![\"3m-products\"](\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/3m-products.jpg\")
<\/a>Post It. Scotch Tape. Scotchgard. Surgical Tape. Traffic Tape.<\/p>\n
All these 3M products reflect a common theme: Technology must work for the welfare of mankind and innovation must add value to customers.<\/p>\n
This resonates very strongly with the ethos I picked up at my alma mater IIT Bombay years ago.<\/p>\n
For the sake of clarity, I don\u2019t mean \u201cwelfare\u201d in the sense of social welfare or corporate social responsibility.<\/p>\n
To me, a brand provides welfare when it does one or more of the following things by basic charter: Alleviates pain; helps people to do their jobs better; lets people extract more value from their possessions.<\/p>\n
3M products qualify for welfare provision:<\/p>\n
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- Art Fry invented Post It to anchor bookmarks in his hymnbook when he saw that the slips of paper used by choir members on various pages of the book would fall off in the middle of the concert, causing major chaos in the process!<\/li>\n
- Scotch Tape helped people make simple repairs to household items during the days of the Great Depression when they couldn\u2019t afford to throw stuff away<\/li>\n
- 3M’s surgical tapes eliminate the need for invasive procedures to remove surgical sutures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
#2. Amazon<\/strong><\/p>\n
![\"amazon-address\"](\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/amazon-address.jpg\")
<\/a>Amazon Remembers!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n I\u2019ve been shopping on Amazon for nearly 15 years in Germany, UK, USA and, finally, India, during which period I must\u2019ve bought at least 100 items from it. Knock on wood, Amazon hasn\u2019t even bungled a single order so far!<\/p>\n
Amazon also remembers all my addresses across the four countries since circa 2000.<\/p>\n
All this must be needing a lot of investment in technology and commitment to customer-centricity.<\/p>\n
I realized how much only when I interacted with a leading IT company that manufactures computers, printers, storage systems and software. I\u2019ve been this company\u2019s customer for over a decade and registered on its website ages ago. However, every time I call its customer care telephone number, I\u2019m asked to repeat my contact info. Its CSR told me that the company purges customer information once in three months apparently because it won\u2019t allocate more storage space to store customer information for longer periods!<\/p>\n
#3. SBI<\/strong><\/p>\n
India\u2019s largest bank exhibits thorough knowledge of banking. Its bankers have guided me on various occasions with tricky money management questions\u00a0e.g. Will I gain or lose money by breaking my fixed deposits and redepositing them at higher interest rates when a premature termination of that nature would attract penalties? SBI even made a snap offer for mortgage when I encashed my fixed deposits to fund a house purchase (click here<\/strong><\/a> for more). Full Disclosure: While selling various IT products and services to SBI over the years, I\u2019ve had the pleasure of interacting with its extremely high-caliber employees.<\/p>\n
Apart from 3M, Amazon and SBI, I’m extremely loyal to Cleartrip<\/strong> (Online Travel Agency), Coca Cola<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Deutsche Bahn<\/strong> (German Railway).<\/p>\n
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- Cleartrip:\u00a0In the past 15 years of booking air tickets and hotel rooms online, I\u2019ve used Expedia, Make My Trip and HRS. But ever since I discovered Cleartrip eight years ago, I\u2019ve ditched all the other websites. I also don\u2019t Google for air tickets or hotels anymore \u2013 I simply head over to Cleartrip\u2019s search box. I like the clean design of Cleartrip\u2019s website. Once, when I\u2019d canceled an air ticket booked on Cleartrip, I was pleasantly surprised to find the company following up with me to ensure that I\u2019d received the refund in my bank account!<\/li>\n
- Coca Cola: I’ve absolutely\u00a0no\u00a0idea why I’m fiercely loyal to Coke.<\/li>\n
- Deutsche Bahn:\u00a0I like DB for its high speed ICE trains with their great dining cars, awesome railway stations like Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, hourly connections between major cities in Germany and for performing the stunning feat of operating a 500 km route without a single stop (e.g. Berlin-Frankfurt).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n![\"cult-loyalty-brands-fi\"](\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/cult-loyalty-brands-fi.jpg\")
<\/a>My Cult Loyalty Brands<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n If I look at the above brands, good product is tablestakes across all of them. So, it’s certainly not the driver of cult loyalty.<\/p>\n
Half of these brands don\u2019t even know of my existence, let alone gather insights about me and engage with me with relevant, targeted offers. So, engagement based on data is also not the driver of cult loyalty.<\/p>\n
But all these brands illustrate the use of technology for the welfare of mankind. All of them have a consistent track record of providing superior customer experience. The combination of their raison d \u00eatre\u00a0<\/em>and operational excellence strongly resonates with my value system. This has created an emotional bond, which I believe is the driver of my cult loyalty towards these brands.<\/p>\n
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Does Amazon's work culture show that you can't both mollycoddle employees & delight customers at the same time? http:\/\/t.co\/8s81Gpi7Qy<\/a>?<\/p>\n
— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) August 27, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n