adeshsidhu's posterous

Free can be costly...

Few years back, when I was a student, I used to hunt for Cafes which offered free Wi-Fi connectivity (I still do!). There were a couple of them in South Delhi and I used to spend hours over there with coffee, cakes, sandwiches and my iBook. At times, Wi-Fi used to stop working in between or worse not working at all. I used to complaint about the unavailability of service but most of the times sales people used to cut sorry figure. What used to baffle me was that they never used to show urgency in getting it rectified. Logic from my friends used to be, you get what you pay for. It made sense to me and I got used to these outages. After all 'Free' has some kind of magnetic attraction!   
 
A lot of people realized last week that Free may not be best, when Google was shut down for couple of hours and users were unable to access their emails. Unfortunately, there were no phone helplines where people can complain about it. Same is ture for Twitter which has had few outages in last two months. As more and more businesses (especially the smaller ones) are relying on these free service to connect with customers, increasing their reach and to market their services, outages hurt them, sometimes badly. But they cannot do much about it. Since users are not paying anything, there is no customer service/helpline available for these users. With missing customer service, user are left in lurch with nowhere to go. Google does have a premium account where they have phone helpline and they guarantee for some minimum up-time. I guess there will few takers for paid service as free has some magnetic attraction.
 
I think logic stands true - we get what we pay for.
 

Screwing you


Customer generally goes through four stages of emotional atyachar whenever a brand does not live to its promise and he has to lodge a complaint, so that it starts delivering again.


Stage one is denial. Customer could not believe that the brand he has chosen can falter. He is unable to come to terms that the choice he made was wrong as he has put in a lot of resources (like time, money etc) in it. He continues to deny that the brand he chose did not live upto his expectation.


Stage two is anger. Once he is out of denial mode, customer usually approaches customer service department with his complaint, riding on a wave of a high temper. He shouts, he threatens and he abuses. But in return he gets nothing more than apologizes, assurances and better treatment in future.

 

Stage three is sadness. Customer is miffed. He knows that customer service department is hiding behind strong organization policies. He is not interested in any apologies or assurances. All he wants is a solution which is beneficial more to him than company.

 

Stage four is acceptance. Customer knows that he cannot do much about it. He is exhausted. He is ready to accept solution provided to him as per company’s policy and prefers to move on.

 

I think it is important to understand here that these four stages are painful for customer but it can be more painful for organization in future. Sometimes, what seems to be success in short term is actually a loss in long term.

 

Small is big.

 
This world is filled with people who want to do things in a 'big' way. Only big way. They want an immediate impact (positivewala) for their efforts at all levels.
 
People want to make big money in one go and put all their efforts to do that.
Kids want to win big prizes from their one effort.
People put all their big efforts behind their one blockbuster.
Bloggers want to earn big money from their blogs in the shortest possible time with the shortest number of posts.   
Entrepreneurs want big money from their VCs in one go.
 
After all BIG is surest way of catching attention. Right? Nope. Wrong. This is not true anymore.
 
These days small is a building block and many 'smalls' constitute one 'big' which happens over a period of time. This one firm is just proving this.
Kickstarter is helping a lot of entrepreneurs, artists who need small budget to realize their dreams. They help them in raising small money by bringing them closer to their investors who can invest only few dollars.
 

Earl Scioneaux III is not a famous music producer like Quincy Jones. He is a simple audio engineer in New Orleans who mixes live albums of local jazz musicians by day and creates electronic music by night. He had long wanted to pursue his dream of making his own album that married jazz and electronica, but he had no easy way to raise the $4,000 he needed for production.

 

Then he heard about Kickstarter, a start-up based in Brooklyn that uses the Web to match aspiring da Vincis and Spielbergs with mini-Medicis who are willing to chip in a few dollars toward their projects. Unlike similar sites that simply solicit donations, patrons on Kickstarter get an insider’s access to the projects they finance, and in most cases, some tangible memento of their contribution. The artists and inventors, meanwhile, are able to gauge in real time the commercial appeal of their ideas before they invest a lot of effort — and cash.

 
 
And this is not only one.
 
Mohammed Yosuf of Gramin bank has showed that his Microfinance bank can compete with one of World's biggest banks. Yet, people are always looking for that big idea which can transform the world in a big way. Big definitely gives instant gratification but many 'smalls' can make things 'big' over a period of time which is beyond anyone's imagination.

Seeing is believing

I recently visited a Canon outlet to check out a new range of digital
camera. On entering, I saw a camera submerged in water. I was little
surprised to see that and was curious to know about it.

 It came out to be a camera which Canon launched as a waterproof camera
in the beginning of 2009. To induce curiosity, create experience
around this product, show case true strength of their product and
create buzz, Canon has decided to showcase USP of their camera in a
style.

 Canon has put their foot where the mouth is. I found their approach
quite novel. For years many watch manufacturers have been selling
watches which are water resistant. Customers ask couple of times about
manufacturer's guarantee on water resistance. But none of these
guarantees gave peace of mind to customers which Canon's small gig has
given. This cannot be achieved by any amount of advertisement. This
cannot be achieved even if some celebrity endorses the product.

 As they say, seeing is believing, as perception builds once you see
the whole process.

 By the way, I also liked the passion with which their salesmen explain
their products. I have no doubt that my next digicam will be of Canon.