Sunday, June 05, 2005

Things I Want

Four things I want companies to do that would make my life easier, and turn me into a very loyal customer.

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I want my dry-cleaner’s to barcode all the clothes I send them, and scan it in every time it comes in. Eventually, I’ll have an online repository of all my suits and shirts, and information on when I bought them, and how often they’ve been cleaned. I can add notes on special care for individual garments on the secure page provided by the dry cleaner, and as a result, will not go anywhere else, ever again, for my cleaning. If I move, a consortium of cleaners could have access to my data, and I’d only want to move within that network, because I don’t want to lose the information on all my clothes and their care. <a href="http://www.purpletie.com">Purple Tie</a> does some of this in the northern California, but not enough. I want Starbucks to mine its cash card transactional data and create a premier-customer line between 8:00am and 10:00am for high value customers, in select stores, reducing the wait time for these customers to get their coffee. Value could be determined by a combination of frequency, longevity and margin (some drinks make more money than others.) This will increase sales of the cash cards, where they’ll get better margins because of breakage, and it’ll push morning traffic to stores that can handle them better. Of course, all of this has to be done under some kind of new Starbucks loyalty program umbrella, and have other benefits as well. I’d recommend creating a program construct with only a few national benefits, like the coffee premier-customer lane. The rest of the benefits should be administered at the local store level, with benefits coming from neighborhood vendors who want to share in Starbucks’ traffic. I want my local home improvement retailer to start a replenishment program so that I don’t have to go buy lightbulbs or filters anymore. I want a subscription to my every-week home necessities. Come to think of it, they could also send things like garbage bags, disinfectants, laundry detergent and toilet cleaner. I want to be able to manage my subscriptions online, and turn them off when I go on vacation. And when I move, I want to be able to go to my local home improvement retailer, punch in my new address into a kiosk, and have it spit out data on how often the house needed replacement bulbs, filters and other essentials. I want my wireless carrier to have a push-button option that allows me to upload all my phone numbers to some secure network location that they host. That way, if I ever lose my phone, (and I don’t backup my phone numbers to my computer,) I can use a simple push button with the same provider to download my numbers again. I’d pay for this service, but if I were my phone company, I’d give it to me for free—because with all my 600+ numbers stored securely on their network, I’m not going anywhere. http://www.brutalclarity.com/index.php/43/
 

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