Brand Love

I was at a Marriott in Minnesota recently.  It was cold and snowing that week.  One morning I get up and look out of my window to see the road and the lawn completely blanketed by snow.  I got ready and came down to go to the client office.  I had equipped myself with a muffler around my neck, ear muffs, winter gloves and a coat.  I was ready to brush the snow off my car and scrape the ice off the windshield. 

I walk out and am greeted by a car that had no snow or ice on it.  I glance around to see that someone had cleared the snow and ice off all the cars in the parking lot.  I was, to say the least, pleased with the pleasant surprise Marriott offered.  They made my life easier and they made me look cool.  While all my colleagues (staying at another hotel chain) were sweating in the Minnesota cold scraping ice off their windshield, I simply got in my car and drove off.  It not only saved my time but also saved me from the trouble of clearing show and ice in sub-zero climate.  You can bet I am going back to that Marriott.

This got me thinking about customer loyalty and brand loyalty. 

What is Customer Loyalty?

Customer loyalty is where a customer is loyal to a particular company/service/product.  Customer loyalty can be garnered by offering rewards, discounts and other perks. 

A simple act like clearing snow off cars, which is not part of their SLA or contract goes a long way in making the customer happy and finally loyal.  What Marriott did was make me cool and kick ass.  This reminded me of one of Kathy Sierra's posts on this subject (Image courtesy: Kathy Sierra).  

Brand loyalty, however has to be earned in a whole different way.  Brand loyalty is earned by offering exceptional products and services.  

Companies like Apple command brand loyalty mainly by producing excellent products that consumers want.  The products are of such high quality that they command a cult-like following of brand loyalists.  Apple has also creates an ecosystem (iTunes) that ties the customer into their products for a seamless experience (and forced brand loyalty).

Other companies indirectly force brand loyalty.  Take for example Canon or Nikon in the imaging market.  Once a consumer invests significant amount of money on the foundation product (say, the camera body) and a few accessories (say, lenses, flash, etc.), it is hard to switch to another brand due to the fact that they are different standards (say, lens coupling).  Switching would mean an entirely new investment to get back to where you were.  Not that these companies produce inferior products.  Both produce products on par with each other which makes it even more difficult to keep customers from wavering.  Hence, proprietary standards like lens coupling ensure brand loyalty. 

Customer loyalty is directly related to cost, discounts and rewards.  Once the rewards and discounts vanish, the customer will easily wander.  But, brand loyalty is not related to any of the factors mentioned above.  Irrespective of the cost or rewards, customers will always be loyal to the brand.  This kind of loyalty can only be commanded by producing exceptional products.

Everyone takes great service for granted.  Great service is not going to garner loyalty.  But the opposite is absolutely true.  Bad service will absolutely drive away customers.  Businesses should concentrate more on dispute resolution than on exceptional customer service.  It is human to make mistakes.  But, what sets apart great businesses is how they resolve disputes.

Businesses should concentrate on both customer loyalty as well as brand loyalty.  They both require different strategies and resources, but go a long way in customer retention.

Remember, the cost of customer acquisition is always higher than the cost of retention. 

16 Things from A16Z

Andreessen Horowitz published 16 areas they are focusing on for 2015.  This list is a good bellwether of what areas to research, work on, invest in, etc. 

CES 2015

Steven Sinofsky has published a nice recap of what he saw at this year's CES.  It is nice to note that batteries are improving in performance and how companies are trying to figure out ways to incorporate sensors into everyday products.  

Hotel Check-In Process

Many a times during my business travel, I have waited in line to check-in to my hotel room.  I have always thought that this is an area that needs improvement.  With mobile apps and today's technology, this whole operation can be automated, especially for regular registered guests.  This is a great opportunity waiting to be realized.

Several hotels have already started on this journey and trying to catch up with other industries.  Starwood properties has  already installed smart locks that can be unlocked using their mobile app.  That is one step forward.  Hilton is following suite.  Meanwhile, Marriott has an app for check-In, but you still have to get a physical key card from the front desk.

There are many aspects of travel that can be frustrating.  Especially for road warriors who travel often.  Time is of essence and we want to get what we want fast and move on.

Here are a few things (selective) that a road warrior would need online:
- Ability to check-In
- Ability to use cellphone as a key
- Ability to view available rooms (within the class of room booked)
- Ability to see pictures of the room
- Ability to choose a room from the available rooms
- Ability to be notified when the room is ready (for first occupancy or subsequent, after house keeping)
- Ability to order room service or other services
- Ability to contact concierge to get local information or a virtual concierge

These are a few things that come to my mind.  Of course, you may be thinking that I am anti-social and do not want to talk to people.  That is one of the main reasons I said these were selective.  I could choose to chat with the front desk while checking in (if they are free), or dash straight to my chosen room after a long red-eye flight.  I have been in many situations where I didn't get the information I was looking for or I had to wait in line to get serviced. 

Choice to the consumer is the future.  Given the available rooms, why can't I choose which room I want based on the information presented to me?  I have been in too many situations where I was assigned a room next to the elevator or the ice machine even though I had asked not to.  Empowering the consumer removes all these issues and gives the power to choose.

Hotels can not only reduce their operating costs, but can also make the experienced consumers really happy by implementing these optional services. 

Image courtesy: elitetraveler.com, Marriott

Wireless charging

Ever since I bought my first electric toothbrush several years ago, I wondered what it would take to incorporate similar wireless charging capabilities into phones, wearables, gaming controllers, etc.  The toothbrush doesn't have any exposed electrical contacts.  You just place it on its base station and it just charges using induction.  What if we could use similar technology to charge any other device.  Throw your phone on a mat and it charges itself.  You don't need to worry about carrying your cable.  you could potentially charge any kind of device on a single mat.  Wouldn't that be great?

Well, several companies are already making such chargers using inductive or resonant charging technology.  One of the reasons for the slow takeoff is the competing effort of three bodies: Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), Power Matters Alliance (PMA) and Wireless Power Consortium (Qi). 

Good news is that A4WP and PMA decided to merge this week.  Yay! 

As long as we have fewer competing standards and hopefully, everyone will agree to just one standard.  This will pave the way for wireless charging to charge ahead and make a breakthrough.  Having one standard will allow the utopian charging pad which can be used to charge any kind of device. 

Looking forward to wireless charging on all the devices in the near future. 

Wearables and Classics Fusion

2015 seems to be the year when wearables will be finally embraced by the mass consumers.  Montblanc kicked off the new year with the announcement of its eStrap wearable.  Coupled with the automatic, this is the perfect marriage of a wearable technology with the classic timepiece.  This will surely get the watch aficionados who are also into technology drooling. 

Image courtesy: Montblanc

Here is some press coverage of the watch.  Love to see more fusion of wearables with classic consumer goods in order to spur broad interest.

Drone's eye view

I recently watched a tourism advertisement for Pisa and the short video featured a beautiful leaning tower of Pisa shot from the air.  The Piazza Del Duomo, Cattedrale di Pisa and the well manicured grounds looked fantastic.  The aerial video was also shot on a beautiful sunny day which enhanced the beauty of the location.  I was bowled over by the visuals, and wondered how I was not enamored by the sights when I actually visited Pisa this summer.  I went over my pictures and videos and they were all different because they were either shot at eye level or below.  Whereas, the promo video and photos were all shot from an airborne camera.

The same can be said of any tourist attraction.  They all look fabulous from the air or any vantage that we cannot easily achieve as tourists.  Look at the picture of the Status of Liberty from the air.  Compare that to the eye level shot that we all take.  Imagine capturing yourself peering through the crown of the Liberty from this angle.  Wouldn't that be wonderful?

With the advent of drones, this is all possible.  Camera equipped drones allow us this new perspective when shooting still or video images.

Imagine shooting selfies and shooting yourself in Hollywood style aerial videos while you roam and sight see your favorite tourist spots or while you enjoy your favorite adventure sport.  It can be made possible with the latest generation of camera equipped drones.

Today, you can walk into a city like New York, San Francisco or Paris and rent yourself a bike or a Segway.  Likewise, what if you could rent a drone and shoot aerial imagery or shoot yourself from a different perspective.  In the past this would have meant that you needed to fly an aircraft (either a plane or a chopper) to capture these unique perspectives.  Even if you did that, you wouldn't be in the frame since you are flying.  So, renting and piloting a drone would make this possible.

But, there are problems with this approach.  What if several tourists want to rent drones at the same time?  What if they don't know how to fly a drone?  What if the drones get lost?  What if the drones slam into obstacles or other people?

So, renting drones to drone-illiterate people is not feasible.  There needs to be technology improvements in drones to make this possible.  The drones should be auto-pilot capable.  Given a flight path, the drones should just fly in those predefined paths.  In order to make it interesting, the drones should also be capable of tracking the camera towards a target, be it the sight (like Statue of Liberty) or a person (tourist renter or adventurer).  It will be cool if a drone can fly around in a predefined path and whenever it points the camera at you, it pings you through a buzz of your cellphone.  The phone can tell the drone where you are, as well as double as an indicator to you that the drone camera is looking at you.  This will give you an opportunity to wave at the camera or do something deliberate.

For this idea to be feasible, drones also need the ability to detect as well as avoid each other.  They could create a field around themselves and sense each other and make sure they don't collide.   The other big problem is the battery life.  Most of the small drones have a short battery life of less than 10 - 15 minutes.  This would mean that the drones should also be capable of docking and recharging themselves or even better, swapping their battery automatically.  Once we have these technical capabilities, it will be much easier to build a business case around them.

Now, with the FAA looking into the usage of drones and putting restrictions on commercial usage, there needs to be an exception for pre-programmed drones since they are no longer operator controlled. 

Image courtesy: commons.wikimedia.org