- Amazon has installed 15,000 robots in 10 of its 50 US warehouses. (article here, video here): The robots are made by Kiva, acquired by Amazon in 2012 for 775M. Each robot weighs 320 lbs, and can carry 750 lbs. The robots are guided by stickers on the warehouse floors. This is fast and space-efficient: unloading a trailer now takes 30 minutes, instead of hours. Each warehouse can now hold up to 50% more inventory because racks can be placed closer together. The robots typically run for 2 hours before needing a recharge (which they do on their own). The robots can thus work 24x7 and fulfil an order every 20seconds. In some cases, the robots have allowed Amazon to get packages out the door in as little as 13 minutes from the pick stations, compared to about an hour and a half on average in older centers. The move comes at a cost. Amazon estimated in June 2013 that it would spend about $46 million to install Kiva robots at its warehouse in Ruskin, Florida, including $26.1 million for the equipment, according to company filings to local government.
- For Uber, Airbnb, OpenTable, Customer Ratings also help rate the customer: Travelers are often asked to review their hotel, restaurant and car service. But increasingly, it goes both ways. Drivers for Uber and Lyft, for example, rate their passengers from one to five stars at the end of each ride. If a rider receives three stars or fewer, the driver and passenger will not be paired up again. And at OpenTable, the restaurant booking system, customers are banned if they do not show for a reservation too many times. While guest-tracking systems are generally for internal use only, guests who use the Airbnb online booking service to find lodging may find themselves publicly reviewed. This allows potential hosts to see how a guest was perceived by previous ones before agreeing to allow that person to stay in their home. The online dining reservation system OpenTable allows a restaurant to identify guests who booked through the system. Using OpenTable, each restaurant can make private notes about the guests, like indicating table location preference or if they often send their food back. Those notes are not shared with other restaurants. “Overwhelmingly restaurants use the notes feature to enhance the hospitality experience for their guests,” said a spokeswoman, Tiffany Fox. She added that it will ban a customer who fails to show up for a reservation four times in a 12-month period. These are among the ways that sophisticated rating systems can turn on the customer, identifying the best and worst among them. The rating systems are allowing businesses to formalize a longstanding practice: focusing on their best customers. The worst customers “demand too much, complain too much and cost too much,” said Christopher Muller, professor of hospitality management at Boston University. Beyond that, he said, bad clients make employees unhappy. Companies, he said, do better by spending time on their best and most profitable patrons. “It sounds draconian, but not all customers are created equal,” he said.
- Uber switches fully to Paytm wallet-based pay mode, discontinues Indian card payments: Global online car hire service major Uber Technologies Inc has stopped accepting credit and debit card payments from cards issued in India, and will now only allow payments made through Paytm wallet in the country, the company announced in a blog post. Last month, Uber had partnered with Paytm, the digital goods and services marketplace owned by Noida-based One97 Communications Ltd, to integrate its payment system. With this integration, Uber can sidestep the regulations that require every transaction made with an Indian credit card to include two-factor authentication (2FA). Earlier, it had come under fire from Indian monetary authority RBI over its automated credit card based payment system.
- US offline retailers ran TV, radio ads targeting Alibaba: Several of the largest U.S. retailers warned that Alibaba Group Holding Inc may "decimate" local companies unless Congress closes tax loopholes for online retailers, singling out the Chinese company before it has even established a major American consumer presence. In TV and radio ads over the weekend, the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, which includes Best Buy, Target, JC Penney and other major chains, called on Congress to end special tax treatment for Alibaba and other online giants. "Main Street will never look the same," it said. The ad marks one of the biggest public marketing campaigns against a Chinese company that handles more e-commerce than Amazon and eBay combined, even though Alibaba only surfaced in the American consciousness after it went public in the world's largest-ever IPO in September. U.S. retailers and industry analysts expect Alibaba to soon launch a service targeted at American consumers, armed with its IPO war chest.
