The journey of the best idea

It’s nine thirty in the morning in Germany - time for a coffee and a nut bar. But what if the machine won’t work and the instruction manual cannot be found? The problem of instruction manuals suddenly being nowhere to be found is one we all know, and a team of five set out to solve it.

Simple and understandable - that’s what made the OTTO Product Assistants one of the best ideas to emerge from InnoDays 2015. One of three winning ideas from the three-day staff hackathon held by the Hamburg online retailer, the Assistant is designed to provide information more quickly about the products and accessories. A small, rectangular sticker positioned discretely on the front of a washing machine or the side of a coffee machine. When a customer holds their mobile phone up to the rectangle, the chip concealed behind it transmits small data packets via near-field communication (NFC) directly onto the phone - and a webpage opens. On this webpage the customer will find additional services such as operating instructions, recipe ideas and suggested purchases for coffee pods and detergent. That’s the theory at any rate.

From the idea to the prototype

72 hours later, the theory had been turned into a prototype. A phone of one of the team members served as the basis for implementing the use case. “We created a sticker, built a provisional website and established a connection between the two components. The website contained a wide range of information, including warranty services, operating instructions and accessories for the phone,” explains Benjamin Böge, a member of the team that developed the first prototypes of the Product Assistants. The team came up with the design too, printed templates and stuck them over the NFC sticker. All of this produced a realistic first impression.

Their efforts paid off. The idea of making additional services for purchased products available to customers more quickly and easily won third place in a competition to find the best idea. “The idea was simply a problem solver. Problem: “where can I find the operating instructions” - solved; problem: “how do I descale my coffee machine?” - solved. The Product Assistants put all the information at the customer’s fingertips. The advantage for OTTO was obvious too: long-term customer retention,” Benjamin goes on.

From the prototype to the product - the first test

The question now was, after the third place success how could the idea be turned into an actual product? The answer is simple: test and learn. In the case of the Product Assistant, this meant working collectively on the project beyond the hackathon. Benjamin Böge and Tim Buchholz, who originally put forward the idea of the Product Assistants, are so convinced that the product will be successful that they invested all their additional capacity into the project, won over their colleagues about the idea and used their evenings to research the best way of making it a reality. The first product test took place a few months later. The customer feedback showed that the Product Assistant was a winner. More than 90 per cent of users who tested the tool indicated they would happily use it again in the future.

The first section of the journey is over - the customers gave the product good reviews. Once an idea has made it this far, the next step is to overcome the next hurdle: how can the idea generate revenue? After all, in the end the whole project has to make financial sense. In order to answer this question, the idea is passed on to the next team. OTTO’s Service Department worked together with the Electronic & Digital Category to draw up a large-scale A/B test. Over a six month period, around 15,500 customers received an NFC sticker with their product, and the same number again did not receive one. The Product Assistant was tested with washing machines and dishwashers, notebooks, coffee machines and food processors. Alongside online surveys, the study also collated the customers’ online user behaviour.

Satisfied customers - with and without the Product Assistant

“We wanted to know what the Product Assistant really did for the product,” explains Claudia Feltkamp, Head of Department of the Electronic & Digital Category. “Do customers buy more consumables? Do they rate OTTO’s service better? Does OTTO’s image improved through these service innovations?” The answer was a clear “yes and no”. It’s true that customers who tested the NFC sticker rated OTTO’s customer service positively and exhibited high product satisfaction, but the same results also applied to products that did not have a NFC sticker. Both the test and the control group therefore stated they were satisfied with their purchase - with and without the Product Assistant.

The idea lives on

Did the idea’s journey come to an abrupt end? Surely not. Although the Product Assistant did not offer sufficient added value to introduce it on a large scale, working on this idea did generate new customer benefits. “The first test showed that the additional services were well received. However, we do not need a sticker to show our customer’s explanatory videos or operating instructions. These additional services can also be incorporated well into our customer accounts going forward,” clarifies Sarah Wedig, who oversaw the A/B test for the Services Department. The idea of suggesting suitable additional products such as dishwasher pods and coffee filters to customers is also being elaborated and worked on further. With OTTO ready the devices are connected in such a way that the app gives the customer a signal when supplies are running low.

Benjamin Böge is convinced the idea will be a success. “It needs people who are committed to new ideas in the company, who spend the time and are willing to go one step further, even if the product does not come onto the market at the end of the day.” The failure of a product therefore does not mean the failure of an idea. Instead the spring continues to bubble, forges its own path and perhaps even turns into a rushing torrent. But it requires people to work on it with passion and companies that allow precisely that.