Every Product Is a Service Waiting to Happen
Adidas MiCoach UX and Sercice - Designed by Rit Mishra @ Fjord
The relationship between products and services will become more symbiotic, and products will eventually become a touch-point or enablers for experiencing a service — we will see emergence of service-product ecosystem strategy being adopted by major industries in 2014.
This trend has already been building up in various industries like sports, wellness, home automation, FMCG and automobile.
Brands are creating services to maintain relevance, and in doing so, disrupting both the status quo and market chains. Startups and unexpected competitors threaten larger corporations as they create useful services that quickly expand their product at launch.
Nest is one of the most successful examples of a great product-service ecosystem. Nest is the leader in the home automation space as they turn boring and mundane products such as thermostats and smoke detectors into desirable lifestyle products that deliver value for customers through an innovative product-service ecosystem.
Nest connected smart products offer living services that are always learning, evolving and adapting to our habits and preferences. The smoke detectors and thermostats offer tailored user experience through the close integration of a service that collects relevant data from our behavior and preferences. Nest is gaining loyalty and relevance by delivering an ongoing value to users through a seamless product and service relationship, where one doesn’t exist without the other.
For instance, globally the automobile industry is embracing this change and moving from selling a product (car) to creating a product-service platform to engage and deliver a unique driving experience to its customers. In 2014, we will see emergence of such product-service ecosystems that will transform various traditional industries including the automobile sector.
As the cost of owning a vehicle continues to rise, people are looking for new alternatives like shared ownership and mobility on demand services for example, ZipCar and Lyft. It is very important for traditional car companies to reinvent themselves and adapt to the evolving needs of their customers.
Car companies are also looking beyond just creating safer, cleaner, efficient and affordable cars. Rather, they are re-imagining cars as a touchpoint for delivering a meaningful and fully integrated service experience for their customers to win customer loyalty and retention. I believe cars will become increasingly digital, and move to a centralized computing model. For example, in the near future car companies will offer a full range of services to allow customization and co-design of cars by the buyer with an option to share these designs to encourage social dialogue around it. This will eventually help them build brand awareness and acquire new customers.
The connected car will transform into a platform for delivery and consumption of services like media content, infotainment, geodata services, car servicing and maintenance. The connected car will be able to collect data about users’ driving habits that will eventually help them drive more ecologically and efficiently.
The car will learn and adapt to a users’ needs — It will recognize you and based on your past preferences, it will offer a customized driving experience just for you. It will switch on the AC, turn on your favorite radio station and adjust the seat and rearview mirrors. The car will also tell you when you have your next meeting, and that you have time to grab a coffee before heading to the office. Such seamless service and content integration between the car and other personal devices like smart phones will bring intelligence in product-service ecosystems.
Sports apparel manufacturers are playing this game aggressively: adidas miCoach is a service now supported by a product: Smart Run is a sensor-laden watch that gives runners individualized real-time coaching as they exercise, while their data flows to the cloud. Launched in November 2013, the YouTube video has had over 3.5m views to date. 2014 we will see more of these mash-ups in, in a much more extensive way: Nike+, the pioneer of digital ecosystems in the retail space, is creating an accelerator that harnesses the smarts of 10 startups to build ‘the ultimate fitness platform.’
Earlier this year, InfoMotion Sports Technologies launched 94Fifty Smart Sensor Basketball, a Bluetooth-enabled ball that pairs with your iPad and iPhone to track shot speed, dribble force, control, spin, and acceleration. Posted to Kickstarter on March 5 of 2013, it reached its $100,000 goal in a little over a month, and is another perfect example how a product-service startup could disrupt and challenge the whole industry.
WAY FORWARD
Once upon a time, the logo was the brand. But that’s not enough anymore. It’s the way you behave as a brand that matters across every interaction with people. And these interactions are becoming increasingly digital. As brands move from primarily visual to behavioral, the potential to break promises is rising.
Customer touchpoint opportunities are proliferating faster than brands can adapt. In this world, personalization and purpose are key for brands to stay relevant. With so many platforms being offered, people don’t have cognitive bandwidth to grow affection for them all.
Pushing products or extraneous services that just add virtual noise and clutter to our lives will not win people over. With people’s time and energy becoming even more sacred, we’ll want products and services to aid, empower, educate and delight us. Brands must embrace and consider non-traditional coupling, hyper-smart consumption, and the new lifespan of a product that is extended through digital information and intelligence.