The words ‘fast’ and ‘easy’ are not just power words used in advertising, but provide the very foundation for contemporary businesses. Transport, food, shopping, travel, bookings, et AL. The millennial age has brought with it the need for instant gratification and technology which was built for everything instant and effortless is at the helm of every business idea. All money is riding on the business of convenience.
What are the factors that come together to build such a business?
- Making Choice Easy: We live in a world of abundance and choosing is indeed time-consuming, but, you can make this easier for your customers. For eg; Netflix has a unique recommendation system which displays movies or series the user is likely to watch based on previous choices. Swiggy too categorises restaurants based on access points like ‘Only on Swiggy’ ‘Express Delivery’ etc making it easy for the customer to choose the restaurants they’re looking for.
- Delivery is your Brownie Point: So once you’ve created that desire, how quickly can you make their choice available? Most of the recent apps like Swiggy, Zomato and Dunzo are based on this very important aspect of a business- delivery. For eg: 1) Alibaba’s new retail concept has made its grocery chain highly popular due to integration of offline and online 2) German-based Hello Fresh sells pre-packaged meal kits to consumers 3) Why go that far, Mumbai’s Dabbawallahs the 6-Sigma delivery model which has been applauded by prestigious institutions like Harvard and others is based on the idea of delivering hot, fresh, home-cooked food from the employees’ homes to them at the workplace.
- Minimal ActionTransaction: While the world goes cashless, business are strapping themselves with payment gateways that make customer payments quick, hassle-free and secure. If your business is offline, you can still set up a cashier-free automated payment system that will save customers the hassle of long queues. Amazon Go is the best example of this.
- No Bump in Consumption: So, how do you make sure your consumers consume their purchase easily? Is there a way they can pre-book so that they forgo all lines and obstruction and head straight to the counter? For eg, Google’s navigation app Waze tied up with Dunkin Donuts allowing customers to ‘Order Ahead’. This way they can zoom past the beeline with coffee in hand! Talk about coffee-to-go!
- Post-Purchase Services: You’ve got to have your A-game on when it comes to maintenance and customer service. It’s tough to acquire customers but tougher to hold on to them. And you don’t want to burden an already frustrated customer with long waits on call or an unresponsive UI online. This is where community engagement takes centre stage, especially for businesses online. If you’re offline, come up with set-ups which people can use to access you in an instant. Tesla, for example, has mobile customer services for cars that broke down anywhere, anytime. Today, they have an automated system through which the car itself can update information about parts that need replacement. This saves a lot of turnaround time.
Convenience makes life easy but definitely needs some planning! Put on your thinking caps and think about how you can add this winning attribute to your business.
