In order to learn as much as possible about the interesting things small and mid-sized businesses are doing, I travel a lot. From arriving at the airport to picking up a car to being handed the cardkey at the hotel, whenever and wherever I’m traveling I cannot help but notice how common it is to be prompted to let the world know where I am via the Internet. One airline, for example, offers me a certain number of frequent flier miles every time I check in at a specific airport.
For me, the airline’s promotion quickly adds up to a lot of miles. At the same time, I spend a considerable amount of time away from home. I’m not sure if I want others finding out if I’m home or not to be as easy as logging onto the Internet and visiting certain sites that are linked to the technology the airline is using for its promotion.
And there’s my inner conflict about the checking in phenomenon: How public do I want to be regarding my whereabouts? And if you’re a business owner who is considering adding a check-in feature in exchange for some type of reward, how public do your customers want to be about theirs?
I think it depends, first and foremost, on your customers’ preferences and habits combined with the value of what you’re offering in return. Free miles for simply showing up at the airport is something for which many travelers are happy to forsake a bit of privacy. But if you specialize in financial planning for people close to retirement, for example, driving adoption of a check-in feature might require a bit more creativity on your part. I use that example because many people who travel regularly seem to practically exist in a state of constant connection to the Internet, whereas people who are traveling to offices for face-to-face meetings about their retirement are perhaps not.
As is always the case, you need to determine what the advantages and disadvantages are for your customers.
If you’re running a counseling center, I don’t think most of your patients are going to want to publically announce that they have just checked in at their therapist’s office. And if you’re a real estate professional who specializes in corporate relocations, I don’t think the engineer you’re working with is going to want the world to know that she’s about to close on a house in North Carolina even though she’s still employed in Silicon Valley.
On the other hand, an optometrist I read about recently made the check-in craze work for both him and his customers. While having your eyes examined isn’t as exciting as boarding a flight for Fiji, there’s nothing particularly sensitive about it either. So in exchange for checking in, which gave the optometry practice access to a lot of valuable data about patients, each patient’s name was entered into a drawing for a pair of free frames. The benefits were triple-tiered: The practice was given visibility across the social media channels where the check-ins appeared. The manufacturer of the frames received free publicity among the practice’s patients. And the customers, obviously, had a chance to win a pair of expensive frames and to receive, in the future, care and services more carefully targeted to them.
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