What, Whoa, Really, No Way!
Those are the utterings of delight that marketers love to hear about a product or service. I’m almost gleeful when I discover a new feature that makes my life better in ways I didn’t know it was lacking. It’s that “how did I ever live without this” moment. As a consumer, I have great loyalty for products that do what they’re supposed to do well. But when those products offer some great, unexpected feature, it cements the relationship – not only with that product, but with the brand on an entirely new level.
Recent discoveries
Shortly after buying a new car, I discovered there are sensors on the car that automatically tell me if I have enough room to parallel park. What?!? My car doesn’t have the ability to park itself and I’m a terrible parallel parker, so just knowing the car can fit in the space gives me confidence to attempt it when I would’ve otherwise just driven by. Imagine that: a car can boost the confidence of the driver. I need that!
Here’s another one that I now need every single day. The convenience of texting or emailing on an iPhone comes with it the frustration of trying to get to the exact spot in the message you want to edit. Sometimes you just can’t get to the right spot because of fat fingers, or the app thinks you want to copy the text. Just recently, I discovered that holding down the space bar gets me to the exact spot in a message that I need. Whoa! Try it. It will change your life.
And one for the ladies: I just learned upstart shoe designer Tamara Mellon offers a free two-year cobbler concierge service with any shoe purchase. Really?!? She’s trying to make a name for herself in the competitive high-end shoe industry. Even with fabulous designs and impeccable craftsmanship, she’s just another expensive shoe brand. But the free door-to-door shoe repair service – now that made me pause. That’s worth the price and worth giving the brand a try (gleefully, a gorgeous pair of shoes is in transit to me).
“No way!”
When someone discovers something unexpected and blurts out “what, whoa, really?!?” – or any such delightfully incredulous words – you know it’s got to be something special. Most recently, I heard “No way!” in response to a feature on Cisco’s latest collaboration product, the Webex Room Kit Mini. The Room Kit Mini is a hardware-based videoconferencing device for huddle spaces. So, you would expect it to have a powerful codec, a great camera, awesome microphones – basically everything you need to have a state-of-the-art video meeting. There are also some impressive artificial intelligence features like noise suppression and people count, but one unexpected feature elicited that “No way!” response.
The Mini offers a USB passthrough capability that allows you to connect to any video soft client on your laptop – Skype, Zoom, Hangout, Webex Teams, etc. – while taking advantage of the great camera and microphones on the Mini. How’s that for delightfully unexpected. You’ll see in this video how a simple USB connection to the Mini can completely up-level a software-based video experience. And that people count feature I mentioned earlier, that works even when you’re using a software client with the Room Kit Mini. No way, indeed!
You must have examples of unexpected, delightful product features that you’ve run across. Please share it here so we can all try to figure out how we ever lived without them.
Learn more about the Cisco Webex Room Kit Mini.
Very Compact Unit.
I have a unit in my test laboratory and performing test and certification for my customer, with NEC 4K LCD screens, 40-inch, and 50-inch screens.
It is the technology which they had been looking to re-fresh their huddle spaces.
Chris, so glad to hear that. Thanks for your feedback.