#e2o

Will Mahindra's e2o eco-car cause a stir in London?

Let’s get one thing straight from the start: the Mahindra e2o EV was never designed to take on the Tesla Model S.

Once we get this out of the way, we can start looking at this Indian-made micro EV for what it really is. And the more we look into it, the more we think it’ll make sense to potential buyers when launched in London over the coming weeks.

Most famous for its Formula E team, Mahindra…

Zero emissions or displaced emissions?

Mahindra e2o is the first-in-line of next-generation global electric vehicles. The Mahindra e2o has been named keeping in mind the overall Mahindra Reva philosophy of going green for sustainable living.

The ‘e’ in Mahindra e2o stands for the Energy of the Sun, which is abundant and clean. The ‘2’ pronounced as ‘to’ signifies the connected technologies in the car, while ‘o’, represents ‘Oxygen’, the life force that sustains all of our existence on Planet Earth.

The Mahindra e2o will use next generation Lithium Ion batteries and have a range of 100 kms per charge, which is adequate for most daily journeys within the city. The Mahindra e2o will enable users to charge their vehicle through any 15-ampere plug point at home, or at the workplace.

- See more at: http://www.mahindrae2o.com/aboutus.htm#sthash.B8nMzH4b.dpuf

      Our people are our brand

       - Jon Iwata, IBM CMO, Conference Presentation in 2001

  While Tony Hsieh popularized a similar phrase in 2009,  Jon's words "our people are our brand" made a profound impression on me in 2001.  If companies try to become social only through their marketing, they need to heed Jon's advice.  Customers will remember how they are treated more than the messages. 

  Cheryl Burgess (@ckburgess) summarized it well in her blog:

  Before a business can humanize its brand, it is imperative that it humanizes its business first. This process involves more than just meetings, lunches, phone calls, emails, golf outings or office parties. Instead, such an evolution requires the adoption of social behaviors and communication in every facet of the organization. People don’t think of a brand as a series of departments. Rather, they think of a brand as a whole entity. Businesses must live up to this perception and restructure both internally and externally in order to function as a cohesive unit.

  What does this have to do with saving our vacation?

  When a business acts social -- all the way down to rethinking their core processes and how they act -- customers share their experience for years.

During the December 2010 snowstorm that disabled the US airline industry for almost a week, I had one of those experiences that reset my expectations.  By tweeting to fulfill a complicated change of flights:

I could have prevented the  almost 2 hours of hold music if I only tweeted before dialing,

my family reached home 2 days before 90% of the people on our flight,

my daughters were able to sleep an extra 4 hours rather than wait at the airport for pilots who were known to be delayed, and

I became a fan.

What happened?  I was in Phoenix, AZ with my family to celebrate a "big" birthday for my father-in-law.  The 1:30am night/morning of departure, I received a notification from one of my most valuable iPhone apps, Flight Tracker, that our JetBlue canceled the return flight.  Their website wasn't very helpful.  I could tell there was another flight at 7am the next morning through NYC, but I was not allowed change a canceled flight. 

 When I called customer service, a cheery recording informed me the wait would be over an hour.  I was not as cheery, but I understood.  JetBlue didn't want the snow.  I waited.  And it was more than an hour. 

At 3:15am (almost 2 hours later), my wife wakes up, finds me on the phone, and asks, “isn’t there another way to reach them?”  Searching the web didn't lead to much until I saw twitter streams that showed success in getting information.

As a very experienced traveler, I didn't really need just information, I needed to change the flights.  And soon as seats would be limited at best. 

While BustBuy, Zappos and others were servicing with twitter, this was different.  I needed someone to make decisions and change 4 airline tickets and keep the family together.  In December 2010, it was one thing to tweet a coffee order; it was another to change how you get home before New Year’s day. 

Or so I thought. Unfortunately, the New York Times article on airlines and twitter came out later on the day we were flying. 

I tweeted @JetBlue.  12 minutes later, they asked for my record locator in a DM.  I responded adding the flights I wanted.  We were confirmed.  I was speechless.  Miraculously, a JetBlue agent picked up the phone (almost 2 hours later).  I finished seating with the person on the phone, but I could have tweeted it.

      I’ll save you the agony of how they delayed the flight from 7am until 2:30pm, how I tweeted @JetBlue to find out if we had to be there for the 7am flight, how they responded they pilots were not going to be there before the 2:30pm flight, how everyone on JetBlue only received the cancellation 2 hour before the flight, and how I listened to scores of people who were in line that could not get back to the east coast before New Years.  All while we flew home (a day late) with twitter.

What made this successful?

Jetblue was one of the 28% of companies who respond to inquiries on twitter.  While they didn't publicize it at the time, they had added social to their customer service process which allowed agents to help many stranded travelers at one.

They made it work.  They exceeded my expectations -- even after waiting on the phone for 2 hours.  When the DM confirmed the new flight, I experienced a dramatic sense of relief that was almost euphoric. 

I was grateful to JetBlue.  And in spite of many things they do that irritate me, I still am grateful and tell this story. The way their people acted across channels is my view of their brand.

What comes next?

We move to some "hows."  My next entry will focus on "process" and ROI.  While process is still very important, we found you have to use a different lens than the process flow which has been the foundation of analysis for at least half a decade.  This new lens can be a repeatable framework to model ROI.