In many ways this book is something like ‘Chicken soup for men’. It gives story after story about real people, fictional characters, poems, speeches and more, trying to answer one simple quetion "What makes a man?"

New York Times Best Selling Author William Bennett starts with a very interesting article which proves that boys today are clueless about what they are supposed to do (or not supposed to do) when the grow up. Due to various reasons, William Bennett feels they don’t get enough guidance on this topic and become confused young men and suggests this book as a reference reading giving them pointers about some great men.

This book is devided into 6 major sections: Mam in War, Man at Work, Man in Play, Sports and Leisure, Man in the Polis, Man with Woman and Children, Man in Prayer and Reflection. Each section provides around 100 pages of reading material, all of them short and sweet. Means, you can open this book in any page and start reading. Articles are coming from ancient world to the modern, giving a really great reading experience even for grownups.

Hoping to see a similar book for girls (and women) soon!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

This school accepts only Cash payments, no online transfer possible, someone has to go there physically and make the payment. Unfortunately, I had no time for this yesterday, and asked my wife to do it.

She went there, made the payment, and came back. I saw the receipt and filed it.

After some time, my wife asked ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about the experience at the payment queue?’. She sounded really upset.

‘Okay, tell me what happened.’

‘There were only 10 people in front of me, but they took more than 40 minutes to accept payment from them, that lady in the counter was very very slow, Her manager should have seen the long queue and done something to speed-up things, they should have opened more counters, at least on the last day…’

This is just a sample of what she said, I counted at least 20 suggestions of improvement for the concerned school / bank.

Surprising thing is, that bank queue is always like this. I have stood in that queue more than 10 times and I almost always waited for 45 to 60 minutes before making my payment, and I never complained, I never made any suggestions for improvement. Why?

Simple reason, from my college days, I have never seen a short bank queue. So I accepted it as a ‘norm’ and didn’t complain.

On the other hand, my wife rarely steps inside a bank, So she is questioning the ‘norm’ and making improvement suggestions.

As a flip side scenario, If I am asked to cook for a day, may be I will come up with so many issues / difficulties / improvement suggestions in our kitchen and my wife will wonder ‘Are you crazy? I cook there all the time and never had these problems!’

Look at this from a product manufacturer, or service provider’s angle. They may be having hundreds of customers, some of them complain, others are silent. Does that mean this second group is happy?

May Be. But what if they are just ‘accepting the norm’ (like me in the bank queue) and being silent? That is a dangerous sign.

Let us say tomorrow a new bank opens in my daughters’ school premise and they find innovative ways to accept payments faster and in a more convenient manner (For example, Online payment, home pickup of school fees etc.,). I will be switching to that bank, without complaining anything to the first bank. Because they are changing the norms and these people are not.

Means, if you wait for your customers to come, complain and help you improve, you may be losing your market share soon. Winners will be those who don’t wait for others to tell them what to do and improve / innovate constantly, on their own.

(083)

***

N. Chokkan …

12 01 2012

***

N. Chokkan …
09 01 2012

In the last few months, I heard great things about Redbus via various sources (Newspapers, Television Channels, Magazines, Friends, Relatives, Social Media Pals etc.,) but never had a chance to use their website, mainly because of two reasons : 1. I prefer train travel’s comforts 2. Few years back I had some VERY BAD experience with private bus operators, and decided never to go back.

However, two weeks back, I was forced to travel by bus because train tickets were not available on the day I wanted to travel. With zero motivation / interest, I went to redbus.in.

To cut a long story short, I loved RedBus website, very little content, but presented in the manner that makes sense to the end user, No gimmicks, wonderful interfaces which are intuitive and make the booking process very fast, Integration with almost all popular payment channels, discount coupons, cash vouchers, SMS confirmation, Email Confirmation, Mobile Ticketing… It had everything!

So, I booked my first RedBus ticket, traveled in a private bus after many years, and next day morning, I got an Email, with a subject line “How was your travel?”

It was a mail from Redbus.in asking for feedback about my travel, with a personalized link to a very short form, which took just one or two minutes for me to fill, Nice!

But the best part is, the way Redbus uses this feedback data. They collect this information and decide on the rankings for various bus operators. For example, “xyz travels” may have a 4 star rating, and “abc travels” may have a 2 star rating. Next time when someone else books a ticket, they will know who is more reliable, punctual and providing a better service / care to the travelers.

More than any other Redbus.in feature, this impressed me the most. As I told earlier, I had very bad experience with few bus operators and  Redbus is helping me avoid them, by collecting feedback from all its travelers. As long as people take that one or two minutes to fill out the feedback form, the social ranking system will ensure that good operators get more business and bad people are ignored, even if they sell tickets and cheap rates, People won’t have bad experiences anymore (hopefully!)

Also, this forces the bus operators to improve. They can’t rest on their laurels and continuously keep the service level high, else, they miss the online business, which is growing everyday.

Good job Redbus, This feedback system is a primary differentiator between you and all other retail sites / eStores out there in India.

As a CRM consultant, I can see the value in this huge data Redbus is collecting, wanted to share some feedback about how they can improve this in future:

1. In India, there are more indirect internet users, than direct. What I mean is, many people just ask their son or daughter or neighbor to just ‘book a ticket for me’. They may never use Redbus.in, but they are the ones who travel in those tickets booked

2. Hence, feedback has to be collected in two ways: Redbus Experience Feedback (From the person who booked the ticket) and Travel Experience Feedback (From the person who traveled), In some cases both may be same, but the current form assumes they are always the same, which is wrong

3. To solve this problem, Redbus can consider this:

• While booking a ticket, ask for the mobile number of at least one passenger
• After the travel is completed, send an Email to the person who booked the ticket (Redbus.in member), and an SMS to the person who travelled (Passenger)
• Email system is similar to what they have today, but it will only collect Redbus experience feedback
• SMS system will given them two toll free numbers, one for bad feedback and one for good feedback, If they liked the travel, they can call the good feedback system, Else, they can call the bad feedback system, where they can also register (in their own voice) why they didn’t like it
• This system ensures that Passengers can give the feedback even if they are not internet savvy. They needn’t type a feedback, they can speak, if possible in their own mother tongue (Not all Redbus users speak English, FYI!)

4. I opened the feedback Email in my iPhone and clicked on the link, it took me to Redbus.in home page. Looks like I need to go to my PC and fill the feedback, This not the right way, When someone is taking pains to click on the feedback link in their phone, it is better we respect them and collect the feedback then and there, no one will click that link twice (After all, giving feedback is work without any immediate benefits to me )

5. I am not sure if Redbus does it, but they should phase out bus operators who get bad feedback on a regular basis, or give them a timeframe (say “improve in 6 months, else get out”). This makes sure there is a healthy competition among bus operators to stay in Redbus.in database. (Of course, Redbus.in will lose some business because of this, but in the long run, it will become a gold standard for excellence in bus travel!)

***

N. Chokkan …

05 01 2012

Conceptwise, it is quite simple. A book with lots and lots of stories, some of them about good people and some about bad people. End of each story, there is a small discussion on why (and how) they became good / bad and what lessons we can learn from their life.

With this simple idea, Tama Fortner (Compiling editor of this book) has hit a home run. Each story is just 2 or 3 pages with simple text (from international children’s bible) and wonderful diagrams (all images from Eikon Bible art!). This makes reading a breeze.

Most important, each story finishes with a practical example, means the author says how this can be used in real life and you too can become a hero (or stop yourself from becoming a villain). These examples are simple and sweet, target audience will love them.

However, one comment I want to make is, the text in this book can be a bit more story like. As the publishers have decided to use bible text, there is a disconnect in many places. May be they could have opted for a 1 page story, followed by 2 to 3 pages of actual bible text, Short stories will pull people inside and the bible reference will give them more details.

Other than this small issue, I loved the book. Excellent production, clear printing (images, text and beautiful layout) and it is a recommended reading for everyone, especially children.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

But in reality, most of these schemes don’t work. I would have registered for at least 20+ loyalty programs and got my fancy cards. But I can’t carry all of them wherever I go, most of the times I keep that card in some book shelf and forget all about that, It doesn’t make me return to the same establishment again, unless and until the benefits are very good and real.

When I say “Benefits”, I don’t really mean cash back, discounts etc., they are important motivators, but for a loyalty program to succeed, the company has to think of something unique and a real value add.

For example, we buy our monthly groceries and other goods from a super market. Last year, they gave me a loyalty card and told me that I will get 1 point for every 200 rupees spent on that shop, and later I can convert those points to gifts.

I did a mental math, my reward is, 1 rupee for every 200 rupees. Means 0.5%, Boy, this scheme is junk, I don’t want silly 0.5% discount for my purchases, forget it!

But guess what, those store people were smart. They recorded my mobile number, and tied it to my Loyalty card. Every time I bought anything from them, they asked for my loyalty card, when I said “I don’t have it with me now”, they asked my mobile number, and added loyalty points to me, even without the card.

Yesterday, I got a mail from them, which gave a nice pie chart with this snapshot:

Your Purchases last year:

• 38% Fruits and Vegetables
• 22% Pulses and cooking oil
• 16% Dairy Products
• 8% Snacks
• 16% Others

Wow, I never knew this. When I clicked on the pie chart, it gave me details on my purchases every month and how they changed over the 12 months period. Amazing insight on my spending habits, which I can’t get anywhere else!

Now, I am motivated to carry their loyalty card and produce it for any purchase, I know I am going to get some useful data out of this, in addition to that 0.5% discount, I will buy more and more from them because others don’t give me this value add.

Moral of the story? If Loyalty is a one way street (I want people to buy more from me), it is never going to work. Any Loyalty program will work only if there are visible benefits to the customers too.

***

N. Chokkan …

27 12 2011

(Originally written for our company blog : http://blog.crmit.com/?p=444 )

For example, when I am writing this blog article, I use the simplest (and the best-est if you would excuse the cliche) software called “Notepad”, I could have used Microsoft Word, or any other sophisticated word processing programs available out there, but that doesn’t matter, as long as I know what I am writing about, and have the interest to sit down and write it, the tool becomes secondary, I may write my next blog article in my phone’s text editor, or in a piece of paper, till I am ready to present it to others, I need not worry about the format, beautification etc.,

Same logic applies for Social CRM too, if you wait till you have the best tool that fits your expectations, probably you will end-up waiting forever. Instead, focus on understanding these basic things:

• Who is your customer?
• How “Social” they are?
• Where they hang out in Social media?
• What they typically talk about?
• What we want to listen to?
• How we want to respond?
• Why we want to respond?
• How do we balance between genuine social conversation Vs intrusion on their privacy?
• What we want to achieve by all these?

OnlineStoreX and OnlineStoreY increased the minimum purchase limit to Rs 200/- if you want free shipping. Hmm, Expected, But still…..

As a consumer, I am upset that Online Stores X and Y decided to increase their minimum purchase limit, for free shipping, as I don’t really want to pay for shipping of books. Now I am forced to buy for Rs 200/- (instead of the usual Rs 100/-) to save shipping cost. Not a serious problem for me, but still I don’t like it and I tweeted about it.

After couple of hours, I got a reply from OnlineStoreZ (A competitor to OnlineStores X and Y):

Hello, OnlineStoreZ offers free shipping, without any minimum purchase limit. Try www.onlinestorez.com

Very simple, I was motivated to click the given link, because it really addressed my issue. Great!

Now, when we try to guess what could have happened behind the screens, we understand how simple and brilliant this idea is:

• Listen to what people are talking about us and our competitors in Social Media
• Wherever we make a difference, respond with our offerings
• No need to talk bad about our competitors, just say why you are different, and how you solve their problem

One person in particular raised some very basic doubts, like ‘Do we really need CRM?’

It sounds a bit silly, but his argument was solid: ‘My sales team is already comfortable handling the demand we have, and our success to failure rate is excellent, we meet and exceed our targets even without CRM, what’s the big deal?’

We tried to answer his question with a discussion on “What is CRM?” and “Why every business needs CRM?”. But still, he came back to the same argument, “I am doing good without aCRM, What difference it can make? Give me a real, practical example!”

At that pressure moment, I tried a stupid trick, using a very simple imagery (fairy tale, really) to explain what difference CRM Makes:

‘Imagine you are standing beneath a magic tree. Instead of fruits, this tree has lots and lots of coins, some of them are silver coins, some are gold coins, and some are platinum coins.

Once these coins are ripe, they fall on the ground, you need to catch them and pocket them.

Trick is, if a coin touches the ground, you lose it permanently. You can’t get it back!

So, you are running around, catching coins as they fall. After sometime, you become so good in it and are able to catch lots and lots of coins.

End of the day, you count your coins. 160 coins in all, 10 platinum, 50 gold and 100 Silver, Happy!

Now, imagine you build a large magic plate around this magic tree, Coins fall on this plate, You don’t have to run to catch them, instead you can peacefully have a look at them, analyze which coins give you the best value and pick them. Later you can throw away all the low-value coins.

In this scenario also, you may end-up picking the same number of coins (160), But because you are not rushing and carefully choosing your coins, you will have many more Platinum and Gold coins, instead of silver coins.

Now, mapping this tale to your business scenario, that tree is nothing but your market, coins are opportunities, some of them bad, some good, some very good and profitable, they are constantly falling and you run around the tree trying to pick the coins that come your way, you may be missing some Platinum coins, but you can’t worry about that, because you need to run, run, run.

If you have a CRM system in place, it is like this magic plate, It catches all the coins and presents to you in one view, gives you tools to analyze which ones are good, prioritize them and pick the really good ones which give you the best returns. It saves you time, and energy.

With or without CRM, your capacity is only 160 coins, but with CRM, you get the best returns.’

This is a story a school boy would prefer, not the corporate executives. But surprisingly, it clicked. They didn’t jump and sign the contract immediately, but at least they got the message loud & clear, and were much more open to our recommendations after that.

Hmm, I need to spend more time with my daughters, to pick such stories

***

N. Chokkan …
15 12 2011

(Originally written for our company blog and posted here : http://blog.crmit.com/?p=401)

Mind maps were the cration of Tony Buzan, world famous thinker, writer and speaker. Recently I read a book by Dilip Mukerjea, Director of Buzan Centre, Singapore, which covered the art and science of Mind mapping very well. This book is titled ‘Building Brain Power: Turning Grey Matter into Gold‘ (Published By Westland, 320 Pages, Price: Rs 750/-)

Even tho’ the book title talks about brain power, it mainly focuses on Mind Mapping (after all, Author Dilip Mukerjea is supposed to be one of the TOP Mind mappers in the world!) and the good news is, it starts in the very basics, start with a central theme picture, draw a single branch, write a keyword, use colors etc., It can be used by anyone (as another book by Dilip Mukerjea says “Age 5 to 105″).

In addition to mind mapping, this book also covers various aspects about brain, starting from the anatomy, to history, to techniques and more. Every section has colorful pictures (Hence, the high price and wonderful puzzles / games for us to relax, so that it doesn’t become a boring text book read.

My favorite section in this book is the chapter of lists. Author picks important topics on Brain power (Memory, Creativity, Rading etc.,) and gives 10 action points on each. These act as a good check list for us to use what we have learnt from this book.

Now, for the negatives. This book is very well produced with amazing layout, you will never be tired of reading boring text page after page. But at the same time, the text sometimes gets very long, very very long. So I had to skip few parts to get to the portion I was interested in.

Means, this is not a book you can read from page 1 to last. Instead, it is like a mix of a reference book, an instructiin manual and a workbook. depending on what you are looking for, you may want to jump chapters and extract best value out of it.

Most important, don’t miss out on the Mind Maps the author has provided, for each chapter / subtitle, they cover the concepts neatly in a single page and can act as a quick cheat sheet when you want to review that particular portion alone. I expected a list of all mind maps in the front or back of the book for quick reference, but that was missing.

Overall, a good book, but slightly expensive for Indian market. Would be great if the publisher releases a condensed version (slimmer, easy to hold / read for children, easy to afford for parents) for students, who will benefit the most from this book.

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N. Chokkan …

08 12 2011

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at  BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

The television channel sponsoring this event released a promotional video recently. It announced “Select ten best songs of your favorite composer, and send them to aaa. The most liked songs will be performed by him in the event.”

Good Idea. As a fan, I feel happy about this ‘participation’, but when I look at it from administration perspective, Email is a very bad (ancient) concept for this type of interaction.

Let us say my favorite composer has only 1000 fans across the globe, each one are sending their ’10 best songs’ list, some of them may choose the same songs, or totally new / unique songs. This means, I would have roughly about 6000 to 8000 songs in my Email Inbox.

Now, what will I do? How can I make any sense out of this data? Am I going to open all those 1000 mails, copy paste the text manually? Am I going to write a software program to do that? What if people used wrong spellings for song names? How will I know which songs made it to the ‘top 10′ list?

Obviously, these “Email your favorite songs to aaa@bbb.com” kind of campaigns are nothing but a polished version of age old Paper-pen-letter campaigns. You will get tons of data, but then nothing will come out of it, unless and until you have lot patience and ready to comb through all those Emails manually.

So, what is the solution?

Simple, use the power of Social Media. Create a buzz using the same ‘Select ten best songs of your favorite composer’ concept!

Here are some ideas I could think of (with no detailed analysis of this campaign’s goals / objectives). These are not new, many corporates and brands are already using such ideas, but I hope this will act as a small case study on how to go from Email Campaign to Social Campaign using the same base idea:

1. Create a website for the concert. People can login to this website using their Facebook / Twitter / Google+ profiles
2. Provide lots and lots of media : Rare photos, videos, promotional clips, fan mail, and finally, a database of all the songs by the star composer
3. People can search for their favorite song and vote for them, You have upto 10 votes, you can change them till 5 days before the concert
4. Every hour, select the “Top 50″ songs and feature them in a special page, where people can view them and vote
5. Provide option for people to recommend this site to their friends and followers in various social networks
6. Sell Concert tickets, albums, t-shirts etc., Provide 10% discount to all those people who have already voted for their “top 10″ songs. If you choose only 5, you get only 5% discount
7. One week before the concert, Send notifications to all the people registered in your website, offering them a 20% discount on the concert ticket
8. During the concert, provide free WIFI to all users to post messages / tweet about the event LIVE
9. Provide live video streaming of the concert in your website, for those who couldn’t attend (Advertisement supported)
10. After the concert, send a mail to all those people who voted for the songs with personalized text such as “You selected 4 of the 28 songs sung in the concert. Hope you liked the other 24 songs too. Thanks for your support”

This is just a sample, there are tons of other ideas, but the point is, an Email campaign misses all these. When you have a dedicated website and web 2.0 style voting system, You will know exactly which songs were liked by the people and that will drive the success of the show. As a bonus, because of the viral nature of Social Networks, this campaign will reach lot more people, very fast, means, free advertisement for you!

Now, I hope the Television Channel reads this article, likes the idea and sends me couple of free tickets for the concert

(082)

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N. Chokkan …

06 12 2011