It’s size that changes the experience

We know that in the government, possibly because of the size, the right hand often doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Are are the rest of us better?

Do large, profitable and professionally-run organisations offer a smoother experience than the silos of a bureaucracy. 

Here’s my experience of the Airtel web site that makes me wonder.

 

Retrieving an MMS from the web

It started with the following message from AirTel:

There is an MMS message for you. at http://www.airtel.in/mms/ Your Passcode is: c6s8**

Okay, I knew these were pictures sent by a friend, so I followed the url.

Oops:

The requested URL /mms/ was not found on this server.

---

IBM_HTTP_Server Server at www.airtel.in Port 80

 

Activating MMS on the phone

Maybe the url had changed. We know it happens.  So I look around and find this:

Getting Started
You'll need a compatible mobile phone to send and receive picture messages. To Activate MMS, send "MMS ACTIVE" to 121. Requires MMS enabled handsets. If your friends don't have a picture messaging phone, you can still send them a picture message. They'll receive a text message asking them to go to a web address where they'll be able to enjoy your message online.

:: Airtel :: Postpaid Mobile - Mail & Messaging Services.

 

All right, I send the SMS to 121 requesting activation of MMS, but get this response:

Welcome to My Airtel. Make a selection
1-For Billing
2-For Payments
3-For Bill Plan
4-For Do Not Disturb
5-For Help

Great!

 

Trying something else

 

So I give up on MMS, but continue to look around and discover something different but useful:

Access via PC

Access Airtel Msgr via your PC or Laptop:Instant chat with friends with any mobile number in India. Airtel Messenger on your PC offers many reasons for you to get hooked on. Foremost, it lets you send messages to any Airtel mobile number in India , for free. GET CRACKING, MAN!

Download NOW!
Click here to download AirTel Msgr.

:: Airtel :: Postpaid Mobile - Mail & Messaging Services.

 

OH, but “download AirTel Msgr” link brought in a completely useless zipped folder called mysites! :-(

 

 

Technorati tags: government, organisation size, AirTel, website, service

There's no customer loyalty in net shopping

I had been a regular customer at rediff.com, mostly buying books from them.

One evening about four years ago, I couldn't log into the site. But I wanted a book, so I logged onto Fabmall.com (now indiaplaza.in) and bought it there.

In years that followed, I never went back to rediff, because Fabmall was equally easy to use. I joined the Fabmall book club (nice discounts) and did all my shopping there.

That was till last Sunday, when at 6 pm I tried Indiaplaza, and their server was down. I typed rediff.com in the address bar, loss of discount not withstanding.

This time Rediff didn't ask if I was registered with them, only for an email ID. They accepted the payment by credit card, without fuss and sent a mail, creating an account in the process.

My book was delivered yesterday.

I should have been happy with the whole experience, except that I also received a mail shortly before the book was delivered:

You should receive your order between 29 Jun, 2007 and 03 Jul, 2007.

The mail provided a tracking number and a link, but this number was declared invalid at the Courier's site!

Hmm. This makes me want to declare the rules of business for net merchants who expect me to shop with them:

1. Ensure no glitch. 99% uptime is not good enough.
   
   Know what the best in the business can achieve and go for it. If there's a break down, say so on the main page, give an estimate of when you would be back and ask the customer to leave their email address, so you can get back.
   
   
2. Eight days in advance isn't customer delight.
   
   It shows that your information is unreliable. That the tracking number fails even as the package is being delivered only reinforces this impression.
   
   
3. Promising eight days later is wrong.
   
   Your business has an expected response time that your competitor sets and your customer knows. Promising less, even if you can meet this expectation isn't the best strategy.

 

Technorati tags: service level, internet shopping

Where to get your car serviced in New Delhi?

In today's post Stephen J. Dubner blogs about IBM's exceptional customer service that made him wish that:

... IBM made more things so I could buy them and know that if something went wrong, the repair process would always be this good.

Source: Freakonomics Blog » Should IBM Run the DMV, CIA, and TSA?

Almost immediately one of his readers (Kent, unfortunately no url) asked:

Why is the co-author of Freakonomics buying overpriced insurance/warranty for a computer?

Good point. However, exceptional service is just such a magical thing that it makes you price blind.

Today a V-belt in my car ripped as I was driving to office. At 3.30 in the afternoon, with the Sun at its fiercest.

In some distress I rolled into the office with a noisy, flailing piece inside the bonnet. A friend suggested that I contact Himalayan Motors in INA market to have it fixed.

They agree to pick up the car and reach my office in less than 30 minutes.

• The car is examined and the offending V-belt cut away with a blade in about 5 mins.
• One of them recognizes that the car has visited their workshop earlier. (True. More than a year ago!)
• The car is delivered back in little over an hour.
• Two belts replaced (the other was also worn out).
• Also, some length of rubber tubes (hardened due to engine heat), one T-joint (wrong size) and a rubber grommet (disintegrated) replaced too.

Total cost to me? Rs 270 (less than 6.6 US dollars), all inclusive.

 

Technorati tags: customer service

Economics, not Engineering, shows the way

Would you expect a reputed College of Engineering to adopt technology based solutions to efficiently perform its own functions?

Perhaps not, if you understand what the economics professors taught you.

Since college seats are scarce and the college is not able to charge a market determined price for its limited seats, it must find other means to reduce demand.

You would, therefore, understand how the Delhi College of Engineering solved its admission problem:

1. They notified the Combined Entrance Examination for 2007 on March 21, 2007 during the CBSE Board examination when the attention of students is mainly fixed on their textbooks. Thus only such candidates who have supportive and involved family members would get notified.
2. The advertisement seems to have appeared only in Hindustan Times. That is a good move too because it increases the odds in favour of families that subscribe to (and carefully scan) several newspapers--surely a good target population.
3. The form can only be obtained from two or three places by making a personal visit on working days between 10 am and 4 pm, excluding lunch time. This is a little confusing. It may be designed to target families that have at least one literate, unemployed member or those that employ drivers for their family car.
4. The brochure would be available only between 23 March 07 and 16 April 07. Since the period starts on Friday and ends on Monday, it is includes the maximum number of weekends possible. And should you want the bulletin by post, this period is further reduced to 13 days, which includes three weekends.
5. The official homepage of DCE at http://www.dce.edu/ did not mention the notification on the day it appeared, but rather referred to their admission process for year 2006. That was a clever way to throw off the lazy Internet dependent wasters. Even as this post is made, the two main admissions hyperlinks refer to last year.
6. Yes, a relevant link has also been quietly added now. But that is to discover the really determined crowed: it points to the virtually unreadable picture of the ad in the newspaper. How clever! It is not machine readable, so wouldn't be indexed on search engines. (The information must be protected from any easy or automatic retrieval mechanism.)

And these barriers are for just obtaining the information brochure. Surely the rest of the mechanism is equally carefully designed keeping the end objectives in mind.

 

Technorati tags: engineering admissions, economics, system design, incentives, markets, price, DCE

Desipundit bids farewell!

It is never any good dwelling on goodbyes. It is not the being together that it prolongs, it is the parting.

British writer, Elizabeth Bibescu

Without so much as a prior hint, Patrix announced to his incredulous readers that desipundit would quit this month end.

There have been almost a hundred pleas for him to reconsider the decision and undoubtedly the flood isn't weakening soon.

For most part, the readers have shown a very mature response. While they've hoped that the decision could be reversed, they also acknowledge that the host (and other contributors) have the right to determine how much effort they are willing to spare for desipundit.

All very nice. So Patrix has the right to shut it down because it is his blog after all? Here's my take on why it could be a case of bad judgement.

It is evident that desipundit has cultivated a loyal readership. This imposes a certain responsibility on those who have engaged the readers over a period of time.

Earning goodwill is different from earning money. If you have my money in exchange for something, the money is yours in an absolute sense. You may do with it exactly as you wish. But when you have my goodwill, it's different. So Patrix, you may use any money that desipundit has generated, there is no obligation to give it away to charity.

But I said goodwill is different from money in your bank account. It's different because when you spend, or even waste money, you destroy nothing. The money moves on and is available to someone else. When you waste away goodwill, it doesn't reappear in somebody else's pocket.

Some readers have suggested that you could hand it over to others and get new contributors who are willing to do their bit. It is understandable that you don't want that to happen. However, it's understandable only if you acknowledge an attachment to desipundit, even though you see no obligation to continue it any longer. To give up a child for adoption is very difficult, but it's a better option than to strangulate it.

You wrote a short matter-of-fact post that reminds me of the words of Swinburne:

I remember the way we parted,
The day and the way we met;
You hoped we were both broken-hearted,
And knew we should both forget.

But the readers don't want to forget and have freely expressed their opinions. I'm sure you have found their response at least heart-warming, if not overwhelming.

You say that other contributors agree with your decision. It would be better if they came out and spoke for themselves. They have a readership too and they owe at least an honest blog post on the subject right here.Let me admit that I haven't been introduced to desipundit for very long, just a few days. So I'm not motivated by a feeling of a great personal loss. And if desipundit leaves a void behind, in the fullness of time it would be filled in by someone else. It's just that I had this urge to explore the issues involved here.

One last conversation, Patrix?

 

Update:

Desipundit is back!

Congratulations to Patrix for a very good, mature decision. And best wishes to Saket, who has taken over the reins, and the new teams members (see Desipundit, Redux).

Technorati tags: desipundit, farewell, parting, readership

Doesn't make business sense!

Minutes ago I had a Coffee Frappe and a Super Sandwich Chicken Tikka at Cafe Coffee Day. Good coffee, spoilt by awful business strategy!

I asked for a chicken sandwich from their menu. The service person informed me that the price of the sandwich had changed.

But, of course! This is my third visit in the week and I knew that already. Though I hadn't ordered a sandwich recently, the hand corrected menu has been familiar for months now.

Oh the price had gone up again he told me. From Rs 40 to 60. But I don't complain about that anymore.  Not since Professor Harford explained all about coffee prices in The Undercover Economist. The money doesn't go to the Cafe chain.

Perhaps, the sandwich was venti now, and I was hungry, and you know it's all about self-targeting anyway. (You've read this book, haven't you? Makes paying for coffee much easier.)

In short, I was comfortable paying the small sum of Rs 60 that was asked for.

But what I received was a sandwich and a Chatpatta Sticks packet. Something I won't pick up on my own for Rs 2 at a railway station. Someone else may, but I won't.

Now I've had coffee on four different continents. Where in the world do they include anything like Chatpatta Sticks with either sandwich or coffee? And does that make their coffee more or less affordable?

I wish they wouldn't cheat us.

And the price for the 22 gms of unforgivable corn meal and rice offering in the packet? Rs 10, inclusive of all taxes. That makes me wonder: If the packet becomes part of the sandwich, do I pay tax on tax?

Post Script:

Hey, I am a confirmed blogger now. I write about coffee and sandwich, and finish the post on a laptop while riding back in the car!

But it is not a bloggers ready world: I wish the Cafe coffee Day's wifi service was still available to customers and my camera cell phone had easy Bluetooth connectivity for transferring pictures. I'd have shown you pictures of the restaurant with the chatpatta sticks in the foreground and the server (waiter) in background. And also included the IP address of their server (proxy) in the post.

Cool, and I might yet recover the money that I lost if a coffee ad is served up alongside and you decide to check it out. But please, don't do it unless you really are interested in the ad. If it's construed that I encouraged you to do so, I might lose the Google adSense publisher status and any hopes of recovering the loss incurred on that sandwich--through legitimate blogging about the experience.

Thanks. Now don't, unless it is your decision.

Technorati tags: economics, coffee, sandwich, price, business, policy, strategy

Prizes, rather than patents, as reward

The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz argues in favour of prizes (over patents) in New Scientist. 

"Patents are not the only way of
stimulating innovation. A prize fund
for medical research would be one
alternative. "

The full essay can be accessed here.

Stiglitz's views have sparked a lively discussion at Marginal Revolution. Worth a look, if you are interested in such stuff.

Tags: innovation, research, economics, society, patent, prize, government, market

Learning from the Chennai experience

We do want to learn from every experience, folks, isn't it? What could have been done different at BlogCamp Chennai?

Experience: Some speakers, though knowledgeable, had not done adequate homework.

For next time? Request everyone to give an abstract on the wiki. If visitors comment or raise questions on the abstract, the speakers would know better how to structure their presentation.

Use this interaction to apportion time between speakers.

Experience: Most of the activity happened only at two places. Informal sessions with a few people did not emerge of their own.

For next time? Behaviour does often emerge from structure, so maybe a different a layout could be tried.

However, all this takes nothing away from the splendid efforts of the people that made it all happen.

So ladies and gentlemen, would you fill up your glasses? Thank, you. Please rise and let's drink to Kiruba Shankar and his dedicated team of volunteers.

The Swift Pace of Online Business

The people over at Amazon.com are swift.

As I had discovered earlier, ordering and downloading an e-document on Amazon is a breeze, even though I received something different from what was offered.

Well, they have sent a quick and polite promise of refund:

I've requested a refund of $6.00 to your credit card. This refund should go through within 2-3 business days and will appear as a credit on your next credit card billing statement.

(Thank you, folks!)

Have they fixed the error that led to this situation in the first place?

Not yet. As I write, the digtial edition of the book at $ 6 is still on offer: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684841479

Perils of Buying Online

On January 2, 2006 I was looking for Michael E. Porter's book "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" on Amazon.com.

Amazon described the product as:

Hardcover: 896 pages
Publisher: Free Press (June 1, 1998)
ISBN: 0684841479

Among "Other Editions" was indicated a Digital Download in pdf format for $ 6.00.

I need the book for my own dissertation and thought it would be nice to obtain a digital copy because one can search for information, bookmark for later reference, and quote the original text accurately.

The whole process of ordering and downloading the book was a breeze. But to my horror what I received instead was a 1990 article from the Harvard Business Review—bearing the same title and from the same author.

Understandably, Amazon has a "no return" policy on downloads of pdf files. Nevertheless, I've written to the folks at Amazon.com for a refund because what they provided isn’t what they offered.

As I wait for their response, two questions pop into my mind:

1. Should I actually ask for a pdf of the book that I want rather than a refund? After all, they accepted the order and charged my credit card, which makes it a contract.


2. What if I had actually ordered the paper and got the book instead?