(Note: Completing my previous post, today I am writing about the Kindle customer experience.)To create a compelling customer experience, we often tell our clients to define a clear customer experience vision. This vision makes it easier to determine which features of the potential product or service are the most important to develop.
Take home message: The Kindle has a very clear customer experience vision--Reading refined, allowing you to bring your library wherever you go. And this clear vision allows Amazon to decide what features to enhance, maintain, and de-emphasize for the target customer.
As you may remember from last time, I mentioned that my friend Rachel is representative of a target persona for the Kindle. Let’s see how the Kindle leverages the enhance, maintain, de-emphasize model in a way that makes sense for Rachel:
What aspects of the experience are enhanced to meet Rachel’s needs?
- Portability: The Kindle is just 10.2 ounces and 1/3 inch thick, allowing Rachel to take her reading everywhere.
- On Demand Access: 3G wireless allows Rachel to download an entire book in only 60 seconds.
- Large Selection: There are over 300,000 books, magazines, and newspapers for Rachel to choose from on Kindle.
- Paper: Kindle uses an E Ink electronic paper screen, which is designed to read like real paper. E Ink is not backlit and doesn’t reflect light, which means that Rachel can read on the beach in bright sunlight.
- Leather Cover: The Kindle offers a number of leather covers, including some made by Cole-Hahn. As a result, holding a Kindle feels a lot like holding a leather-bound book to Rachel.
- Simple to Use: Unlike other electronics, the Kindle never needs to be connected to a computer and has no wires. For Rachel, it's ready to use right out of the box…just like a paper book!
Web browsing and music. Although Kindle does allow for web browsing and music listening to occur, the Kindle is sub-optimal for both uses. Amazon recognizes that the core experience is about book reading and has emphasized book reading in its marketing and technology development. Also, the Kindle is not designed to compete with the iPhone/iPod Touch products; in fact, there is a Kindle iPhone app available for those who prefer to go that route.
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So there you have it. A compelling book-specific customer experience that 1) addresses a target set of customer needs and 2) makes specific choices about features to enhance, maintain, and de-emphasize. The Amazon Kindle.
2 comments:
Can you highlight areas of the book and save them? The only problem I'd have is that I underline passages. (I'm one of those. I am not allowed to touch my husband's books nor dog-ear the pages.)
Yes!! You can bookmark and clip different passages of the book, even put in your own notes and export them.
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