1. Hilton HHonors app: check-in and digital key
The Hilton HHonors app allows users to check in and check out, pick a room, pick a floor and, at selected hotels, to unlock rooms and elevators with a digital key.
Avinash said he prefers to stay in a Hilton that uses digital keys, and he invariably pays more for it. CX he argued, is the confluence of love and profit.
2. Geico: car insurance quotation
Geico’s slogan, its brand promise for car insurance, is ’15 minutes could save you 15% more’.
Through investment in its quotation experience on desktop and mobile web, Avinash argued that this time is now down to around eight minutes.
That’s because Geico has worked with car manufacturers and the DMV to enable it to automatically pull live information into the quotation journey. So rather than having to fill in every field, the app seeks much of the necessary information.
So the app now has only four steps to a quote (see the journey trail in the screenshot below).
What difference does it make? Gartner says that ‘Insurers with advanced digital strategies are 63% more profitable’.
Talking about reducing number of page loads can sometimes seem slightly arbitrary and increasing ‘customer love’ can seem fluffy, but the bottom line is that improved experiences make more money.
Once you become a policy holder, Geico has an award-winning app to boot.
3. ActBlue Express: one-click donations to Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders’ campaign raised $75m in donations in 2015. A total of 3.3m donations from 1.3m people.
Small dollar donations have been enabled by ActBlue, a service that has been around since the mid-noughties and allows donations to democratic campaigns and organisations.
ActBlue Express donations can be made with just one click, as the service saves donator’s details. Focus on the customer journey has yielded impressive gains.
For example – part of the donation signup process is to enter occupation and place of work. A lot of donations come from retired folk, who have to enter ‘retired’ into both of these fields.
So, the app was updated so that when someone enters ‘retired’ into the first field, the second field was automatically populated.
This change led to a 4.7% improvement in conversion (reported in HuffPo).
4. Boltbus app: Uber integration
The BoltBus app allows ticket purchase and e-tickets. But Greyhound, the parent company, realised that customers aren’t just trying to buy coach tickets, they are trying to get from one address to another.
So, they have included an integration with Uber. You can book an Uber on either end of the journey. Wait times are displayed and then when you get to your destination your car is waiting.
This is solving a problem for the customer and not for the bus company. The app has had 500,000 installs.
Not only is customer satisfaction increased, but a more profitable cohort is enticed into the app.
5. Walgreens: multifunctional app
Walgreens aims to earn deep loyalty through its app. It does so with a variety of functionality.
Personalised coupons (which ‘learn’ as you spend) are redeemable in app.
Users can print photos, remotely, selecting a store for pickup, with opening hours displayed in app. This function allows the user to choose photos from other apps – Instagram, Facebook etc.
Prescription refills can be ordered by scanning the Rx barcode on your medication. The app even offers a chat experience with a pharmacist and a live doctor consultation for $49.
Lastly there’s Walgreens’ much publicised rewards system, which allows you to link your Walgreens account to your fitness apps and earn points for a healthy lifestyle.
This app is mobilising the business in fundamental ways. It promotes online and offline interaction and benefits the wellbeing of the customer. As Walgreens puts it, ‘Whatever, whenever, wherever’.
App users spend on average six times more than non app users.
6. Garanti: multifunctional banking app
Garanti is a bank in Turkey. Its app offers lots of extra functionality, including the ability to pay traffic fines, tax, to top up your phone and even send voucher gifts to friends.
7. Google: personalised (contextual) search
Google delivers deep relevance. Avinash gave the example of a simple search for ‘sharks’. He was returned the score for his local ice hockey team, the San Jose Sharks.
Google used signals such as trending topics, past browsing and location, to deliver a card showing the most recent match result.
Bing, on the other hand, returns pictures of sharks.
8. Spotify Running
A well-known but relatively new feature of the Spotify app, matching music to your steps per minute when you’re running.
9. Google Photos
Google’s increasing expertise in machine learning has made Google Photos a revelatory product.
Photos recognises the people who most often appear in your photographs. Click on a person’s avatar and photos of that person appear.
What’s astounding here is that Photos recognises that person as they get older – it can track that this is still the same person.
Photos search is also very powerful, able to recognise facial expressions, locations (such as ‘beach’), sports activities (like ‘baseball’), food (‘desserts’) etc.
10. Houzz: image-based search
Another image-based experience. Houzz allows users to select an area of a photograph and get similar product listings returned.
There are 5.5m products available to purchase using this image-based experience.
11. Tink: AI banking
AI is used when analysing transactions on your banking cards. This AI groups spend into activities – a pie chart including food, cinema etc.
12. TripCase: ad experience
TripCase is used to collate travel itineries and bookings.
Avinash encountered an ad (in-app) for travel insurance with an enticing price. Clicking through, relevant information about Avinash was autofilled into the insurance quote.
This was companies working together, sharing data to make an experience easier. In turn, this leads to more commissions and likely an increased amplification rate.
More posts from Syzygy’s Digital Innovation Day:
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