It’s Saturday night. You’ve decided on pizza. You place the order, and then it happens: do you want to pick up, or do you want a delivery…for the same price…without having to do anything…
As a student, I never understood the takeaway option. To me, there was no option: delivery every time. If I was paying, why would I want to pick anything up if there was the option of having it delivered for free?
Fast-forward to last week’s blog, and I was talking about the bridges we’re building to allow our clients to better navigate their customer journeys with GDS. I exposed the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’; looked at what it means to us as a company and the direction it’s about to take us. But the burning question at the heart of all of this: what does it all mean to our clients and their customers?
Welcome to the GDS delivery service.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we run a free pizza delivery service (after all, we are a business and we don’t serve pizza). But the convenience we can offer is just as powerful to our clients as any delivery company on a rainy Saturday night. Why?
Because they don’t have to move a muscle.
They’ve already paid for a product; they know what they’ve ordered and they know when to expect it. Congratulations on making a tenuous analogy. So what’s the problem?
Well, the problem for the industry at large is that they only provide a pick up service. An event is created, relative parties are invited down to attend, and the rest is up to them. Win or lose, it’s on their shoulders. Thanks for coming.
With GDS’ follow-up journey, we don’t just make the product – we deliver it. For our clients, that means being able to rely on a service that identifies with their needs, aligns with their goals and respects their timelines. It also means that we don’t expect our customers to fund the legwork for results.
But perhaps more interestingly, we can, very literally, deliver what they want to their front (office) doors, with our ever-evolving video conferencing platform – and that is where the true power of the follow-up journey comes into play.
As The Virgin Group’s CMO, Ian Rowden, said of the brand in a recent interview with MeetTheBoss TV: “They don’t just play like everyone else. They change things for the better.”
I’d like to think we’re not far off that sentiment with that we’re delivering to our clients today. The next step?
Express delivery.
