They make it look so easy! Today's nimble digital brands, born in the past decade, have revolutionized their markets and transformed our lives by putting the customer first, and getting the basics right.
Take Uber, the world's biggest taxi company, which turns 7 next month. Instead of investing in taxis, Uber's whole business is built on a super smart app, which handles all bookings and payments. 2016 revenues are estimated at $26bn.
What about WhatsApp, another 7 year old, now handling 42 billion messages daily. That's double the global SMS volume, handled through another smart global app.
Big numbers indeed, but what lessons can we learn from Uber and WhatsApp, and apply to other non-digital businesses?
Of course it's not realistic to compare every business with these two. Mobile IS the user experience for Uber and WhatsApp, both are impulse rather than planned buys, and involve low cost or zero cost transactions.
Most businesses involve longer purchase cycles, are a considered purchase and held back by legacy processes and structures which get in the way of such rapid innovation.
There are a few pointers for us all which shout out from the registration email I received a while back.
Here are 5 top take outs from a happy customer
- Keep it personal to build trust - it's good to know there's a human there to provide customer spport
- Be obsessive about the user experience - everything about the app is quick and easy
- Make it easy for customers to contact you - and encourage their feedback
- Reward your customers - to build good will, and grow your customer base.Long live word of mouth.
- Focus on the here and now - use time and location features to make customer' lives easier
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