How Nike managed to make me do It.

In complete honesty, I’ve never been very fond of running. Being an unexperienced runner for most of my life, I always lacked the motivation to just “Do it” out of the blue, especially since I had no clue on how it should be done properly. That changed completely when a friend of mine recommended me the Nike Run Club last summer.

As you might have noticed, in every Inspiring CX article the product or service is not an end to itself: there’s always some extra value added from the customer perspective - and this week’s case is no exception. Nike, a company known worldwide for producing sports footwear, clothing and accessories, managed to offer an app that comes for free, suited for both beginners and experienced runners.

What’s Nike Run Club about? It offers its users a vast series of tools needed to run better, such as GPS run tracking; audio guided runs; periodic custom distance challenges; customized coaching plans for users’ personal goals and the possibility to add your friends to share your progresses and motivate each other.  

If this wasn’t enough to convince you to start running, Nike offers another app, Nike Training Club, made for those who prefer working out at home or at the gym. The app, which again, is free, offers over 190 free workouts across strength, endurance, yoga and mobility targeting different parts of the body. Sessions range from 15–45 minutes and are designed to help users see and feel results.

At MadeFor, we have developed 8 Customer Way principles to help you achieve customer centricity. In principle 5, namely “Experience is more than product”, we focus on how important it is in a connected world for brands to differentiate on more than product feature, since every service that a brand offers is an opportunity to stand out. In addition, the overall user experience needs to be coherent across every touchpoint, aligned to the brand’s purpose. About Nike’s purpose:

“Nike exists to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. Our Purpose is to move the world forward through the power of sport – breaking barriers and building community to change the game for all.

*If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

In its apps, Nike is successfully aligning every touchpoint to its purpose: helping people reach their fitness goals – no matter what they are. They achieve such objective by allowing users a lot of personalisation features, as a real personal trainer would do. The latter point is the reason why its users including myself are so fond of the Nike Apps, and clearly with the beginning of the pandemic, this amplified even more.

Another cool feature on Nike Run Club is the possibility to register the shoes you run with (even if they are not Nike) and track how many miles you’ve run with that pair. What’s more, when it’s time to change your old running shoes, the app simplified the process of getting a new one: you can simply retire them and buy a new pair through the app, which also offers access to special deals from time to time.

When I first started running, Nike Run Club really assisted me in overcoming the first steps by guiding me on the right distance for my first run and, while running, it kept correcting me on my pace and motivated me to finish. In fact, my favourite feature is the Guided Runs. A voice accompanies you on your run, that encourages you to keep going and shows you how! Recently Guided Runs has started a collaboration with Headspace, another very cool customer centric app (that you might be hearing about soon 😉). Until last year, I couldn’t imagine myself running at all, now I can’t imagine myself running without Nike Run Club!

By Rosa.