Waardeproposities: bied jij nog wel waar je klant om vraagt?

Tijdens een werkbezoek in Londen koos ik voor een verblijf in het citizenM hotel. De 'M' staat voor 'Mobile'. Hun gasten zijn dan ook niet zomaar toeristen, maar 'Mobile Citizen': mobiele wereldburgers. 

Ik stapte het hotel binnen in de London Bankside wijk en direct bij binnenkomst stonden 6 touch screen computers klaar voor het inchecken. Ik toetste mijn achternaam in en automatisch werd mijn boeking gevonden. Het scherm vroeg me een 'citizenM-Card' te pakken en deze voor de detector te houden. Et voilá: checked in! Met dezelfde kaart kan ik de lift gebruiken, mijn koffie, wijn of maaltijd afrekenen bij de bar en in 1 minuut uitchecken bij vertrek. 

In tegenstelling tot de meeste traditionele hotels bleek de lounge

gezellig druk. 'Lounge' is eigenlijk niet het juiste woord. De complete begane grond is eigenlijk één grote woonkamer, subtiel opgedeeld in drie delen door middel van kleuren en stijl. De 'citizens' praten hier bij, ontmoeten en werken hier, pluggen hun laptops in één van de vele stroompunten (geschikt voor zowel Europese, VS als VK stekkers), maken gebruik van de snelle gratis WiFi, delen presentaties op de diverse grote schermen die stijlvol zijn ingebouwd in boekenkasten, of ze lezen de gratis selectie aan kranten. In het midden van de ruimte is de 24/7 geopende hotel bar en ten slotte in de hoek enkele grote tafels met schermen, waar iedereen die binnenloopt kan inpluggen en werken. 

Wat is de pijn van de klant en waar wordt hij/zij blij van?

Eerder dit jaar ben ik in het nieuwste boek van Alexander Osterwalder gedoken: Waardepropositie Ontwerp. Een vervolg op zijn succesvolle boek over Business Model Generatie. In zijn recente boek gaat hij in op hoe organisaties producten en diensten af moeten stemmen op de klant; de pijn verzachten en verrassen met toegevoegde waarde. Toen ik op de website van CitizenM las: 'Absoluut geen broekenpers, liftjongens of stomme kussen-chocolaatjes', was ik eigenlijk al verkocht. Het bleek een uitstekende manier om echt te beleven hoe het is als een organisatie, in dit geval een hotel, het waardepropositie-denken succesvol implementeert.

Wat is hun waardepropositie dan? Wat verlangt een hotelgast nu werkelijk?

• een groot en lekker bed
• een krachtige regendouche
• gratis films op een breedbeeld televisie
• snel en gratis WiFi
• apparatuur kunnen inpluggen zonder adapters te hoeven kopen (of vergeten)
• een tablet om temperatuur,verlichting, televisie en de wekker te bedienen

En dat is het! Geen oubollige stoeltjes waar je toch niet op gaat zitten in de kamer. Geen bureau dat niet gebruikt wordt. Geen bijbels in de lade van je nachtkastje. Geen lichten waarvoor je je bed uit moet om ze uit te doen. Neem de pijnpunten weg bij je klant (in dit geval: wachten om in- en uit te checken, betalen voor WiFi, geen bereik, een lege bar), en verras hem of haar met extra's. Zoals ik bij CitizenM genoot van de heerlijke relaxte atmosfeer, mensen en gesprekken, mogelijkheden om nog wat werk te doen. 

Broekenpers

Het contrast was dan ook enorm toen ik twee dagen later incheckte in het (door mijn werk gereserveerde) Holiday Inn Kings Cross. Een lege hotelbar, WiFi met slecht bereik en steeds opnieuw verbinden voor 5 GBP per uur, in de rij staan bij de receptie en jawel..... een broekenpers (heeft iemand die ooit gebruikt?)! 

Alexander Osterwalder

Voor wie Osterwalder zelf bevlogen wil zien vertellen over zijn model voor waardepropositie-ontwerp is er op 29 september a.s. een Masterclass op Neyenrode. Klik hier voor meer informatie.

BLOG: My trip to London pt. 6 (final) - ‘How social is changing our trip completely'

Monday, 9AM, time for the business purpose of my trip to London. After the one-minute touch-screen checkout at CitizenM I am walking to the ManpowerGroup Office in London City. Today I will meet with my Northern European colleagues for a two-day session on how social media is impacting our business, and how we can leverage our combined strength to use the huge potential of social for our candidate branding and engagement. While walking, I am thinking on how social influenced my trip so far.

First of all I came across the CitizenM Hotel-concept while reading slides on Business Model Innovation on the social sharing platform for presentations: www.slideshare.net. As I got interested, I looked up the hotel on TripAdvisor. This travel website has become thé review portal for all hotels, apartments, flights and restaurants. A great business model by the way, where almost all content is user generated (reviews and photo’s of travelers) and the money is earned with advertising. I filtered the reviews on ‘traveling alone’, and got 126 ratings that averaged 4.5 stars. Sounded good! Also the photographs matched the atmosphere that CitizenM where displaying themselves on their Facebook and Pinterest pages. On my way to the airport, I visited the Twitter account of EasyJet to check with a tweet what the extra costs were for taking an extra bag with me, and swiftly got a reply from their webcare team. 

Once in London, I used Yelp to find a nice restaurant in the neighborhood. This social review site lists all types of bars, restaurants and clubs. Search on the map, using your GPS location, filter on the amount you want to spend and the average rating of the restaurant’s guests. When I found a nice place, I could easily reserve it online with the ‘opentable.com’ connection, where I had reregistered for former trips already by connecting my Facebook-profile. When talking to a freelance writer during dinner in the hotel, I looked up her profile on LinkedIn and made a connection to see on what accounts she had been working on. After sharing my run on Sunday morning around the Battersea Power Station on Runkeeper, I received a couple of ‘hearts’ from my fellow-runners to motivate me. And in the evening, while writing my blogs, I shared my stories on our internal Google+ network. The comments and ‘+’es’ I was receiving, motivated me to continue writing and sharing with you. 

So if I am to point out the two most critical impacts that social has on today’s world, it would be these:

1. Traditional organizational hierarchy is soon history*

(* from a great Wall Street Journal article on ‘the end of management’)

Before we had the internet and social media, organizations needed a clear hierarchy and managers to organize people and allocate resources. Now we are online and social connected anywhere, anytime, any device. The internal ManpowerGroup Google+ is proving more and more to enable collaboration without the need of hierarchy. And guess what: the pace of creativity, collaboration and innovation is only increasing because of it. Employees no longer only need to make themselves valuable through what they know, they can develop more knowledge by collaborating in a much more fluid format. 

2. Reputation is the new cash

What became very clear of my social media influenced trip to London, is that reputation is key to succes for business in the future. Social media is bringing transparency. Via websites like TripAdvisor, it becomes transparent what the hotels’ value propositions are. Do they live up to it? And their own customers decide if the service, food, location and wifi is up-to-standard by rating it with 1 to 5 stars. The same is happening in a lot of industries. Uber is bringing ratings to taxi drivers. Would you order a cab with a driver that was rated with 2 stars by 24 people? And the Holiday Inn that I ‘rated’ in my blog. Would you book it?

And there is Glassdoor, a US website where employees and former employees anonymously review companies and their management. You could say: the TripAdvisor of the work-related part of business. It's already quite big in the US, and it will be coming over to Europe as well. Our services, operations, candidates, communication and style of doing business will be more and more rated by growing crowds of customers, candidates, employees. 

BLOG: My Trip to London pt. 4 - citizenM says: Death to the Trouser Press

The sun is setting in London, time to head to my hotel for the coming nights: citizenM. The ‘M’ stands for ‘Mobile’. People they are targeting are not tourists, but Mobile Citizen. So I entered the Hotel in Southwark London at 6 PM. Right next to the entrance, 6 touch screen computers are awaiting me. I pick one and enter my last name. It automatically finds my booking, asks me to pick a citizenM card, hold it in front of the detector et voilá. The checkin is done! With the same card I can use the elevator, buy my coffee or beer at the bar, and checkout in 10 seconds. 

Contrary to the traditional hotels, the lounge is buzzing with people and conversations. And ‘lounge’ is not the appropriate name for it. The whole ground flour is one living room, subtly divided in colour and style into three area’s. The ‘citizen’ are working, plugging in their laptops in the numerous connection points, using the very fast and free WiFi Internet, sharing presentations on several large TV’s that are nicely build into bookcases decorating the walls, or reading the free newspapers on the tables. In the middle is the hotel bar, and in the corner large tables with connection points as co-working space. 

I selected this hotel on purpose as its concept triggered me. In a (very) traditional industry, this new Dutch based hotel chain has created a successful innovative service operation, business model innovation and a concept where the value proposition for the customer has been leading in every decision. Starting in 2008 in Amsterdam, the chain has now 7 hotels. On the website I read a “absolutely no trouser presses, bellboys, or stupid pillow chocolates.” To be honest, my decision to book citizenM was already made at that instant. 

Their value proposition? What does a hotel guest really, and I mean really, want?

• an XL king-sized super-comfy bed
• a powerful rain shower
• free movies on a wide-screen television
• free and fast WiFi internet
• international plug system
• a tablet to control temperature, lights, television and the alarm clock

That’s it. No stupid seats that you never use, no desk that you never sit behind, no bibles in the drawer, no lights that you have to get out of bed for to turn them off. They took away my pain points as a customer (waiting for checking in and out, paying for Wifi and/or having a bad internet connection, no guest interaction), and brought a smile on my face with a nice warm atmosphere, a hotel bar buzzing with activity and opportunities to co-work.

After my day in London, I took a meal (self service, card swipe and paid), a beer, and sat in one of the living rooms. Lounge music was playing, the whole hotel bar was crowded and buzzing. A freelance architect sat next to me and offered me a drink and we were eating some nuts while discussing the CitizenM concept.

CitizenM says: luxury isn't a packet of nuts in a minibar, it’s a 24 hour real-bar