By Gregg Ostrowski, CTO Advisor, Cisco Observability

The holidays are often filled with festive traditions, such as decorating, exchanging gifts and sharing meals with friends and family. But one thing that is now consistent across households is the central role applications and digital services play over the holidays. Whether it's watching a classic holiday movie, listening to those favorite festive tunes, ordering a last-minute gift, or connecting with distant relatives, people are relying on applications.

At Cisco, we recently surveyed over 12,000 global consumers, exploring how people will be using digital services over this year's holiday season. The study found that 63% of people now believe  applications and digital services are important to have an enjoyable holiday.

However, with people so heavily reliant on applications for almost every aspect of their celebrations now, the research also revealed the extent people are concerned about these applications not performing properly. More than half (53%) of consumers admit they are worried about the implication an application or digital service not working would have on their holiday.

The fuel of holiday nightmares are bad digital experiences

The digital services that are most likely to be used over the holidays are for entertainment (76% of consumers expect to use entertainment applications), tools for connecting with friends and family (74%), retail (69%), utilities (69%), and news and information (66%). Other popular applications include food delivery services, collaboration and productivity tools - to finish work or studies ahead of the holiday - and health and wellbeing applications as consumers set their new years resolutions.

Overall, 60% of global consumers report they expect to be using more applications and digital services this holiday season than in previous years. However, while people will be leaning on applications like never before, many have big concerns about these digital services are letting them down when they need them most.

Most of all, consumers are worried about the impact of a banking application failing, which could prevent them from making an important payment or transfer, or a messaging platform going down, stopping them from speaking to friends and family they won't be with during the holidays. Other fears include an online retailer's application not working properly, making it difficult to buy a last-minute gift or order last-minute ingredients for holiday cooking. Whatever it is, 45% of people state that if an application or digital service doesn't perform, it could ruin their holiday.

Application owners must avoid dissatisfied customers during holiday season

Of course, most people usually feel a bit anxious and stressed ahead of holiday celebrations, wanting to ensure things run smoothly and everybody has a great time. But these tensions have reached a new level, with 40% of consumers acknowledging they will find it harder to enjoy themselves as much as they would if they encounter a bad digital experience.

When people encounter a problem using digital services, their reactions will be strong. They'll get stressed and angry, and they'll vent about the issue to friends and family. More than a quarter (26%) of consumers admit they will exhibit negative behavior or sentiments in response to digital service issues.

It may be the holiday season, but people will be completely unforgiving towards digital services that let them down - and to the brands behind these services. Whether it's slow loading pages, payment issues or downtime, seasonal goodwill will disappear. Many claim they will immediately delete a poorly performing application and never use it again. They'll switch to an alternative without hesitation.

Application owners need to recognize and ensure their applications are ready to cope with unprecedented traffic over the holiday season. They have a big opportunity to attract new customers and ramp up sales over the holidays, but a single application performance slip up could cause consumers to walk away, leading to a substantial loss of revenue and reputation.

This is why it's now so important for organizations in all industries to implement an application observability solution, to ensure their IT teams are able to rapidly identify and remediate issues before they impact end users. Crucially, with application observability, technologists can correlate application availability, performance and security data with key business metrics so they can prioritize those issues which could damage digital experience.

All over the world, consumers are gearing up for a fun-filled festive period, and applications are at the heart of their plans. Brands need to move quickly to ensure their applications and digital services provide customers with exceptional, seamless and secure digital experiences and give customers the holiday they're dreaming of.

##

ABOUT THE AUTHOR