Perspectives

I am starting to believe that Indian businesses don’t know how to do business on a phone. The large corporations (such as ICICIs and Godrejs and Pizza Huts) get the point to a reasonable extent. But, there are multiple issues.

First, there aren’t a great lot of large corporations in India. So, you are most likely going to encounter many small businesses in your life time in India for everyday requirements.

Second, it doesn’t seem like the large corporations are putting in a great lot of effort in getting their phone link to the customer right. I have first hand experience with Bank “A” and I know the main menu of their IVR by heart. But, everytime I have wanted to call them, nothing in the main menu seems to match the question I have in mind for them. And I begin to wonder. I know that if I keep pressing something, Bank A’s IVR gives up on me and transfers me over to the first customer care person available. I subconciously know that once I get to a customer care person, things will start rolling. And, I am the best case scenario. I am in technology and I think I understand the phrase “Technology as an enabler”. Wonder what percentage of people who dial up end up speaking to a service representative. If it is a huge percent, then the point of the IVR is lost.

The worst case scenario is my mom. To begin with, she is perplexed by the idea of an automated voice system which is not a human being. Second, She is scandalized that if she presses a wrong button, the world might end and bad things might happen. She is also worried that this voice person will not give her any help. How is it that she can’t ask questions to this computer voice?

Also, folks at the call center want to put the phone down or transfer the call as quickly as possible to another department. It feels like “red tapism” except it all happens on the phone line and you are sitting. Your time isint anyone’s concern. You are not running around, right?

Lets talk about the Torso and tail, the medium and small businesses. The service stations, restaurants, Gas stove repair, flower shops. And it sucks quite a bit here. It is almost like customers who call up on the phone are second grade and do not require the same treatment as folks who show up in the showroom or shop. It is not like I am not going to pay.

Atleast once, I have been asked to call back later because the person who picked up the phone was busy. She didn’t even care to ask me what it is that I wanted. Because I am on the phone, I am not real? Other times, the person who picks up the call hasnt a clue. I called up a dance company and the person who picked up goes “Oh, you want to talk to my husband?”. More often than not, it is someone’s personal phone number which is listed on the internet. And when you call, the person gets infuriated about how you could call him at 8 PM in the night? I am expected to know his office timings, right? Cutting the call, Number busy etc. have happened quite a number of times as well. And these are all institutions that treat their customers normally when you visit them. What these businesses don’t take seriously is, a bad user experience on the phone is a bad user experience about the way they run the business.

Honestly, this doesn’t come to me as a surprise. On the other hand, It is more of a wishful thought. 400 million phone connections isint a joke. We have virtually covered all people with any purchasing power. I wish our businesses understood the power of remote & voice communication. I am a believer that voice is the most natural form of human communication. And there just isint space in your jeans pocket for a keyboard and a mouse. The fact that 1-800 as a concept is not popular (Not sure what the reasons are here) itself is a standing symptom of how businesses arent embracing the telephone yet.

Just like every other industry in India, telephony is fragmented, de-standardized and over regulated. Customer side phone revolution has already happened. Wont the businesses see this?

Telematics Research Group released a press release a little while ago and they say that the future of Portable Navigational devices look promising. Also, Mobile phone based GPS will become popular than traditional PNDs from makers such as TomTom or Garmin. So, if you are going to buy an in-car navigation system, you may want to hold on. Maps may just be available on your mobile phone.

More here

Just learnt that MGMaps has added Yahoo India maps support. What that means is now, using mgmaps and selecting Yahoo India maps as the map provider, you have lesser ways of getting lost in India. The default search is still from Google though. I actually didnt know about mgmaps until the Google controversy. But the app is one helluva sweet little thing. Works like a charm.

I was thrilled for a different reason though. I wanted to see how our maps look on a mobile. Sort of a first look for me as well. Aah, looks sweet. I searched all over the place and got my archaic digi cam to take a pic of my phone with our maps (these days, I click only with my phone).

What do you think? Is a mobile map app something that Indians want ?

This is one long pending post. Zook is a new sms and/or wap based local search service that a good friend of mine and others released a month back or so. Sameer calls it “Mobile answer engine”. Pretty funky huh?
There are quite a few reviews about zook all over the web now, and Zook’s blog is here. But why keep reading when you can actually try it ? Point your mobile browser to http://zook.in or send in a query like “Zook ringtone” to 3030 in bangalore. (not sure if it works in other citites).

The USP of this product, ofcourse is the way it helps you narrow down on what you are looking for by way of asking a few unintrusive questions. Pretty neat, I should say. My point of contention there is that, zook kinda assumes that most queries have multi meanings. For instance, Zook excels if your query is leading, like “thai”. But, most users come from a Google background where they help the search engine find what they want rather than confuse it. If I am really looking for a restaurant, I would explicitly say “thai restaurant, koramangala, bangalore”. And for a query like that, Google or any other local search works just as well or sometimes better than Zook.

But, zook could work like a charm for the long tail of (confusing) queries. I guess that is the intent , but I dont think they have that rich data yet. For instance, I know of a very famous coffee shop recommended by “Lonely planet” in colaba, mumbai. Google does a decent job. Zook returns nothing.

I use the wap zook along with seraja for events, which is pretty good. Also, I dont think value added SMS is a viable option given the current state of things. Maybe, more on that later. On the whole, it is a very good start and Sameer is a think tank. Full of ideas all the time. I am sure they will crack it as we go along. He just gave a podcast on podtech with kamla Bhatt. He gives a few interesting data points there. Listen to it here. Or I have also embeded it in this blog post.