One question too many....

After 4 years of using my Sony Ericsson M600i (yup..the one profiled in Casino Royale), I switched to a Nokia E72 last week. Reviews said this was the best business phone in the market today. I am not getting into a debate on that one.

While setting up the phone without referring to the user manual, I somehow managed to get my SIM blocked. This state is not new to me, since I had achieved the same state with my M600i. So I called up the Vodafone customer service number. After the initial queries, I was directed to the action menu of the IVR. I was surprised to hear that the "Know your PUK" option was the second option. So I choose it and get the IVR read out my PUK. I got my E72 running again. All within 2 minutes. Considering I had a harrowing time during my M600i days to get the PUK from the Agent of Vodafone. This was a very pleasant experience. When I hung up, I was very happy to get my E72 alive so I can proceed on my exploration of the features.

Within a few minutes, I get an SMS from Vodafone:
"Thank you for using Vodafone Interactive Voice Response(IVR) System.Was the required information for your query available on IVR?Reply toll free with YES or NO."

It was very appropriate time from them, and I replied a resounding "YES".

Then I get a second SMS,
"Thank you for your response.Was the IVR menu easy to use?Reply toll free with YES or NO."

Now this was the last straw. It got me pissed off. And I have still not responded to this. This was one question too many. Vodafone should have stopped at the first question. Maybe the next time I call them, they could have asked this. "One question at a time" is my motto that I preach to every CRM manager I meet.

While on this, let me highlight the "toll free" phrase in both messages. Vodafone has recently started charging for speaking to the call center agent. Bold move? I say stupid move. You can only do this, if your services are up to the mark and your service permits self service. The fact that they have to throw of customers from talking to the call center agents shows that customers do not find Vodafone services meeting their needs.

At this time, Idea comes out the "Get Idea" advert showing Abhishek telling a woman to get Idea when she has been held in waiting by the customer service number. Will it help them get the Vodafone customers...? This needs to be seen. But for someone who has recently been thru the Vodafone customer service and possibly suffered a charged interaction with the agent, this ad is bang on. A review of the advert series in this Sunday's daily by two advertising professionals gave poor rating to the Idea ad series. But as a consumer I disagree and think the advert series is bang on and probably much better that the "language" series Idea ran previously.

Yesterday I received a SMS from Nokia about a "strong BLACK theme" available for free download. When I go to the link, I am told that my phone does not support this theme. My registration with Nokia was for E72. They should have known that the theme is not supported by my phone and should have eliminated my number from the SMS list.

I have heard many marketers say "its only SMS and costs only 1 paise to send one out". But the cost of a wrong message is the possible option for "do not mail". To me the TCO of any database marketing should also include the cost of a customer opting for a "do not contact". Then this one SMS may seem like a cost of over a 100 rupees. Now let me hear you, Mr. Marketer..... speak louder...

Maintaining the envy

The latest issue of Outlook Business has an article titled "Resurrecting the Devil". This article talks about Onida and the position taken regarding the usage of devil and the tag line "owners pride, neighbours envy".

In course of the article, during the discussion on the decision by Onida to discontinue the devil, advertising consultant Gopi Kukde has been quoted as the devil being an idea and as such cannot get old.

The stance of Mr. Mirchandani is that with television being a commodity today, owning one is no longer an envy evoking event. Hence, the devil and the "envy" is not relevant today.

The way I see it, the discussion is not about the devil character or tv being a commodity. It is about ownership of an idea in the consumer mindspace.

Obama owns the word "change". Similary, Onida owns the word "pride" and more so the word "envy". Even today, more than a decade of the first envy advertising launch, a majority of todays buyers (30 to 45 year olds) would remember "owners pride, neighbours envy" and immediately associate it with Onida. This association is an envy of other electronics companies. How many of them can claim such a recall and association?

I find it disappointing that Onida is letting this association go to waste. If I believe Mr. Mirchandani, and I do so, television is a commodity. Fair enough. So ownership is not a cause for envy.

I would suggest that the Onida guys then seek out what would cause the envy in today's world. Somewhere in the article, there is a passing mention of Onida losing out on service. In today's world, where every house has a television set, some even more than one, the numbers game have set in big time. Each TV brand has lakhs of customers. Each customer is just a "customer id" to the TV brand.

In this scenario, if a company can treat customers on a more personalized level. That would sure cause envy.

Lets take Onida. I think a lot of customers would still have a functioning Onida TV. If Onida can trace these customers out and create a process of felicitating them and maybe even replace the TV sets with a LCD or LED TV. Keep communicating with them so that the neighbourhood is aware. That would create envy. And Onida can still claim ownership to the "envy" word.

How much would it cost? A TV ad costs around 3 to 5 crores. The mileage and ownership of envy word is worth not doing one such ad and still it would not cost 3 crores to create a "carnival" to replace the Onida TV sets.

I get a call from the airlines....

Remember my post on the letter to chairman of Kingfisher Airlines relating the incident when everyone was in the aircraft and the pilot was late. See post here.

I got a call few days back from the airlines related to this mail. The lady on the phone apologized for the same. I asked what action has been taken. She said the roster committee has taken serious cognizance of the fact and the captain has been warned.

Now did that satisfy me? I dont care. I was happy that the airlines called me and apologized. And to reply to some of my friends... No they did not offer a free ticket. Neither was I hoping or aiming for one. I had been submitting my feedback forms regularly when I travel the same airline. But never was my feedback acknowledged or replied to. So just receiving a call was enough faith in the customer relationship program of the airlines.

I wish they show equal importance to the feedback forms passengers fill out. It will show that atleast they read the forms. Today, I have no idea if any of my forms have been even opened by them.

I had an excellent tip for them (well.. since its my creation, i think it is excellent). Kingfisher sells the t-shirts with the company logo. If they provide an incentive to passengers wearing the Kingfisher t-shirt to board first, it will form a good incentive for passengers to flaunt their Kingfisher t-shirts. It also gives the airlines a good mileage to have a few tens (if not hundreds) of passengers travelling door-airport-door wearing the airlines red colours.

Do you guys have any such ideas on how they or any airlines can provide a inclusive experience on customer relationship? If yes, comment here or mail me at michaeldsilva@gmail.com

Factory approach to Analytics

I try to be an active contributor to the blog on my company website. Hence, my future posts are segregated as those that derive through my association with Customer Centria and the ones that derive from personal experiences and interactions. The former category will be posted on the company website. I will post the link here. Only the posts related to the later category will be posted here.

Today's post relates to KXEN User Conference and is available for reading at my company website:

Factory v/s Craftsman Approach to Analytics: Notes from KXEN EMEA User Conference 2010

Await your views / feedback on the same.

Notes from KXEN EMEA User Conference

The conference was a good one. There were many customer presentations wherein they highlighted the returns and the ease from using KXEN software. Following are the notes I jotted from the event.
* John Ball started the conference. One of his slides stated a "Factory Analysis v/s Craftman Analysis" (source Gartner).
* La Boite a Outils spoke about using KXEN to identify customers who are ready for a big purchase. They claimed an 80% uplift by using KXEN modelling.
* James Kobielus from Gartner presented the key note. One of his slides stated that businesses can "confidently place your business bets only if you know whether the odds are in your favour"
* He also stated that for businesses to be agile, preditive analytics is necessary as it supports fast response.
* European Commission spoke about building over 1500 models using KXEN to control the shipment of live animals and processed animal products into EU.
* Wolters Kluwer spoke about diversifying risks with multiple projects as opposed to a single large initiative.
* MonotaRo spoke about moving from a state of "selecting which customers to send a 1700 page catalogue" to a state of "select which catalogue to send to each customer"
* The presentation of Logica was the highlight of the session, where they presented how social network is used to identify potential terrorists.

Look out for detailed posts on some of these topics.