This principle is at the core of any sustainable experience. This applies to all industries from transportation to financial services to retail or government for that matter.

Regardless of whether you are serving an end customer or an employee, their time matters more than their money. Treasuring customer time is a way to start with the customer and work backwards. You can’t design any meaningful, sustainable experience if you don’t factor time in. And this is much more than letting your customer open a bank account with you in less than X minutes. X minutes are nothing, if the next time I have an issue with that account I have to waste hours with a poorly designed mobile app or a lousy (human or gen AI) agent.

More than money, the pandemic has highlighted that time matters. People realized that they can work effectively without wasting time to commute, they can shop or apply for a piece of ID or book a scan spending way less time than before. I am not talking about the fake dichotomy physical vs digital, or even worse the poorly conceived contrast between proximity and intimacy that characterizes much of the debate within FSI.

I am simply talking about time. Something you can easily measure that goes beyond any customer satisfaction or net promoter score.