In my recent post I made reference to the impending death of mobile operators as they circus to the market pressures to separate from physicality, dropping the need for SIM based connectivity. The hypothesis opens the book on a number of new debates on the advancement and structure of our digital lives.
One of the true enablers of our daily digital lives is the need to drive hyper contextual services that not only deeply understand who we are, BUT where we are, what we are trying to do, and what might valuable in the moment.
Over the past decade we’ve witnessed the ongoing deepen of digital relationships as businesses learn, listen and adapt to our needs. This is most evident in the world of Google, Amazon and Facebook, who create unique lenses on the world in an attempt to de-clutter and personalise ‘my world’.
In 2012 during Google’s drive into the payments space, they were quoted in saying:
“The data about payments, is worth more than the payment itself”
A revelation that most players in the payments space often overlook. The perspectives steams from the idea on ‘The Age of Wisdom’, in which tomorrow’s dominate players will evolve from a position of contextual insight, drawing upon learned behaviours they allow them to predict your needs, often before you are even aware of them.
Let your mind run away with the idea or a second, and indulge me on some examples:
- The role a bank plays in the life of a consumer will shift from one of a static repository, to an informed empowerment service that helps maximise the power of our hard-earned dollars.
- Insurances will shift from a future financial risk management service, to an active prevention of risk.
- The motor vehicle industry will shift from one of ownership, to a managed logistical service.
- Healthcare will shift from reactionary and diagnostic, to prevention and maintenance of quality of life.
- Even the hospitality industry could transform into a lifestyle management offering catered to unique life, medical and genome needs of the individual.
Each of these examples not only enhance the value of the service for the consumer, they also enhance the commercial model for the service provider. Health care providers can take the guesswork out of future scenarios.
So once the enlightened ones in each industry realise the value of the connected consumers, they will quickly move to learning the value of creating incentives for ensuring continuous connectivity. Leading to the obvious;
“It’s more valuable to have the consumers constantly connected, than the cost of their connection.”
Making the key decision for business leaders on when and how to subsidise connectivity.
While it may seem a radical idea, the numbers of key industries aren’t that far away from making it a serious consideration. If you take banking for example where the average CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) can run into the thousands (I found research that suggests USD $1500). The reallocation of acquisition budgets could subsidise years of data connectivity. Creating deeper, more insight relationships with consumers, and opening the door for more insightful cross and up sell opportunities.
So take a moment and think… what additional value could your business derive from a constantly connected consumer?
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