Ease of Doing Business and Amazon Dash
Customer satisfaction. Favorability. Net Promoter. Trusted Advisor.
We've all been chasing KPIs, for ourselves, for our clients.
And lately, many of our clients have been talking about ease of doing business as a KPI that matters to them. And in the energy business, or in the b2b space, the idea of "ease of doing business" is particularly challenging.
Enter Amazon.
Aren't they always at the center of every conversation about customer-centricity? In fact making it just as easy as possible for each customer to make a purchase, to be delighted, is at the center of the Amazon business model.
Enter the dash button.
Have you been following the evolution of this little device? Amazon has found a way to capture the moment of desire, of convenience. You can install these little buttons into every moment of consumption in your life, from home essentials like paper towels and laundry detergent to beauty products, heck there's even a dash button for Doritos.
And this is the genius of Amazon. They have found a way to insert themselves into the buying cycle, to further integrate their services, in a seamless and invisible way, into our lives.
All with the touch of a button.
Now, you might say utilities invented this idea (hello, light switch), and Amazon is only finally catching up. But in November, Amazon offered a $4 credit on up to three dash buttons per customer. But the buttons were already marked down to $0.99. So Amazon was essentially paying their customers $4 per button to try the dash button.
And why would they do something like that?
In a world where every executive is striving to lower the cost of customer acquisition, what would the benefit be of not just marketing, but paying customers to do business with you?
Could it be that creating a truly customer centric experience, of finding an opportunity to make it easier to do business with you and to delight your customers, is worth a risk?
There's a lesson here, utilities. We just all have to pay attention.
