A Product Company Excels at Service

I usually drink water from the tap. Partly because most people in Hollywood movies do and partly because I’m too lazy to boil or filter water. Even when I wrote persuasive advertisements for the world’s largest water purification company, I continued to drink from the tap. However, when a friend refused to visit me with her 9 month old son if I didn’t have ‘Aquaguard’, I got one.

Since then, it has adorned the wall in my kitchen, used by visiting friends and occasionally by the maid who refuses to let me drink from the tap as long as she’s in the house. So I was caught off-guard when a guy called me to say that my Aquaguard was 6 months old and it was time to get it serviced. Could he come now? Within 15 minutes a uniformed service guy was in my kitchen cleaning the water purifier and replacing parts. I was a little wary of what this would cost me. But it was a free service.

Wow!
The company not only provides a free round of servicing and filter replacement, they actually keep a track of when my service is due, remind me about it and all I have to do is open the door! This for a machine that costs less than Rs.6,000. What a contrast to owning a bike that costs 15 times or a car that costs a 100 times that. Forget about being reminided, you actually have to run behind the service center guy, wait your turn, drop your vehicle at the service center and pick it up the next day. And my guess is that there are more Aquaguards installed in the country than cars sold of any brand.

There is nothing really exceptional about what Aquaguard does. It is made exceptional by the lack of such service levels across most other industries. And the processes and infrastructure to provide such service is neither complex nor costly. It is within every company’s reach to do this.

While I write this, there is a huge red-blue truck in the quiet street below my balcony with three men shouting at the top of their voice “Gas, Gas…”. They are checking if anyone needs a Cooking Gas Cylinder.

*Although I admire their service, I do not endorse the product. I’m unconvinced about the benefits of Aquaguard and their claim of “Absolutely Safe Drinking Water”

TED: Daniel Kahneman on Happiness

Daniel Kahneman at TED

One of the world’s most respected psychologist and winner of a Nobel Prize for Behavioural Economics, Daniel Kahneman talks about:

1. Why “Happiness” is a redundandant concept and needs to be replaced with other words that fully describe the myriad experiences that we currently put under the happiness umbrella
2. The difference between “experiences” and “memories of experiences”
3. And how this difference influences our choices on everything from the surgeon we choose for a major surgery to a vacation.

Making it Easier to Complain

Today, it is almost a cliche that brands want to “listen to customers”. They have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and myriad social media initiatives to supposedly ‘listen’ to customers and make the brand open and communicative. Unfotunately, this is mostly limited and as soon as a customer has a real complaint that needs a real solution, the company suddenly doesn’t feel so communicative any more.

AT&T has launched a nifty iPhone app that could a be model for companies that actually want to listen to their customers and use the complaints and feedback to improve the service. AT&T’s “Mark the Spot” application lets a mobile subscriber complain about dropped calls, low network coverage and bad voice quality. This is a location based app that uses aggregated data from many complaints to find and show areas in the AT&T network where subscribers experience the most problems.

This is a good way to let the customer vent their anger about a dropped signal, feel that AT&T is going to do something about it and at the same time provide AT&T useful information about problems in its network. The information is a collected in a way that is instantly usable rather than generic ‘feedback’ that usually finds it way to ‘nowhere’. This is also removes irritating IVRS systems and call centers from atleast a small part of the customer care function.

The only problem with this approach is that a customer could easily end up feeling that he’s sending complaints into a black hole (which is usually true even while talking to customer care), in the absence of a response or any updates on what happened to his complaint. This is standard psychology, you want a ’sense of progress’, a sense that someone heard you and they’re doing something about your problem. This is what responsiveness means (not just sending a auto-reply email acknowledgement). AT&T should take this forward and when the network problem in a particular area is fixed, it should send a short update to everyone who complained about the particular location.

I like this app particularly because it acknowledges the fact that most customers are not going to report dropped calls and network problems (from location) if it means opening up an email client and writing an email to a generic email address (complaints@att.com). Consumers have become too cynical to expect anything to come out of such an email. It is smart to acknowledge this and make it easier for customers to complain in a way that gives them a sense of ’specificity’ (as against the ‘generality’ inherent in writing to a generic email address or filling a web form).

Dell: Where is mine?

A bad experience drives you like no other. My experience with DELL drove me out of my procastrination to write on the blog again.

I was considering buying a laptop and called the Dell helpline to ask a few questions. I was put through to a “Sales Account Manager”. He answered all my questions well and was quite helpful, but insisted that I place an order on that very call. I said I wanted to consider other options and would get back to him. So he requested me not to call the helpline again, but to call him directly so that the sale would be through him. He sent me his mobile number on SMS. The next day he called me to check if I had decided. The day after that I had five missed calls from him. I called him and told him not to call me. I’d call him and place the order when I made up my mind. Which I did last thursday. The payment, order and address confirmation went smoothly and I was quite pleased with the simplicity of the whole process. I was promised that I would get the notebook in courier by Tuesday, February 23rd, or latest by February 24th.

My current notebook is not brink of dying with only half the screen working, the other half blank. I was quite anxious to get the new one. I was provided a Blue Dart tracking number to check on the status of my shipment. On Tuesday (the due date) I checked online and was shocked to see that the destination was mentioned as Mumbai and the estimated delivery date was March 1. I immediately tried calling Varun (Sales Account Manager) whom I had placed the order with. No response. A few rings and he would disconnect my call. I called about ten times and finally wrote an email asking him to call me ASAP. No response.

Today morning, I spent 2 hours calling the Dell helpline. I spoke to about 12 different people. Narrated my problem and gave my order number to each one of them. Each one would transfer my call to the “relevant people” and then I would be on hold for about 5 minutes listening a female voice advertising their “premium care package” and monitors. Even when I specifically requested them not to transfer my call, they would. “All our customer care representatives are busy”, I heard that about 50 times today morning. If I chose the “Buy a new computer” option on the IVRS, I was immediately connected to a “real person”, but soon lost his interest when I told him I had a problem with an order I had already placed.

Finally, I called up BlueDart to see if I could get some clarity on what was happening. My phone was picked up on the second ring by a very helpful, live human being. He took my details and within 2 minutes told me what the problem was. Despite my giving the address in writing, Dell had screwed up and given them the wrong pincode. This pincode was apparently out of BlueDart’s “Service Area” and therefore they brought the parcel to Mumbai from Chennai and were going to arrange for a special delivery to that pincode, which would take an additional 3 days from the date promised to me by Dell. I told him that my address was 2 km away from BlueDart’s Goa HQ and there was no way it was “out of service area”. He quickly corrected the pincode but said my parcel would still arrive three days later because it was being held at Bhiwandi for the ’special delivery’.

All this, without a single person from Dell being helpful. All of the ten people I spoke to sounded like they were doing me a favor by listening to my problem. The only helpful people at Dell seemed to be the sales people who expected you to place an order. Once you place your order, you are on your own.

While it is understandable that mistakes happen, a company that does not move quickly to acknowledge and correct it, is going to leave the customer with a terrible experience. In this case, ”my Dell representative” simply ignored my calls and no one else in their customer care department was any help.  I had to myself correct Dell’s mistake with BlueDart and make sure I got the notebook. If I hadn’t done this myself, I wonder when Dell would have woken up to the fact that they had shipped to the wrong address.

Ofcourse, Dell is by no means an exception. There are companies in every industry who offer the most shabby after-sales experience and have a unresponsive, irritating and useless customer care operation. However, in my experience, Dell topped every other “bad experience” I’ve had. It was like they were behind a screen and there was no way to reach anyone who could help.

It is shocking how  companies will spend millions on advertising and marketing, but won’t fix these simple problems. None of the problems arising out of this experience are difficult or expensive to fix. But I am quite sure if I order a laptop from Dell next year, I could have the same experience. Ofcourse, I won’t order from Dell again.

With experiences like this, Dell still has the cheek to say “Yours is here”.

DESIGN is the new TECHNOLOGY

A presentation I recently gave at the MIT Institute of Design, Pune to the students of their PG course in Design Management.

IFFI Pitch

Currently working on a very interesting proposal to the design the participant experience at the International Film Festival of India, Goa. It is held in early december each year and attracts participants from all over India and from the festival circuit across the world.

We are proposing to design every aspect of the experience, right from participant registration, choosing movies, booking tickets, the venue, networking at the event… Using a mix of technology and common sense! :-)

Just the process of making the proposal and explaining what could be done is extremely interesting. As an avid participant at IFFI for the last 5 years, I guess ‘research’ and ’studying user behaviour’ is well taken care of!

Tomorrow is the pitch. Lets hope that we get a chance to create a better Film Festival experience!

Clearly Good Experience

Cleartrip has been my favorite travel booking website since its launch. In fact, I’m so happy with the entire experience on the website that I haven’t even tried any other travel site. Last week they did two small things that reaffirmed my faith in their focus on customer experience.

First, they gave me a Rs.500 voucher for being a regular customer. When I saw the email in my inbox, I half expected some convoluted scheme where I could redeem it only if I was booking a flight to Bhubaneshwar or some such rider. And I expected some complicated way of redeeming the voucher with messy codes etc… But their offer was surprisingly simple. No voucher codes, no riders. Just book your next ticket by June 5 using the same account and Rs.500 will be credited to you in a week. No need to copy-paste voucher number or claim rebates etc… Couldn’t have been simpler!

The second thing they did was something I had been thinking of for a while. They added a ‘book a cab’ option once you book your ticket. Makes complete sense, most travellers in cities like Mumbai need to take a cab to the airport. Why not tie this in with booking the ticket and in the process get a little extra revenue? Their share of a customer’s total spend on travel increases and it offers the customer the convenience to book everything related to a trip in a single process.

However, there are some obvious improvements which I hope they’ll make quickly. For one, their rates for a cab are much higher. A ride from my home to the airport in a Meru Cab costs about Rs.225, but their minimum fare is Rs.350 (for within 15 kms) For a difference of Rs.125 I expect a lot of people would rather make a seperate phone call to Meru and book a cab. I haven’t tried the service yet (and probably won’t, I take a Rickshaw which is much cheaper), so I don’t know if they’ve tied up with a cab service. But that would make perfect sense. Just book cabs for an existing service like Meru and get a commision.

Right now, the way it works is: you give them your number, they call you in a while (actually 4 hours) and make your booking (however, its been about 48 hours and they haven’t called me yet!). With their history of creating good experience, I expect they’ll soon move this process online. Just put in your address and when you want to leave. They send this information to a cab service (which is basically what they ask over phone) and you get a SMS confirming the booking and cab driver’s number.

Airtel is India’s Largest Music Company

Business Standard reports that Bharti Airtel has become India’s largest Music company, surpassing Saregama which has revenues of around Rs.150 crore.

Late last year, Bharti Airtel had bagged the ‘Best Mobile Music, TV or Video Service’ award at the GSMA Asia Mobile Award 2008 at Macau. Airtel’s Music-On-Demand was awarded for creating a uniquely intuitive, personalised user experience of music on mobile.      Airtel had bagged the prestigious award among stiff competition from global leaders such as Telstra Corporation, Australia, Geodesic Inc, US, Artificial Life Inc, Hong Kong and Gracenote, US.     

This is really revealing of trends we might see in the future with service companies leveraging their reach and interaction with consumer to sell other services.

Another amazing fact that I recently highlighted in a presentation to a bank’s management: Vodafone is the largest bank in kenya. Yes, it is still a mobile service provider, but its mobile based money transfer service (M-Peso) is the most widely used banking service in a nation where a majority of the population doesn’t have bank accounts (but have mobile phones!)

“Tellable” Service Experiences

I read a very interesting post at workplaceexperience.blogspot.com about creating service experiences that are easily ‘tellable’. An important factor, that is often not considered while designing services and experiences.

“You put in your memory card,” he says, “and it prints thumbnails of all your photos.”
“Uh, OK,” I reply.
“Wait, this is the cool bit. On the printout, there are little boxes next to the thumbnails. You tick the size you need, and put the paper back in the machine. It reads your ticks and prints the pics you want automatically!”

Now that is not just a ‘tellable’ experience, but a very nice use of technology to create a human-centered interface without too much gadgetery.

Read the entire post here.

Touchpoint: Service Design Journal

I just got my copy of Touchpoint. It is supposedly the ‘first ever’ Service Design Journal, published by the Service Design Network. The content is very interesting, but a bit ‘Journal’ like. It has interviews with Service Designers, case studies, articles on methods of service design and much more.

You can get a subscription here.