I’ve seen a number of reports in the business press over the last few days about the economy showing signs of recovery. I am seeing this firsthand from a different perspective at the moment.

My wife and I are on a 5000-mile (ca. 8000-km) road trip odyssey running from South Florida to coastal Texas and then on to Boston, as we help one of my sons relocate to start a new chapter in his life and career. Preparing for this trip, I was not exactly sure what to expect along the way. Purely from anecdotal observation as I write from the passenger seat of a moving van in the second of three legs in the journey, I can confirm that the US (at least what I can see from the road) is indeed awakening. There are more people on the road than I thought there would be, and it has been great to see people moving around. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

• The highly transactional businesses we’ve visited in retail, hospitality and food service are adapting

We had a lovely dinner in Friendswood, Texas (south of Houston) a few days ago with my family at the Baybrook location of Whiskey Cake. This is a favorite of our Texan twenty-somethings, and I was impressed by how they have adapted to the COVID-19 recovery. Our server brought out a handheld device with a giant QR code on the screen, letting us know that the restaurant no longer used physical menus. There was a bit of theater as she went around helping each person scan the code to bring up the menu on our respective mobile devices, taking drink orders along the way. While this process might slow things down when the restaurants are all back to peak capacity on weekends, the connection provided an excellent way to get everyone engaged and to reinforce that concept of “cleanliness theater” that I first read about in this article by Larry Mogelonsky. Digital menus are great for a lot of reasons (lower costs, easier to change items or run promotions, etc.). Here I think the firm used the concept of an e-menu and drove the change over the “acceptability threshold” by having the server explain that this was better for everyone from a cleanliness perspective. They were simply using the QR code to direct guests to the menu available on their website; no doubt they could add more functionality as time progresses. In this case, what impressed me was how they took the opportunity to eliminate a potential cleanliness issue and make a process change for convenience at the same time. They saw the opportunity to “sell” the idea of an e-menu by having the servers explain the advantage of this new option.

In a different visit for takeout to Hearsay on The Strand in Galveston, we found an excellent layout for diners with well-spaced tables and lots of little cues to reinforce the focus on cleanliness. Their website actually calls out the steps they take and confirms the current (for the locale) limits on capacity. I arrived to pick up my takeout order and realized I needed to make an addition. The hostess very politely informed me that I could not actually touch the menu while making my new selection, but that she was happy to set the menu out for me. Everyone kept their distance, and the staff was wearing masks and gloves that were color-coordinated. While I am anything but a fashion expert, I think this detail was a small sign to diners that management is taking the precautions seriously.

Through about 1900 miles (ca. 3000 km) of the journey so far as I write this from the passenger side of a moving van, nearly every single employee in the grocery stores, restaurants, fuel stations, travel stops and hotels we’ve visited were wearing masks. I cannot recall a single case in food service where the staff and facilities were not in order. Will this be a permanent fixture? Honestly I hope it will not be necessary. But it is good to see that business owners are taking the steps needed to meet the requirements of the present, so we can get back to a more normal activity level.

• There is work to be done in contactless payment

I’ve found using contactless payment to be a frustrating process over the last few years. In one trip to London a while back, I decided I was going to use my watch (contactless app) to pay for the cabs exclusively when not on the Tube. I’d say about one out of four tries worked, and at some point I realized I was holding up the drivers or new passengers by persisting. My experience using a phone has been better, but even the phone payment process is still not ready for prime-time, in my view. Several of the large oil company brands (“flags” to many in the petroleum industry) are supporting contactless readers in fuel dispensers now, but I’ve not been able to use the "at-dispenser" options with the cards and devices I have on the trip. I am experimenting with the ExxonMobil and Shell mobile apps and will update the post with the results. In fairness, ExxonMobil has added messaging on their website about increased convenience and decreased pump contact (see ExxonMobil Rewards+ App .)

Update 2020-05-28 from about mile 3000 (ca. 4800 km) in the trip: Contactless payment worked at Sunoco via an NFC reader on the dispenser. I successfully used my card in a contactless transaction at a Sunoco in Pennsylvania enroute to Boston. Ironically, the second attempt was blocked by my bank due to fraud detection as I went from the moving van to our truck. That required a card insert, but this is not Sunoco's fault. Given the relatively low frequency of multiple fueling transactions at a single stop, the benefit of fraud detection blocking may outweigh the convenience benefit. Credit to Sunoco and their suppliers for getting this right! I'll report next on the other apps as mentioned.

Update 2020-06-02 from about mile 4600 (ca. 7400km): I successfully used the ExxonMobil Rewards+ to authorize a pump in eastern South Carolina from the mobile. I had a problem earlier in a different station in Massachusetts but used NFC contactless there. The application uses location effectively to identify the station and enables you to select the dispenser and authorize from the phone. In this case, at least, no extra location codes or barcode scanning was required. Congratuations to ExxonMobil and their partners for a very good experience. The locations need to do more to promote this, as I suspect it would increase loyalty as people look to reduce physical contact with frequently touched payment terminals.

My wife and I were talking about the stress of shopping during a pandemic on the way over to Texas as I was trying to convince her to put the contactless payment applications on her phone. She had a perspective about this that had not occurred to me.

When I am at the grocery store picking up lots of different things, touching grocery carts and, in general, trying to navigate social distancing, the last thing I want to do is pick up my phone and use it for payment. I will just have to sanitize it when I get home.

I’ve always thought that the mobile app “barcode as token” concept is a good one requiring lower investment in store hardware - think of the Starbucks Mobile App or (where I live in South Florida) the excellent Publix mobile app. These types of apps use the existing POS barcode scanners to read the barcode from the payment app and complete payment. What about my wife’s objection about using the phone? I don’t think anyone knows what specific method will become the preferred contactless option. I noticed Publix is rolling out other contactless options using Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay (see this link), which is a good example of covering all the bases and reacting to customer demands. We sometimes hear people in the payment industry talk about the (real) difficulty of getting shoppers to change behavior. What an opportunity we have in front of us now with everyone paying attention!In general, the lack of contactless payment is the biggest “miss” I see on this current road trip. Most stores, restaurants and hotels we have visited don’t have contactless payment options. In the few cases where we have seen the option, the establishments don’t have the marketing and messaging to inform the shoppers. Has there ever been a better time than now to drive behavior changes in payment towards contactless, as consumers all thinking about ways to stay safe? Incidentally, my younger son did convince my wife to install Samsung Pay on her Samsung watch while we were together, so hopefully I will have some real-world experiences to observe before our trip is complete. The obstacle to my field testing will be finding businesses on our trip where contactless payment is available.We’ve had excellent experiences on this trip with hospitality, having stayed in two hotels and one home marketed by Airbnb so far. For the Texas leg of our trip, we rented the (Airbnb-marketed) home to help our son pack up his apartment. Airbnb had a lot of messaging about cleanliness on their website and based on my experience probably has coached their hosts on presenting the same. This emphasis on cleanliness seemed higher than the last time I searched the site (pre-COVID-19). In the current environment, Airbnb and similar booking sites have another advantage in contactless payment for convenience and safety. We booked the trip with our credit card online before leaving and so had no card handling (high marks from my wife even if normal process). While the booking process hasn't changed, we saw more messaging about the "contactless experience" - another good example of highlighting a potential differentiator in service.While online payment is a normal aspect of the booking process for companies like Airbnb, it highlights an area on which I think the hotel industry could focus. Most hotel chains have a prepayment option that provides a small discount as an incentive. The discount is nice, but we find that we are not always confident enough in our exact plans to pay ahead of time. Why can’t we replace the card swipe / insert at the check-in desk with a confirmation triggered from the mobile app? There are complications because of the “pre-auth process” used at check-in (verify card now, settle payment later when total is known). I would argue that now is the time to deal with these issues and to innovate on new ways to communicate with guests who are thinking about minimizing contact.

• Customers are thinking a lot more about cleanliness and contact, creating opportunities for new initiatives and messages that are relevant

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My wife, who paused her real estate career in early 2019 to focus on supporting our family in other ways, continues to serve as Head of Procurement and Head of Health Services for the Thompson Family (among many other responsibilities.) Enforcing a strict regimen of masks, hand sanitizer and social distancing that would make Dr. Birx extremely proud, she leads the way in our family to ensure we make this long trip safely. We are not alone here. The chatter with family and friends often centers on these topics of health and safety. Not meaning to imply any gender bias in this next observation, I’ve watched numerous women steer their husbands and children around other groups of people to keep social distancing in the shops and stores we’ve visited from Texas to Florida and then back into Mississippi so far.Do we see everyone wearing masks? No, we do not. However, many people - even most people in some cases - are doing so. People are more aware and, if our lessons in marketing hold, more willing to consider changing brands or products to fit their new areas of concern around cleanliness and contact. If our front-line businesses focus on these areas in serious and visible ways, I think they will add customers through word-of-mouth recommendations from current customers. On the other hand, if they ignore these changing concerns, others will earn the business as customers switch.Coming out of a Home2Suites by Hilton in Mississippi earlier in the trip, my wife summed up the stay this way:

This place was really clean. I could smell the bleach on the linens and that made me happy.

While I would argue most people have placed cleanliness near the top of their criteria for selecting a place to stay, businesses are doing more to highlight their own processes and policies. Everyone has to raise their game, as what would have worked “pre-COVID-19” will no longer suffice.These data are not going to show up in traditional historical reporting for some time. Now more than ever it is vital to use the immediate, real-time data we have available to us in our business and in our ecosystems. Only by looking at what is happening on the ground right now can we see how things are changing. Transactional data, customer call center transcripts and recordings, interviews with managers and employees in the field, focus groups, social media sentiment and supplier data can signal the changes that are happening, if we commit to analyzing the data and using the insights to challenge our current plans and assumptions.Winning the trend means spotting the trend early with eyes and ears attuned to the activity, environment and sentiment data around us. Those who do so first will recover and prosper in a rapidly changing environment. Knowing the economic devastation that we have faced across our economy, I am happy to see on this trip real evidence of the creativity and innovation that our front-line businesses are showing.Here’s to a safe and prosperous awakening for all!

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