Tag Archives: amazon
Innovation posts of the week: The 3 Types of innovators
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Defining Customer Needs In Volatile Times: Two Steps To Accelerate Innovation - Business 2 Community
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From the Trenches: Musings from an MBA at an Innovation Firm – Frog Design
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3 Types of Innovation-Structured [Apple], Unstructured [Amazon] & Open [Google] via @rowangibson
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Four Ways To Spot Markets Ripe For Disruption by @lukegwilliams
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The Fringe Beats the Mainstream by @practicallyrad
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Innovation must be constantly top of mind by @ovoinnovation
A great customer deserves a special gift continuously
But that gift can’t be that obvious.
It’s always interesting to me how some organizations delight their customers. Or how they assume their customers will be delighted.
The image above is a promotional email from Scientific American Book Club, it was delivered to my inbox with the title: A great customer deserves a special gift.
The title got my attention, but the offer didn’t!
Why? Because their offer makes me feel like it’s a hard sell. It’s repetitive and predictable. It actually annoyed me. I mean, are book clubs still relevant? I’m sure in some cases they still are but I’ve never actually felt like I’m in the SCIAM Book Club.
Also I can get those books at Amazon delivered to my Kindle for less. The other problem is I’ve been a SCIAM Book Club member for two years and have so far bought two books from them and it wasn’t even by choice. I was forced to.
Meanwhile, as an Amazon Prime member I don’t pay taxes and get free two day shipping on most orders. And on top of that, Amazon just threw in free online video streaming rights to about 5,000 TV and movie titles. All that for $79/month.
Am I delighted? You bet!
So what gives?
The best way to delight a customer is to exceed and/or break their expectations. A type of gift that breaks/exceeds expectations is the one that isn’t directly related the offering a customer expects. What do I mean? For example, us Amazon Prime members didn’t expect to get free online video streaming with our subscription when we signed up. It would’ve been more common to expect a lower price or quicker delivery (incremental value) on our purchases. While that may make us happy it certainly would not have exceeded our expectations.
The element of surprise is the ultimate equalizer
Think about it this way, when you are dating a girl or guy everything starts out really fast and you just want to do everything for your partner to keep them interested. You want to keep them entranced. But as that relationship grows and reality settles in, most of the time, that ‘want’ disappears. Your partner knows your tendencies and knows what to expect. You become predictable. A bore.
The way to break this pattern is to do something unexpected, to surprise.
And so it is the same with the relationship between a customer and an organization. But in this case, the customer is the receiver and the organizations has to constantly be surprising and delighting. Otherwise you risk becoming a bore, predictable, more of the same.
In a world of sameness, promoting sameness is not a viable strategy. Get that out of your head and break the pattern.
Related articles
- Is Amazon Prime’d for Streaming Success? (compete.com)
- HANDS ON: Amazon’s Prime Instant Video (mashable.com)
- Should Amazon free its Kindle? (shamelessinformation.wordpress.com)
Innovation posts of the week: How Aha! Really Happens
- Harnessing Ignorance to Spark Creativity by @work_matters
- Model for Employee Innovation: Amazon Prime Case Study by @bhc3
- Innovate By Hacking Capabilities by @skap5
- 50 Tips for Successful Innovation – Business Pundit
- Ever wonder how to pick the best ideas? Flexible promotion schemes are best! by @fei_innovation
- Innovation Essentials: 10 Basic Principles of Innovation via @customerthink
- How Aha! Really Happens – Strategy+Business
- How Learning Leads to Results via @ariegoldshlager
- Where Does Innovation Fit Within Business Operations? by @prwpmp
#Innovation posts of the week: What if innovation was the standard
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What if innovation was the norm – Innovate on Purpose via @jdpuva
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Four Ways Of Seeing That Set True Innovators Apart – Forbes via @RowanGibson
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The Role of Empathy in Customer Care and Innovation via @ArieGoldshlager
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How Companies Can Implement Adaptive Behaviours Organizationally (PDF) – BCG via @Ralph_Ohr
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10 Ideas For Instilling an Innovative Culture via @lindegaard
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Amazon’s Smart Innovation Strategy – BusinessWeek via @kiwiquick
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Innovation Strategies Combined – MIT Sloan Management Review
The imitate to benefit syndrome gets you nowhere
Every once in awhile I get an email that asks me to give out ideas (strategy) that previous clients used to achieve a particular goal. I’ve attached part of a conversation below which only explains part of the story but let’s just say that I’m being asked for secret recipe that they can plug and play and voila!
I can give you this information but it’s no use to you because if all you want is to try to copy their success, let’s just say you’re going nowhere.
Best practices that worked for someone else don’t necessarily mean they’ll work for you. You shape your business based on your own strategy that works to your unique mix of strengths and weaknesses.
Strategic behavior that benefits you
If you truly want to differentiate, look outside your industry. Pick a goal like ‘we will provide the best customer service period to our customers’ and instead of looking for ‘examples’ on how your competitors might do this, look for companies that are known to give the best customer service in their respective industries and see how you could use that to your advantage.
Examples of companies that give superior customer service are Amazon, Zappos, Ritz Carlton, GoDaddy and they all have different ways of achieving this. They’re all known for this because they’ve stayed away from conventional strategic logic and are willing to do what their competitors can’t even dream of.
The whole point of being strategic is to be so different that your competitors will try to emulate you, not the other way around. If you can’t win in the game you’re playing in, think for yourself and create your own game.
What say you?
P.S. Sorry for over-linking to my Posterous blog but I think you can see a pattern there.
Weekend innovation tip: Lessons for business from the top 10 good brands
What makes the best brands special? PSFK studied 10 brands and published a report on the qualities that make the special The Scorpion King . Below I’ve are some lessons for business from those 10 brands.
Download the Good Brands Report 2009
GOOGLE.
Experiment rapidly and embrace failure.
APPLE.
Rage and Honor movie Every aspect of your brand should be as good as the product.
ZIPCAR.
Stop selling products, start selling services.
GOOD MAGAZINE.
Set the agenda and let your customers spread the conversation.
AMAZON.
Identify parts of your business that could be offered as additional services.
FACEBOOK.
Create a playground and let your customers define your offering.
VIRGIN.
Think big, think small. Amaze customers with your audacity, and please them with your attention to detail.
TWITTER.
Stay flexible, allow your audience to dictate how your products or services are used.
IKEA.
Take a wider view of the shopping experience, making each step along the path to purchase simpler and more enjoyable.
SKYPE.
Reach scale with free product, make money from premium services.
