Want More Customers? Reinvent Things That Normally Suck
Something interesting is happening in airports. Some of them—Minneapolis-Saint Paul International and Newark Liberty International being two examples—have stepped out of the Dark Ages of crappy food and terrible service, and are now light years ahead of where they should be with new, tech-savvy restaurant experiences.
If you've traveled in the past year or so, you might have noticed small restaurants in the center of terminal walkways that used to have nothing more exciting than guys trying to sell you a frequent flyer credit cards. Walkways are now peppered with sleek lamps and cozy tables with iPads on each one. Rather than having to wait for Sally Waitress to finish getting groped by that drunk business traveler, you can order your food directly on the tablet. No, robots don't bring you your order (yet) but it's still pretty dang cool.
And that, my friend, is how a brand called OTG is reinventing the travel dining experience.
I'm inspired by this, frankly. After all, we'd given up on having a good meal while flying eons ago. Our expectations were low. And yet, here's a brand that did the seemingly impossible: created food destinations that were actually appealing inside airports.
What sucks in your industry?
There are other examples of this amazing transformation from total suckage to a downright pleasant experience. Think of the move from music CDs to MP3s. No longer did we have to wield our unwieldy CD folder with 500 CDs (none of them illegally burned—of course not!) to find our Kenny G album. Now we flip through an app on our phone to find it. Or, better yet, we ask Alexa on our Amazon Echo. I love my Echo ... but I digress.
Brands that started using social media to handle customer service inquiries are another example of improving something that totally and utterly sucked. No one ever expected anything better than having to call an 800 number and waiting on hold for ages. But suddenly we could get in touch with actual humans in real time. Life got better.
Surely something in your industry sucks. Maybe it's the typical product your competitors put out. Or less-than-stellar customer service. Maybe there's a major problem that no one has solved. This, for you, is gold. It's your opportunity to reinvent and cash in on being the one that makes everything better.
Innovation is inspiration
I believe that the best way to continue to thrive in an industry is to innovate. But how can you continually innovate? By paying attention. Finding opportunity in what generally isn't working—or at least not working well—could be your ticket to phenomenal success for your business. If that "thing" isn't obvious, talk to your customers. Find those pain points that challenge them, then ask yourself how your company can improve upon existing practices. Then go beyond expectations. Don't just solve the problem, exceed what people could possibly imagine a solution would look like.
Ask yourself what you'd like to see as a solution. Can you find a way to surprise and delight people, the way those tablets at airport restaurants do? What additional value can you offer that will provide even more value for your customers without breaking the bank?
Never rest on those proverbial laurels. Continue to push to excel, both beyond your business's past successes as well as those of your industry in general. Know that you'll never reach the top of the mountain, and that's okay. Because the fun comes when you continue to go beyond what people ever thought you (or anyone, for that matter) were capable of.
