Outside Innovation

Pay with Amazon from Your Mobile Phone?

Sometimes when my spider-sense tingles, it’s hard to back it up with concrete evidence. So I may be going out on a limb this week by suggesting that Amazon’s rebranded payment service (yawn) “Pay with Amazon” could become a major player in mobile commerce.

Why do I think that this seemingly innocuous announcement, which took place at a payment systems conference, Money 2020, on October 8th, 2013, is an important 3D chess move by Master Bezos? First, I’m not the only one who found this announcement significant. Nigel Powell of RedFerret fame blogged that Pay with Amazon “will completely change the face of online retail.” But I’m sticking my neck out a bit further (with no real evidence) to say that I believe that Pay with Amazon is coming soon to your mobile phone.

What I like about the idea of using Pay with Amazon on my phone to pay for things I buy is that it leverages the investment I’ve already made in entering all my credit cards and payment info and account information into Amazon—a trusted shopping partner I’ve been using for years. And I won’t have to worry about the fact that, if I lose my phone, someone can gain access to my money or my credit cards. They remain securely locked away in Amazonland.

How a Finnish Journalist Tried to Save Nokia

Here’s a great story about how Lauri Malkavaara, a journalist for the Helsinki Sanomat newspaper, tried to save his country’s mobile phone company. You can read Lauri’s entire article here. I’ll paraphrase and quote a few excerpts. [The emphasis is mine—highlighting the lovely way he describes the phone’s usability issues.]

On August 18, 2008, Lauri wrote a letter to Nokia providing his feedback about the design of Nokia E51 phone he had just been given to use by his employer.

Dear Nokia:

“… .Last week my second mobile phone broke and my employer bought me the third mobile phone that I have ever had in my life. I have wondered about it for a week now. At first I did not even know how to call with it without the manual, and I still do not understand very much of it.

The problem is that half a year ago a friend of mine at work showed me a device manufactured by Apple called the iPod Touch. I fell in love instantly… I ordered my own iPod touch, turned it on, and knew immediately how to use it. I have used the device now on a daily basis for over six months, and I have not even thought about any manuals…. It is no wonder that it is a huge success all over the world.

My new Nokia telephone model is called the E 51. Unfortunately the phone has not been designed so that just anybody could learn to use it easily…..”

How We Lost Our Hospital

As many of our loyal readers know, I have been involved in the effort to try to save my local Maine community’s hospital for over a year. Unfortunately, on October 1st, our efforts were defeated when our beloved St. Andrews Hospital, which had served our local fishing, tourist, and retirement community so well for over 100 years, closed its doors. The “customer” spin on this sad story is this: if you are a large organization that is attempting to rationalize and improve your operations to be more efficient and deliver better quality and keep profits high, you can’t do that rationalization without engaging with the customers you serve. If MaineHealth, which has owned our community’s hospital for 17 of its 105 years, had engaged with its patients and customers to redesign service delivery options, we might have wound up in the same place—with a walk-in daytime clinic instead of a 24-hour local ER and hospital. But we would have collaborated on reaching that conclusion and in designing the services offered. Instead, the “parent” nonprofit healthcare system surprised its customers by announcing the hospital closure as a fait accompli, triggering 13 months of outraged protests and community activism. The result: a group of customers who are likely to boycott as many of MaineHealth’s newly merged LincolnHealth subsidiary’s services as they possibly can.

Larry Ellison’s Priorities? Not His Customers!

On September 24^th, Larry Ellison committed a major customer experience faux pas. He was an unexpected no show for his final keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle’s annual meeting of the faithful (developers and customers). Customers were left sitting for 45-minutes until an embarrassed Chairman of the Board admitted that a communications error had occurred. Where was Larry? A few miles away in a boat on San Francisco Bay, watching his America’s Cup contender win yet another race against the New Zealand boat. Tom Kurian, EVP of product development, tried to fill Larry’s shoes, but many annoyed customers walked out. And those who did remain were not impressed.

The next day, Wed, Sept 25th, Oracle Team USA won the America’s Cup series in a decisive and stirring victory. As a multihull owner, I was thrilled to watch the compelling final race. But, as a customer advocate, I find it too bad that Oracle’s management team couldn’t have parlayed their CEO’s obsession into an inspiring presentation about real-time access to big data in the new Oracle Cloud, punctuated by racing footage, with Larry making at least a brief appearance.

Farewell to St. Andrews Hospital in Boothbay Harbor, ME

Last night our small, rural "community" hospital ceased to be. At midnight, St. Andrews Hospital became the Boothbay Harbor campus of LincolnHealth. It offers a walk in daytime clinic, doctors' offices and physical therapy.

A group of citizens worked together for 13 months to try to stop the closure of our hospital, by its parent, MaineHealth in Portland, Maine. We lobbied legislators, hired lawyers, wrote thousands of letters, voted, met with Board members--all to no avail. 

Tonight we'll have a peaceful vigil from 8 to 8:30 in the parking lot of the now Urgent Care Clinic, after it has closed its doors for the first time in over 100 years, with flashlights and music (bagpiper, taps, singing and memories)....

I asked for permission for our gathering from the CEO, Jim Donovan. He denied it saying,

"I’m sorry but I cannot grant your group permission to use the St. Andrews parking lot for this purpose for two reasons.  First, the St. Andrews ED is not closing.  It is converting to an Urgent Care Center that will continue to provide high quality care for the residents of the Boothbay Region.  We do not view this as a farewell, at all.  Such a gathering will only perpetuate the “St. Andrews is closing” myth that has caused confusion and concern among some members of the community.   

And second, having a number of people gathered in our parking lot at night is not a good idea from a risk management perspective.  The pavement can be uneven and depending on the weather, maybe slippery and covered with leaves.  It is our responsibility to protect people who come onto the property to receive care and to not allow for unnecessary risks.  We feel what you are proposing constitutes an unnecessary risk for both members of your group and our property."

To which, Dr. Nancy Oliphant, our local independent family practice doc, replied:

Well, as of October 1, 2013, anyone seeking medical care between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. will find the doors to St. Andrews are locked. I call that “closed.” The ED is closed. The urgent care center is open. An urgent care center is not an emergency department.

Mr. Donovan also said that “Such a gathering will only perpetuate the ‘St. Andrews is closing’ myth that has caused confusion and concern among some members of the community.”

St. Andrews Hospital is closing. That is not a myth. A hospital has inpatients and an emergency department. As of October 1, St. Andrews will have neither."

Hopefully, they won't be stupid enough to arrest a bunch of old folks.

You'll be able to follow our saga here.