All Deceptions Are Not Equal – Bait-And-Switch Versus Phishing

Bait and Switch and Phishing are both deceptive. But, beyond that basic characteristic, they’re not the same. In Bait and Switch, the deception is in the offer. In Phishing, the deception is in the offeror. Let’s get on with it. Bait and Switch Bait and Switch is a type of Dark Pattern in which “you … Read more

Colgate Total PayTM Cashback – Most Rewarding CEM Ever?

Colgate-Palmolive is currently running a Customer Engagement Management program for its premium toothpaste brand TOTAL. Like all CEM programs, this one also mandates product purchase. The price of the product is INR 102 (US$ 1.25) and the reward for purchase is a cashback of INR 50 (US$ 0.67) credited directly to the consumer’s PayTM eWallet. … Read more

How Merchants Will Fight Subscription Dodgers

Many product and service providers entrap consumers in subscriptions that they no longer need or want. The Rogue’s Gallery of shady merchants includes some of the largest and most valuable companies on the planet, as we saw in What Is Subscription Trap?. Uber fines Rider even when Driver cancels. Few Riders jump thru' the hoops … Read more

AI In UX

I’ve written before on Artificial Intelligence in User Interface of websites and apps. This post is about a related topic: Artificial Intelligence in User Experience. For the unintiated, User Interface, User Experience and Customer Experience are not the same. UI: Nice-looking form.UX: Do we need the form?CX: Enhance customer journey in and out of the … Read more

Six Hacks To Escape Subscription Trap

In What Is Subscription Trap?, we saw several Dark Patterns used by brands and service providers (“Merchants”) to make it difficult for us to cancel subscriptions like Social network e.g. LinkedIn Premium Digital media e.g. Wall Street Journal Streaming video service / OTT e.g. Netflix Hosting service e.g. Hostgator SAAS software e.g. Salesforce In this … Read more

All Payments Are Not Equal – Retail Payments Primer

This is a slightly edited version of my answer to the following question on Quora: I had a similar experience recently. I scanned the Merchant’s QR code at a restaurant with my PayTM app. PayTM asked me to link my bank account to complete the payment via UPI. I refused to do so because I wanted … Read more

How Does Google Maps Know Traffic Conditions In Realtime?

When I was in Germany in the early 2000s, all my questions about distance would receive answers in terms of time. That too, under two conditions, namely, without traffic and with traffic. For example, if I asked a customer, “how far is your office from Munich airport”, the typical answer would be, “one and a … Read more

Why Does Cross Selling Fail?

In my last post on cross-selling entitled Cross Selling Is Hard, we had seen several cross-selling flops by majors. In each case, a company that is wildly successful in one product category attempts to cross-sell a new product to its existing customers and achieves very little success. In some cases, the lack of success is … Read more