CX Service Innovation: Walgreens Partners with TaskRabbit

You are sick in bed, feeling like crap (headache, aches and pains), lacking the energy to get up and make yourself a cup of coffee or breakfast, let alone get in your car and drive to the nearest pharmacy to pick-up some cold medication.

That's the customer problem which Walgreens decided it would help solve for its' customers by creating a partnership with TaskRabbit (essentially a service where you can pay people to run errands for you) this past flu season.

Walgreens used the innovation technique of "task unification" (one of several innovation methods and techniques) bringing together two previously independent product and service offerings into a single unified Customer eXperience (CX). They integrated TaskRabbit services (available in 19 markets) with Walgreens products (in this case cold medications) to deliver a new Customer eXperience which directly serves the unmet need of "simple and easy" home delivery of cold medications (or anything else for that matter) to anyone suffering from the cold during flu season.

The way it worked was quite simple. They took a slice of the TaskRabbit Task Wheel of service options (see image) dedicating a Task request specifically to "Walgreens - Cold & Flu Relief Fast."

All the user had to do was simply tap the Walgreen's branded "Cold & Flu Relief" Task from the menu, select the nearest Walgreen's store, their cold medication of choice along with a preferred delivery time, and a "TaskRabbit" delivered the product to their door (for an additional services fee). No need to search for the keys to the car, drive to the store, search the isles, wait in line to pay, etc.. They could simply stay in bed, get some much needed additional rest, and have their cold medication of choice delivered right to their front door.

The customer is on their way to feeling better and Walgreens' is able to further deliver on its' brand promise of "At the corner of Happy & Healthy".

The Walgreens/TaskRabbit partnership proves that innovation doesn't have to be all that complex. Sometimes it can be as simple as integrating two things that already exist but are currently not offered together as a single integrated product and/or service offering.

I turned out in this case that all Walgreens fundamentally had to do was "better promote" an already existing service during the cold and flu season driving additional traffic (TaskRabbit delivery services) and sales (from end-consumer) to their stores. Of course, a little bit of website and app development was also required (but, that is often the easy part these days).

So the next time you look to innovate be sure to look beyond the walls of your own organizations capabilities to envision new innovative ways of serving your customers unmet needs.