Digital by obligation
Companies have discovered a very effective way to force us to do something without forbidding us anything: making the option they do not want us to choose more expensive, slower, or more difficult until we prefer the one we would have never chosen.
Banking is a good example of this. The entities assure that the face-to-face channel remains available. And it is true. But there are few offices, certain operations require an appointment, and others involve commissions if we do not go to the ATM or the app. The client can still choose, but it is a more than questionable freedom.
From an economic point of view, a choice is only truly free when the alternatives offer reasonable conditions. If a company introduces costs, waits, and obstacles in one of the channels to shift the consumer towards the other, it is not responding to their preferences. It is manufacturing them.
Digitization has brought enormous convenience and has allowed for the reduction of many costs. It would make no sense to give it up. But it has also shifted tasks to the consumer. Now we perform operations that an employee used to do, and we assume a growing share of the security. The company captures a good portion of the savings, while the client performs tasks and assumes risks that did not previously belong to them.
The recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union regarding cyber fraud resolves this issue. In the face of an unauthorized payment operation, the bank must now immediately refund the amount, even if it considers that the client acted with gross negligence. Afterwards, it may claim it back if it proves such negligence. The resolution tells us one thing: gentlemen, whoever designs the channel and pushes clients to use it cannot automatically shift all the consequences onto them.
The same debate arises with the disappearance of cash and will soon appear in many services managed through artificial intelligence. Companies will be able to claim that human attention has not disappeared. It will be enough, however, to impose long waits for this option to exist only on paper.
I do not propose to indefinitely maintain all branches nor to prevent companies from incentivizing the most efficient channels. I propose that benefits and responsibilities should go together. If a company saves costs thanks to a digital migration that it has directed itself, it must also assume a substantial part of the risks, errors, and difficulties that this channel generates.
We can bet on digitalization and artificial intelligence. And we must do so. But we must properly assign their economic consequences. Because, if the client has not truly been able to choose, it is also not fair to treat them as if they had freely assumed all the risks.
