People are always telling me they want to find breakthrough innovations. This is fine. But you can accomplish a lot with something smaller. I have a couple of nice examples of this for you this week.
Today, it happened in my driveway.
My beloved had taken our car to Canadian Tire to get a battery replacement, in preparation for the three months of cold that lie ahead. Big line-up. BIG lineup. Head guy comes out and tells people they should plan on leaving their cars there all day, maybe overnight. [I guess a lot of people are winterizing right now].
Plan B was a call to CAA. [I had no idea this was possible, because house elves look after the car and everything related to it. Lucky me!] It turns out that you don't have to have a dead battery to get them to come and replace it in your driveway. You can just ask them to do this, and they do it. [For a fee, of course].
No sooner had I tucked into my second coffee of the day than this truck pulls up outside and Bob's-your-uncle, we have a new battery in the car. And they took away the toxic waste of the old one too.
Service innovation: Save your customers time. Save them hassle. Take the service to them.
Result: Induce loyalty. Provide a new service that makes money. Earn unpaid media.
Next up, something at the ski hill that really made us delighted.
