Mobile

Money 2020: Part 2 of 3: Mobile Payments and Crypto Currencies

At the close of day one my head was spinning. I managed to avoid all the trappings and temptations of Vegas and made it to my room at an early hour to review my notes and prepare for the next day. I chose to focus on two topics, Mobile payments and Crypto Currencies.

Apple Pay was announced not a month prior and so that dominated the conversation. How it would change the landscape of payments? Who will win? Probably the best way to start is to take a few moments to outline the four main attributes of Mobile payments. They are Near Field Communication, Secure Element, Host Card Emulation and Tokenization.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is essentially an antenna embedded in the phone that allows radio signals to exchange information between two devices at close range. It’s been around since the 1980’s and is widely used and often heralded as the future of payments. That promise has gone largely unfulfilled but now that the iPhones Six and Six Plus are NFC enabled we may see more adoption of NFC.

Secure Element (SE) is a tamper-resistant hardware that can securely host confidential and personal information on a mobile device. It’s built into the phone and is owned by the carriers (Sprint, AT&T, etc.). Until recently the only way to make payments using a mobile device was through the secure element, which meant the carriers had to be included in the ecosystem.

Host Card Emulation (HCE) allows software systems to manage mobile payments by creating an exact virtual representation of a smart card (SE) and storing it in the cloud. This deployment means the carriers can be by-passed by the OS owners. Google Wallet uses HCE in their solution.

Tokenization (sorry, no acronym available) takes the credit or debit card information such as account number, customer name, expiration date and replaces it with a surrogate called a token. This card information is not stored on the phone, only token. The merchant receives only the token during the mobile payment transaction and the token provider handles the translation from token to traditional account number for processing. Apple Pay uses tokenization which is stored in a SE on the phone. This protocol will likely be used to a larger degree in the future.

It has been reported that over 1 million cards were loaded into Apple Pay within 72 hours of the software upgrade being made available. This is more than all other providers combined, including Google Wallet which launched in 2011. This is a testament to the brand power of Apple who has over 800 million payment numbers in their iTunes system. Google has gotten a bump from Apple’s launch, seeing their wallet transactions increase by 50%.

The question of who will win leads to many more questions. How quickly will merchants install point of sale terminals that will accept NFC transactions? Will consumers feel comfortable loading their cards into their phone and using them at stores? As referenced in Part 1 of this Money series, recent and multiple merchant point of sale breaches have heightened everyone’s awareness that the payments ecosystem needs hardening. Consumers in particular are even more sensitized to this.

One more thing comes into play here. EMV, which stands for EuroPay, Master Card, Visa who collaborated on developing a standard that embeds a chip into a credit or debit card. This chip when inserted in an EMV enabled POS terminal. So another question to add to the above list is will merchants go all the way and deploy checkout hardware that will accept both NFC and EMV? The technology will improve security but is only good for physical story transactions. It won’t help with online commerce because the card is not present. It will also require some new consumer behavior. On an EMV transactions the card is not swiped, but is dipped into a terminal and needs to remain there until the customer signs on the screen and taps accept. Think back to the first ATM machines. You inserted your card and the machine held it until the transaction was completed. Now we either swipe or dip the card but it’s not left in the machine.

Crypto Currencies

We are rapidly reaching the point where you can no longer look in your wallet or checkbook register and know how much money you have available to you. Technology, but increase of financial instruments and the ease of opening accounts has caused us to fragment our holdings across numerous places and spaces. If that wasn’t confusing enough, we now have crypto money being thrown in the mix.

I was aware of currencies such as Bitcoin but I didn’t really understand it well. When I saw the amount of time dedicated to it at Money I stopped into a number of sessions to learn. I walked out fascinated by the concept. If you stop someone on the street and ask them to explain Bitcoin you will likely get silence. Technically these currencies are a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure transactions and control how new units are created. There is no financial or banking system and it is not regulated (yet) in the U.S. The safety and integrity of the currency is maintained by members of the currency community known as miners. They use their own computers to validate and timestamp transactions. Why do we need these currencies? Well, obviously we don’t need them but the developers of feel that there is significant friction in the payments and currency system that leads to fees, surcharges, fraud, processing fees and waiting periods.

They site the lack of a global standard for money and nation state specific proprietary infrastructure as primary reasons crypto currencies are the next logical phase of money. Simple, fast exchange with no physical currency.

Although most financial institutions don’t recognize Bitcoin at this time, a number of online commerce sites are beginning to accept them at checkout. Certainly this is will not play into the average consumer at this time, but it is something to watch. Part 3 up next.

Read Part 1: The Future of Currency and Payments

Read Part 3: Tech Crime Takes Off.

Career Opportunity at Discover Bank

THIS ROLE WAS FILLED ON JUNE 13, 2014

I’ve recently changed roles at Discover and am working on building out my digital team. There’s already a solid group of professionals in place shaping a best-in-class banking platform, but we are rapidly growing and I need more help.

This is a Senior Manager role with three direct reports, reporting to the Director which would be yours truly. I have worked at Discover for almost 15 years. We have a terrific culture and are recognized as one of the best run financial services companies in the country. We have a great credit quality portfolio, are well capitalized with strong profit and stock performance (NYSE:DFS).

We are located in Riverwoods, Illinois, just north of O’Hare airport and have a Chicago city satellite office.

Job Description

This position leads a team responsible for developing and enhancing a best-in-class banking web interface for Discover Deposit products. This person will work closely with a peer to drive the current and future state of the user interface across all digital platforms. It is critical for this person to steer and coordinate cross-functional groups that include Product Teams, Marketing, Business Technology and multiple external agencies to create and deliver innovative, simple, highly functional and aesthetically pleasing interfaces based on user-centered design principles. This person should be keenly aware and passionate about emerging design and usability trends across web, mobile and tablet, as well as the evolving digital payments ecosystem.
The Digital Experience team’s primary role is to understand business requirements and goals, and then work with external agencies to develop wireframes and design comps that will deliver the business results with a superior customer experience.
The Senior Manager must be analytics focused and able to leverage web tracking to inform design and enhance functionality already in production. It is important to be able to weigh quantitative and qualitative data before design begins.
Time to market is critical. The candidate must be comfortable operating in an agile development environment and make strong judgment calls based on the information and alternative scenarios.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree required. Specialization in human-computer interaction, graphic design, product design or interaction design is a plus
7-10 years leadership experience in user-centered design, usability and development, preferably with a Fortune 500 company or leading digital firm
Seen as a thought-leader in creating best-in-class digital customer experiences for full site, mobile and tablet interfaces
Experience leading and/or observing user research and usability testing and translating insights into design decisions
Demonstrated ability to lead cross functional teams in the development of scenarios, workflows, site architectures, interactions notes, wireframes and designs
Experience in developing processes to manage complex activities
Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into meaningful interactive experiences
Ability to effectively prioritize project requests based on clear methodology
Strong analytic skills and experience with web site behavior tagging and tracking
Effective communicator and comfortable with presenting to senior managers
Lean Six Sigma would be a plus.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against applicants due to race, ethnicity, gender, veteran status, or on the basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

If you’re qualified and want to work for a highly respected company you can apply here.

The Beginning of the End for the PC? Not Exactly.

Pundits aplenty have been predicting that smartphones will be the predominant device for accessing the web in the near future. That future may be accelerating. IDC, the International Data Corporation, has reported that smartphones have now out shipped personal computers.

Smartphone shipments have tripled, while PCs shipments are growing at less than 50%. In the past you had to buy a new PC every 3 years or so to keep up with innovation and performance (I’m including Apple in there). But the innovation curve belongs to smartphones now. PCs are fast enough and feature rich enough for the majority of people. Consumers can do things on their smartphone that, in the past, had to be done on their PC. New features, functionality and performance are now dominated by the smartphone. Consumers can do more with their phone than their PC and it’s completely mobile.

So is the PC dead? Absolutely not. The reality is that PCs are becoming closer to a television; mature and ubiquitous, and used for very specific activities. They will be replaced at a much slower pace than in years past, and if you have young children, they will buy less than half the number of PCs you have owned, but purchase three or four times more smartphones than you ever did.

This is what has made Apple so strong over the past three and a half years. They saw this shift coming and created the technology to enable it. Their MacPro heavy aluminum tower computers are losing sales ground to the all in one iMac model because there is less need for that purebred desktop computer. The acceleration of tablet sales will put even more pressure on PC shipments.

Brands need to be designing their experiences and business models to adapt to this technology landscape shift, or risk being relocated to the basement with the old folks, while the young, cool, hip people are tapping on the handheld device at the coolest party in town.

Working in the New Digital Design Landscape

You can pretty much break the web down into three phases. The first was Read, the second saw the emergence of Distribution & Commerce, with the third being Communication. Phase is not really the right word, dissolves may be better choice. The Internet has taken everything it was from the prior phase and brought it along into the next one, layering on new and exciting technologies and features. People who worked in interactive in the 1990’s through roughly 2003 essentially built one thing, web sites. Those sites evolved and became rich experiences, but despite the speed of those changes, we kept up pretty well because the content was well contained, neatly boxed-in by the browser, mounted on a stationary computer. Laptops certainly travel, but that’s about taking a smaller version of your stationary computer with you, as the browser, keyboard, and hard drive are identical to their desktop counterparts.

Certainly browser resolution, cookies, javascript, flash, etc. needed to be taken into consideration, but that was child’s play compared to what we have to think about today when designing digital experiences. Today content and experiences can be accessed on multiple devices (no standards) and in any situation, especially driving. And it’s not just point and click. It’s much more complicated. For example.

There’s endless discussion about how to prioritize projects and with them the designs and development of content. Designers today need to think harder about their customer and personas and consult the data more than ever before to avoid letting the shiny object get all the attention. Could be the wrong shiny object. I’ve put together this chart, which really helps me when planning work and making decisions about interfaces, devices and communications channels.

One of the most heated debates is whether tablets, like iPads, are desktops or mobile devices. I have drawn them in as overlaps, as I believe they need to be considered as both, at least for now. When I approach a project, I take out this chart and sketch out the entirety of the experience.

Think Finance with Google: Tortoise and Hare Mash-up

It’s been more than two years now since Lehman Brothers collapsed, signaling the public start of the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Two years in a downward spiral, followed by a bit of leveling off and now a narrow beacon of light piercing the blackness. Despite all those headwinds and pressure, most financial services firms have navigated through these treacherous waters and are now trying to grow in this new reality. Growth was far from our minds two years ago. It was all about battening down the hatches and retrenching. Oddly enough while all this turmoil was wreaking havoc, technology was blossoming, sprouting new connected devices and blurring the lines between web, media, entertainment, shopping and conversation. This amazing time of convergence might just turn out to be the protagonist in this economic story.

Google’s New York headquarters are located in the meatpacking district in a concrete bunker of a building on Ninth Avenue. I love the idea of that structure. I used to visit there in the late 1990’s when Barnes and Noble set-up their E-Commerce shop away from the more traditional bookstore confines across town. It’s a cavernous space with massive elevators large enough to lift delivery trucks. When you finally get past security, you feel you are in a place that could survive anything. A kind of a fallout shelter if you will. It was comforting. This was my first Google Finance event and I didn’t know what to expect. But it was Google, so I set my expectation high. At the end of the day they were exceeded. The agenda was extremely well structured for both content and emotion and, as it turns out worthy of an Aesop fable.

Google’s Principles for Innovation
Macroeconomic Landscape
Consumer Response to the Economic Crisis
Innovations from Google
Client Case Studies
Media Platform Convergence
Google TV and Android Demos

Dennis Woodside, VP for Google led off and immediately stepped on the gas. Things are moving faster than ever and the Internet is rapidly becoming the de facto communication channel. He laid out the evolution of the Internet as follows; read (early websites), buy (emergence of online commerce) and talk (social and mobile). He strongly echoed what others have been saying about mobile overtaking desktop, and soon. To illustrate the point of how quickly information is making its way to the net Mr.Woodside pointed out that there are 800 exabytes of information on the web today. Up until a couple of years ago, if you added up all of human information, radio and TV shows, books, music, newspapers, etc., it would only equal 40 exabytes. By 2020 Google predicts there will be 53 zettabytes of data online (1,000 exabytes = 1 zettabyte). In other words. Kind of a lot of stuff. He was all about speed and racing to get there first. Hare.

Up next were two impressive and informative speakers. Matthew Slaughter of the Tuck School of Business and John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer at Young and Rubicam. Mr. Slaughter was from the school of cold, hard facts and it was a bit painful. He said his inclination was that of the optimistic Tigger, but prepared us for more of an Eeyore perspective. Of course all of us in that room knew the facts. We’d been following them for two years from inside our own firms. Hearing them in this setting, among our competitive peers and coming from an “outsider,” made me gasp and say to myself, “Did all that really happen?” Essentially he told us that it could take until 2020 to recover the 8.5 million private-sector jobs we had just lost. He did remind us that it’s in times of crisis that we produce our best innovation.

All Right2 — Found in a store window in downtown Detroit (John Gerzema)

Mr. Gerzema, co-author of Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution is Changing the Way we Buy, Sell and Live also had lots of stats and charts. But he channeled his message through people who were already innovating and making a difference locally. Not corporate masters of the universe, but simple, everyday people. It was inspiring stuff, witnessed first hand while on an across the country road trip. He spoke about consumers who have been hit hard by the crisis and have less value than in the past, but because of technology acceleration they have more power. Consumers are moving from mindless to mindful consumption. Trust is the key driver now, “Trust is the new black,” perhaps the quote of the day. It’s moving beyond traditional marketing for firms and toward actions and gestures brands must take and make to prove to consumers we care about them. He laid out five concepts defining this shift.

The New American Frontier – Optimism, Resiliency, Opportunity
Don’t Fence Me In – Retooling, Education, Betterment
The Badge of Awesomeness – Nimbleness, Adaptability, Thrift
Block Party Capitalism – Character, Authenticity, Locality
An Army of Davids – Community, Cooperation, Amplification

Firms must deeply understand consumer context and show them we will navigate for them. He rattled off more than a dozen examples that are worth checking out. Here are a few; bluhomes.com, whipcar.com, neighborgoods.net and sunrunhome.com. I’ve only just cracked his book, but it seems to hold many more nuggets, including this tidy summary of where he thinks things are going.

SpendShift3 — My personal notes from Mr. Gerzma's presentation, Consumer Change and Evolution

In short, the message is, quality is in and quantity is out. It’s all about slow now. Slow VC and trust based transaction models. Brands should not force consumers to lock in their purchase decision up front. Offer trial, sample experiences, then work with them until they get comfortable. This is challenging stuff for big brands, especially for those of us in the financial space, because it’s not logistically easy to trial our products. Tortoise.

Back to Aesop. Everything is accelerating, but slow is the way to go. We live a world that’s rapidly converging, think the film Inception. Immediate access to reliable information means consumers can re-purpose the time it used to take to research choices and redirect it to actually understanding what the product or service really does for them, and how it might be to work with the provider. They turn to social networks to help inform their decision. Firms need to invest quickly in the world of convergence so they can be more transparent and open about selling their goods and services. Perhaps even create a newbreed of products andservices expressly designed for trial. “No obligation, no one will call, no salesman will visit your home.” I realized long ago that you won’t learn precise recipes on how to succeed inside your own firm with these event concepts. After all, that’s why you get a paycheck. The best you can hope for are some strong case studies and clever networking.

After a savory lunch they took pity and allowed us to break from the world of stats and enter the world of Gopi Kallayil, a Google Product Marketing Manager for Search Advertising. He had just returned from 36 hours of traveling undertaken for the sole purpose of meeting with the Dali Lama. Show off. Mr. Kallayil was centered and calm and made keyword search sound like a search for the meaning of life. It’s not a type in field on Google’s home page, it’s the “white box” where a billion people across the world arrive at each day and tell it their deepest secrets and desires. Mr. Kallayil pointed out that people tell the white box things they don’t communicate to even the closet people in their lives. Probably true. We got a glimpse behind the curtain of how Google analyzes search terms and how that informs new products and services. He talked about the nnewly launched Instant Search as well as what they are doing around piping in social media conversations. But It was Gopi, so search transcends finding out where to find a latte. Someone noticed what results Google was returning when a user typed in suicide. They made sure that the crisis hotline 800 number showed up high in the results. The next month, calls to this hotline rose 10%.

The highlight of the day for me was Mike Steib, Director of Emerging Platforms at Google. He was engaging, entertaining and really knew his stuff. It was all about mobile, convergence and once again, speed; Hare. Mr. Steib urged us to design our web experiences for a TV screen as well as a mobile screen. He gave us his prediction for what percentage of the U.S. population will have a smart phone by the end of 2011, 100%. I really enjoyed how he took cutting edge ideas developed at MIT and brought them down to practical applications like getting a haircut. Even though his delivery was accessible and delightful, the real message was get going and do it now. It’s a new reality and we will need to figure out how to be a tortoise and a hare.

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Dennis Woodside, Matthew Slaughter, John Gerzema, Mike Steib (Steve A Furman)

The Google TV demo at the end of the day fell a little short for me. They did not have the devices connected to the Internet and so I couldn’t go to my web site, discover.com, to see how it would look on the big, beautiful Google TV screen. A bit of a miss. And one more thing. How about an afternoon break guys! Those aside, I’ll be back, that is if they invite me.

Tortorise and Hare images from free clip art server

Mobile = Shift For Designers and Consumers

Humans have always been obsessed with what they need to “take along” whether it’s going to work or play. The advances of mobile phones and apps has led many of us to shift activities we once did exclusively on a desktop/laptop to our smartphone. This is naturally followed by an increase in the number of places we carry out basic computing tasks; now in the car, at a restaurant, waiting for a flight, watching a child’s sporting event, etc. It’s growing quickly partly because people are relieved of trying to remember what they need to bring with. As long as you have your smartphone (Swiss army knife) you feel better prepared. I have been reading, debating and thinking deeply about mobile these last few months.

I attended two mobile sessions at the recent South by Southwest Interactive track (SxSW) in Austin. The first was entitled The UX of Mobile, with Barbara Ballard of Little Springs Design, Scott Jenson from Google, and Kyle Outlaw of Razorfish. I’ll cover the second panel called Time+Social+Location with Naveen Selvadurai from foursquare, Josh Babetski from MapQuest and Greg Cypes from AIM in a later post.

This post mashes together notes from those panel sessions with what’s been brewing inside my brain and recorded in my Moleskine since last fall. It all runs together which makes it hard on the attribution front. The shape of my thoughts was obviously influenced by what’s out on the web and what was shared at SxSW. Thank you to all mobile thinkers.

In The UX of Mobile, the moderator kicked it off by asking each panelist to define user experience:

Allow users to reach goals
Think about the whole system, SMS
It’s everything that causes a user to not want to use your product; scrolling, buttons, etc.

Mobile today is hyper-focused on apps because the mobile browser is lacking (and because of Apple). When the mobile browser catches up to the app experience, there will be a monumental shift away from apps. The mobile web will be where things will get interesting and play out. But simply trying to put the web onto the phone (miniaturization) is not where the value lies. Mobile screens are a new window into the Internet. It’s the closest thing we have right now to wearable computing and so designs needs to account for mobility as well as personal connection. Design for interoperability, take advantage of mobile cache and leverage the cloud. One should design for the “mobile moment.”

Design knowing that interruptions are inevitable (the waiter comes to take your order)
A phone in your pocket can also be useful (vibrate to signal when you need to turn right or left)
Don’t bring the web to the mobile phone, bring the browser (Safari with iPhone/iPad, Chrome)

Mobile demands that you design for the screen. A smartphone has many more features available to the user than a desktop. Barbara Ballard ticked off a great list of things to be considered when designing for the mobile experience. Notations after → are my additions.

Gestures → Human
Accelerometer → Framing
Bluetooth → Extension
Camera → Pictures
Microphone → Voice
Location → Mapping
Address Book → Social
Calendar → Schedule

The mobile phones of today are closer to traveling ecosystems than operating systems. As such, usability testing for the small screen becomes more critical than browser designs. Designers/developers need to test in context, including social context; in short the real world. For me real world testing will mean getting out of the lab and test in cars, libraries, retail stores, restaurants, sporting venues etc. Internet connections are fairly reliable now; always on and fast. The cell phone carriers are not there yet. It’s better than the 9600 baud days, but not yet comparable to the speed we enjoy with today’s modems. When 4G arrives, we will be a heartbeat away from moving everything the mobile device. That will be a watershed moment.

The iPad is a Roaming Device, Not a Mobile Device

Pick up the April 2010 Wired magazine (I’d include a link but the paper version gets to me before the digital version; go figure) and turn to page 75. There’s an extremely insightful article by Steven Levy, Why the New Generation of Table Computers Changes Everything. In it he talks about how Steve Jobs is “writing the obituary for the computing paradigm” and how desktops will vanish and laptops will be used “primarily as base stations for syncing our iPads.” While at SxSW I spent a lot of time with Ian Magnini, principle at MCD Partners in New York. We work closely on strategy, design and visioncasting. He turned to me and said.

The iPad will replace the magazine rack in your home. There will be one in the kitchen, one in the bathroom and one in the bedroom – Ian Magnani

I think he’s dead on. The iPad has a huge mobile drawback in that it can’t fit in your pocket or purse. So maybe it’s not cell phone mobile, but it could be the perfect “roaming device.” I can picture people using the iPad to read magazines, newspapers, books, then launch the browser to order groceries or do online banking all while sitting in a comfy Barcolounger. Battery life is 10 hours and taps return instantaneous responses. Keypad will be the big challenge.

As always, Jobs will ensure that the design experience will be outstanding. I have heard that there won’t be a calculator on the iPad at launch because he didn’t like the experience. It doesn’t matter. Once it’s right, it will be included in a future version.

Much more to come on Mobile.

Multichannel Mania at the 2009 Forrester Consumer Forum

Just back from the Forrester Consumer Forum. I say just back, but actually it took place in my hometown, Chicago. There was a great turn out and some very engaging keynotes. One of the major benefits of attending a Forrester event is the quality of presenters and attendees. I had lunch with Brad Brooks, VP of Consumer Windows Marketing at Microsoft and got to question him on their new retail store strategy. He was very engaging and open, and if this is a harbinger of things to come from Microsoft, it will be interesting to watch them. The forum theme was The Three Dimensional Consumer: Creating Breakthrough Multichannel relationships. Forrester defines the three dimensions through the lens of the consumer; their needs, interests and questions. Not a groundbreaking thought by itself, but the way in which Forrester shaped the content with context and examples was very effective and useful.

Consumers are becoming more digital, more mobile and more social. These stats were presented in an opening day Keynote by Henry Harteveldt, a VP and Principal Analyst with Forrester.

79% of US consumers are online and 75% of that number have high speed Internet access
18 – 43 year olds spent 20% more time online in 2009 than they did in 2007
62% of US online consumers who purchased a financial product in 2009 researched it on the web first
46% more people belong to social networking sites compared to a year ago
Twitter grew 1,382% year over year, registering 7 million new users in February of 2009 alone
97% of phones are data devices
36% of smart phone users and 63% of iPhone users access the web every day from their device

At Forrester everything comes in threes, so Mr. Harteveldt laid out a framework depicting the three things digital consumers expect from brands; information, transactions and help. Information = engagement, transaction = interaction and help = deliver great service.

Multi Model — Information, Transactions, Help

He offered some great advice on how to excel in satisfying the needs of the digital consumer across all channels.

Offer channel appropriate communications
Match the task with the channel/device
Use social media (if relevant to your customers)
Replicate off line processes online
Extend digital channels into the off line world
Provide relevant tools, forms, payment options, etc.
Excel at service (make it easy, channel-agnostic and utilize social media for immediacy)

Harvey was humorous, bright and on target. Right out of the textbook for Forrester; a balanced mix of facts and vision.

One of the most entertaining and genuine presenters of the forum was Virginia Suliman, VP of Digital Design and Development for Hilton Worldwide with Hospitality is All Around You: How Hilton Delivers Consistently Good Multichannel Guest Experiences. I’m a Hilton Honors member and have been for a while. It’s a brand on my personal watch list. She began with a nod to a world gone by, a nostalgic look at Conrad Hilton’s original vision for the hotel chain. Mr. Hilton wanted there to be a Hilton on the moon. Connie, have you taken leave of your senses? it’s location, location, location. The moon is not on the way to any place.

Ms. Suliman observed that the hotel experience and the home experience have begun to converge. Hotel furniture, bedding, beds and flat screens are easily attainable and affordable for millions of consumers. The cocooning of the early 2000’s and the current economic downturn have caused personal and business travel to slow. She spoke of how her biggest challenge is getting staff to be genuine to customers across all their brands, even the limited service properties. She said, “Hilton is not a technology company, it’s a hotel company.” I really respected her approach to solving the multichannel, multidimensional problem. She attacked the customer experience with a framework that is essentially a usability model.

Hilton Usability Framework — Hilton's framework for delivering a great customer experience

But the real solution was in fact technology, despite her downplaying this aspect of the firm. Hilton built an integrated infrastructure platform connecting consumers to all properties so employees at any of the hotels would have access to the same master database. It’s called OnQ and provides a 360 degree view of the customer, including preferences, but is optimized for profitability. This is a reminder that if you are a big brand (like mine) with lots of customers, outlets and channels, you can be as genuine as pie, but you won’t fully excel without strong technology skills.

Hilton has realized positive business impact as a result of the OnQ effort. They track revenue per available room as a key metric and grew it by 6.2% after OnQ was installed. They have also extended this platform into Hilton University for training.

Virginia Suliman, VP Web Design, Hilton Hotels

CMO of Best Buy, Barry Judge gave a talk a talk called Blurring the Lines Between Customer Service and Marketing. Barry and Best Buy really get the social media concept. I had the privilege of sitting on a panel with another Best Buy executive, Tracy Benson, Senior Director of Digital, also of Best Buy. She told me they set up a monitor in Barry’s office years ago that was tuned to the social media channel. A rolling screen of direct customer conversations; irresistible. Soon he was asking for it to be available on his mobile device and then began responding to customers directly. He also started a blog barryjudge.com.

Key messages in Mr. Judge’s presentation were:

Talk with customers, not at them
It’s about customer 2.0 – not just keeping the doors and phone lines open, but proactively going out to look for customers to serve
The best marketing is when the consumer doesn’t even know it’s marketing (candidate for best forum quote)
Their mission – Buyer be Happy

Their Twelpforce (Twitterers) are licensed to help customers. Best Buy employees who want to Tweet for customer support have to take a test and receive a badge, official deputies of Twelpforce. Best Buy’s experience and learnings in this arena have led them to create a Social Shopping Facebook page with over 1 million fans. It will be followed up with a new web site premiering on Christmas day that has the objective of helping consumers get the most out of their electronics purchase. Tips, tricks, user-generated content and experiences.

Their mobile iPhone application allows consumers to see products, reviews and prices; full transparency. This shows that Best Buy has moved beyond the fears of Social Media that paralyze most firms, and into a brave new frontier. This kind of courage will pay handsome dividends. One more note on their mobile efforts. You can text a short code related to products and immediately be sent all the reviews.

No consumer forum would be complete without Harley Manning making a plea, a begging plea in fact on one knee for marketers to embrace the multichannel customer with his presentation Designing a Multichannel Customer Experience in the Real World. His presentation was a mash-up of personal experiences, stories, Forrester frameworks and very sharp new ideas. Hard to keep up with him sometimes, but therein lies the fun. Here are some of his insights.

Design with channel pairs in mind. Most projects are single design projects, but channel transition is likely in almost any interaction, so plan for it
Pay attention to the most connected channel. Where will the consumer learn about the message first?
Solve the small problems first and build allies in the organization. This will enable you to bridge the the channels in bigger projects later on
Use research, especially ethnographic research
Create multichannel customer experience maps and multichannel management platforms

Getting executive buy-in is compulsory, so Mr. Manning provided a test sheet you can self-administer that will help you determine which category your executives fall in related to digital and multichannel design. You will find out if they are passive, willing or engaged. Once you type the executive you can tailor your discussions and presentations to that style with the objective of moving them along the path to engaged.

If you attended the forum, I’d love to hear your reaction to this post and get your own observations.

Economy Impacts Internet Trends and the Result is Mobile

Every year, Mary Meeker, one of Morgan Stanley’s most seasoned analysts posits her Internet predictions. I wait on the edge of my chair for this moment. This year she calls it Economy + Internet Trends, which once again reminds us how much the economy, or lack of it, has influenced everything, including the Internet. Her presentation was given at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Unfortunately I didn’t see the presentation, but I snagged a copy to read. Lots of the usual slides on key indicators and charts on progress, or lack of it this past year. The big theme for 2010 is mobile, mobile, mobile. It’s big, and not only big, but bigger than we think it is.

According to Ms. Meeker, mobile Internet will be the next generation computing cycle. largely driven by a 10x growth in hand held devices that connect through the cloud. Real time wireless remotes control everything these days and location based services are the secret sauce. But the carriers could be their own worst enemy. AT&T is already struggling to deliver the messages and e-mails within the expected SLA. Mobile services add real time to relevance but not if it stops being real time. Carriers take note! You can download her presentation here .

I have seen an amazing uptick of visits to web sites over the course of 2009 and believe that trajectory will continue. Leveraging this in-pocket or in-purse device will be an important part of anyone’s marketing and servicing strategy for 2010 and beyond. Ignore at your own risk.