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”

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).

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.

CASE STUDY: Influencing ATM Usage through Service Design

Today, we are proud to publish our first Service Design Case Study :-)

The Reserve Bank of India recently mandated that bank customers can use any ATM (not just their own bank’s) without any additional fee from April 1, 2009. Earlier, a bank would charge a customer anywhere between Rs.15 to Rs.50 for the use of ATMs belonging to other banks. This fee acted as a disincentive for customers to use the ATMs of other banks. In absence of this, customers will freely use any ATM.

When Bank A’s customer uses Bank B’s ATM, Bank B charges Bank A a usage fee of Rs.17-20. This was passed on to customers. Now that the bank cannot pass on this fee to the customer, it has to bear this cost for every transaction that its customers use another bank’s ATM for. A Bank with a small ATM network will be saddled with huge costs as customers start using the ATMs (of other banks) that are closer or more conveniently located.

“Influencing ATM Usage through Service Design” outlines how a bank can design its service to minimize the use of ATMs belonging to other banks by its customers. We analyze the different scenarios in which customers would use the ATMs of other banks and create a service model to deal with each scenario. We also studied the usage patterns and pain areas for customers in the current system to devise a new service that allows customers to record, track and account for cash expenditure, which otherwise appears as a single-line “ATM Withdrawal” entry in the bank statement, without providing any details of how the withdrawn cash was used.

Download a PDF of the Case Study here. (824 kb)

We would love to have your comments and suggestions on the process, content and presentation of this case study. Please comment here or write to abhi@gutse.in

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.

Experience Design for Restaurants

Today, we have an article from our first guest writer, Navin Boricha, Partner at MeriMaaCinema.

A restaurant, is a restaurant, is a restaurant, right? You go there … order some stuff … they serve you … you eat … you go home !!! How different can this get? Yet, for a few years now, a chain has been pushing the envelop on this. Here’s a first hand account of the ‘Crazy Noodles’ experience.

The first thing to hit you on your maiden trip to Crazy Noodles, would be the bright (borderline fluorescent) pink and green interiors. The walls are adorned with rather large pictures of delighted customers, in (increasingly common) black and white. The loud music in the background belongs to the standard ‘pop’ variety – but it does seem to have a skew, which contributes towards making the atmosphere very lively. Graphics on the table tops, inquire: “We hope you have left your table manners at home”.

The menu is (by now predictably) an oddly stretched rectangle. The waiter comes in with a weird plate with what looks like mint, but he squirts some liquid on it from a syringe and seconds later the mints expand into two tissues (unpredictably) ready to use. By now you are already expecting something crazy to happen – and the glasses of water, which come next, once again do the trick. The glasses have rather unconventional spherical bottoms, and rather than sitting on your table, they totter perilously. Eventually even the cutlery used for serving food is unconventionally shaped.

But is this place only gimmicks? What about the core product – the food? Well apart from the predictable twist in naming the dishes, the food is of a consistently good quality, it is priced moderately, served in generous portions and there are some ‘Crazy’ specials on the menu for the adventurously inclined.

The architects of the Crazy Noodles experience could have overdone the ‘crazy’ bit, but they have balanced the fine line between memorability and annoyance. For instance there is nothing crazy about the staff. As is customary in ‘Chinese’ restaurants in our country, the staff is primarily North Eastern. They are polite and genial, and even volunteer to tutor you in using chopsticks if you are in the mood for it.

Search for ‘Crazy Noodles’ on MouthShut.com and you’ll find a young housewife’s laudatory review, actually titled ‘Crazy Kiya Re”. All in all, Crazy Noodles is a fine example of a finely crafted customer experience layer, around the core of a well made and right priced product.

And oh yes, just one more thing … at a pre-appointed time, all the staff suddenly gather in a small group … the track changes to ‘Here comes the Hotstepper’ … and they all break into a well choreographed, small jig.
By now, the sneers of even the most cynical customers had made way for a broad smile :-)

Navin Boricha
navinboricha@gmail.com