line is that the Sales Managers control the sales “deal” for the most part while the Used Car Manager’s success in the dealer and General Manager’s eyes is how much gross profit is made from used car inventory on the front-end of the deal. If everyone in sales in the dealership is on the same page, using the same inspection process and judging a vehicle’s condition and value, much of that contention will dissipate. Not all, mind you, but it will improve. And don’t even get me started on the two of them against the Service Department with recon charges. That would be a whole separate blog.

Your Used Car Manager could be doing much more important things for the dealership that result in profit. It seems like such a waste of time and talent to have all the dealership’s vehicle inspections fall onto their plate. Technology has always helped Used Car Managers, but the latest digital revolution has shed light on how much more that could be done for them. A combination of consistent reporting (including images) with fluctuating market data and a human’s opinion can make a dealership more efficient in not only remote appraisals by a customer but also with salespeople starting the process using technology. One of the many things that salespeople are taught is to do a walkaround on the trade and “devalue” it – here’s a ding. There’s a scratch, etc. This can create an adversarial position between the customer and the salesperson when they go into the box to work numbers back and forth with the “man behind the one-way window and lose trust in the salesperson.

The used car manager should be spending their time making the dealership money. That is not something they can do if they are single handedly responsible for finalizing trade offers and evaluations. In addition, oftentimes sales managers are promoted because they were great salespeople – not because they were great at knowing how to buy cars – simply relying on data in industry powerhouse trade-evaluation told which can have values that vary by thousands of dollars.

Automation has become a key element of digital transformation.  This shift could replace nearly 70% of manual, repetitive tasks, according to a Brookings Institute Report. Automation, in fact, has been slowly transforming the way we do business for the past 50 years.

Many industries have leaned on automation to stay upright during Covid-19 shutdowns and restrictions. Banks have used it to accelerate loan processing for millions of affected businesses as well as employees who are out of work or have been furloughed. Airlines use it to manage the increase in flight cancellations and maximize revenue through calculating profitability by decreasing the amount of flights while still maintaining the customer experience and options for those who need to travel. Retailers that have been forced to convert from brick-and-mortar to digital storefronts (if only temporarily) are processing orders with automated systems. Offices went remote overnight, converting many person-to-person interactions into digital experiences. In fact, many customer service centers and agents are doing so remotely among many other examples.

While some organizations already included automation in long term business plans, COVID-19 has created more urgency and opportunity. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed virtually everything about our work and personal lives this year, and automation has been no exception to that rule. With more people working from home, retailers see the value in providing more remote access to data in real time and remote monitoring in general.

Physical store fronts have factored digital retail elements into their Reopening Plans understanding that reopening discussions can't be just about “the now”. Long term success relies on remote data access and processing as states see restrictions ease and tighten up over and over. Remote connection technologies will drive more industries into and beyond the latest digital transformation.

A reinsurer that attempted to sell policies that would insure businesses against a pandemic thus mitigating not only the businesses financial hit but also taxpayers by absorbing some of the debt that would be incurred through unemployment benefits had developed a model and algorithm over many years. Just like a consumer buys auto insurance (or any insurance), businesses also buy insurance. The fact is that a global pandemic like we are experiencing right now only happens about every 100 years. Do you know how successful they were? They didn’t sell a single policy. Because of that, businesses were forced to transform their businesses quickly to models that were hybrids of human and automation in order to simply stay in business.

The pandemic added pressure to accelerate innovation and growth and automation gave them the potential to integrate and automate workflows in order to adapt to the dynamic conditions of the new normal.

Studies report that up to half of automation projects fail and that is in part due to Automation Anxiety. People see automation as a threat much like some people felt the internet would the end of the salesperson. Perceptions are that automation are a job killer as opposed to a way to modernize the workplace. Along with tool and process changes, it's vital that an automated tool addresses that fear to drive user buy-in and adoption and what better way to do that than by including a human element in that process?

In the drive to go fast and far, businesses can lose sight of the power of the human element and some of the best AI includes human intelligence. Automation should enhance a workflow and free workers from tedious tasks, not the essential part of what makes a business human. As technology continues to level the playing field, an organization's ability to balance the impersonality of automation with the expectation of customized, personal customer experiences will be what separates winners from losers.

I am incredibly humbled that David Kain took the time to learn about PAVEInspect last week.

"David Kain, President of Kain Automotive interviews Steve Southin, Co-CEO of DiscoveryLoft about their new vehicle inspection tool, PAVE INSPECT. PAVE INSPECT allows dealers to send a link to a customer that guides them through a self-guided photo shoot that then processes the photos and creates a real-time inspection. This creates a high impact, credible way for dealers to provide quality feedback and accurate vehicle values."

Back in 2012, Apple executives attended a meeting in China where they watched a video of an experimental fully-automated assembly line for the iPads. They watched as iPad parts traveled along conveyor belts and were cut, polished and then partially assembled into a final product. This got Apple excited about creating their own fully automated assembly in an attempt to cut back on labor costs. This ended up being a huge expensive failure.

After seeing the video, the Apple executives were told the line needed very few humans to operate and the line would contain over 1 million robots within 2 years, but by 2019 the company responsible for the production line was only using 100,000 robots across all of their manufacturing. There was something missing.

Apple wanted to be able to cut 15,000 workers from the production line so they tasked their ‘secret’ team with reducing the amount of human labor needed by half. They launched their own robotics lab in 2012 quietly in an attempt to develop their own assembly automation techniques which housed a team of automation specialists and robotics engineers who tried to copy the iPad automatic production line.

But it failed. The problems that arose included basic lack of fine detail. Apple's use of glue required precision that the machinery just couldn’t match when compared to their human counterparts and small screws needed the automation to correctly pick and position them but that automation couldn't find problems as well as a human hand could.

It wasn't the only department working on the project nor was it their biggest failure. That title goes to the millions spent attempting to automate production of what would become the MacBook in 2015. That automated production line began in 2014, and its failures delayed the launch of the Macbook itself. There were problems with the conveyor belt that moved parts along the line but the greatest issue was that parts along the line kept breaking down requiring more and more human intervention.

"If things stop working, the automation can't detect that all the time and repair it," Bourne told The Information. “If any firm were capable of fixing a technology problem, it would surely be Apple, but alongside technical issues there were more fundamental ones.” Since Apple redesigns its major hardware in some small way every year, they would also have to redesign those automated factory lines. Training human workers on new designs is clearly easier and faster.

The most profitable tech company in the world, and - some would say - the most technologically advanced company in history, still relies on humans to build their products. Apple has spent many years and millions of dollars on automating production lines with technology, trying to get machines to build machines but they always revert to using human intelligence when those machines fail. Technical issues and wise business strategies will keep companies using human labor in line with machines if they have any interest in efficiency and low production costs. This Full Automation project was fully abandoned in 2018 and Apple has since adopted a blend of human intelligence and robotics that has solidified the company’s long term profitability based on the concept of evolving assembly much like Henry Ford in 1913. 

As we see digital retailing becoming more desirable to consumers, it has never been more important for dealers to ensure that their processes and technologies deliver on the promise for consumers. There is nothing more frustrating to a consumer than attempting to transact online with any company just to encounter obstacles and frustration. It only adds to that frustration when there is no integration between software offering customers information that turns out to either provide erroneous information or forces customers to repeat the same action repeatedly.

Imagine if you went to Amazon to buy something and everything said “Call for Price.” Or what if you see a price and add it to your cart only to find that the price is more expensive at checkout. That would probably cause Amazon to lose business despite their speedy delivery. Amazon’s whole brand promise is that they not only sell everything but will make it convenient. Quick fact: Did you know that the arrow under their logo isn’t a “smile” but rather an arrow pointing from the “A” to the “Z” to say that they sell everything from A to Z?

Why would any company that promises an easy online experience, invest in technology to make that happen then fail to deliver on their brand promise? That seems a little counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Yet this is exactly what many car dealerships do despite these offerings.

Let’s take trade-ins for example. A customer goes onto a dealer’s website which typically have a “Value My Trade” call-to-action. A customer clicks on it, enters their vehicle information and eventually winds up with a range of values. Let’s say $10,000 - $14,000. Which number does the customer see? Of course, they see $14,000. Worst case, they know a range for their vehicle’s value. They come into the dealership, look at the vehicle, test drive it and are ushered into a salesperson’s desk. The salesperson leaves and comes back with a trade-value of $8,000. How do you think the customer will take that? They’d probably be upset. It was after all the dealership’s own website that gave them the trade-in value range.

Why would any dealership want to start a transaction in an adversarial position? Everything could have been going spectacular in their customer experience to that point. Now, that experience just went from excellent to poor. Will they still buy a car? Maybe. Will they like the dealership or salesperson after they leave? Probably not. Would they recommend the dealership to their friends and family? Doubtful.

How a dealership designs their website and the technologies they choose to offer for customers need to fulfill on their promises. If a widget is being used simply as a lead generation tool and not offering accurate information, then the dealership might as well not have it at all. Customers will absolutely hold the dealership accountable for any misinformation or failed process regardless of whether it was the dealership’s fault or a faulty third-party vendor.

Make sure that the dealership is delivering on its brand promise of a great customer experience and easy access to information that is accurate and transactions and sales will come easier as will brand loyalty, service revenue as well as repeat and referral business. There is nothing less expensive to earn but, at the same time, it’s also the most expensive to lose.