Can Chatbots Replace Humans?

If you think bots will never replace human agents, you’re amongst the lucky few who has been served by intelligent human agents. Let's stop pretending that the average Customer Service Rep has an IQ of 140 when we believe that chatbots are not intelligent enough to replace human agents. https://t.co/ErzpUfMmLP via @verge . #CustomerService pic.twitter.com/ujDj2l3593 … Read more

Uber Creates Loyalty To The Deal But Not For The Brand

In his book Loyalty 3.0, author Rajat Paharia, Founder of gamification solution provider Bunchball, says that loyalty programs of most brands generate loyalty to the deal but completely fail at their fundamental purpose of fostering loyalty for the brand. Uber is a great example of one such brand. The world’s largest rideshare company extensively uses … Read more

Why COD Still Rules Ecommerce In India

Contrary to popular belief, Flipkart didn’t pioneer ecommerce in India. That distinction belongs to Fabmall, the startup that introduced ecommerce in the mid-1990s well before Flipkart was founded in 2007. I remember placing orders from a dial-up modem in 1998 and paying online by credit card, which was the only mode of payment supported by … Read more

Mastering Targeted Offers – The Uber Way

Uber uses targeted offers as the bedrock of its customer engagement management (CEM) strategy. For the uninitiated, a targeted offer is a personalized deal for an individual customer segment – or even individual customer. It’s the antithesis of spam, where the same deal is sent to all customers. A simple example of a targeted offer … Read more

Reliance Jio – All Good Things Don’t Come To An End, They Just Stop Being Free

In Reliance JioFi First Impressions, I’d shared my experience of buying the Portable 4G Pocket WiFi Router and onboarding the 4G Internet connection from Reliance Jio in September 2016. I’d followed this up with another post a month later in which I’d recounted my first two months’ experience with Reliance Jio. At the time, the Internet … Read more

Thriving On Chaos Of SMAC Architecture

If you follow this blog, you know that I mostly write about fintech, marketing, product management and customer experience. IT architecture is a new topic. I was prompted to write about it after witnessing a series of chaotic happenings with modern SMAC architecture during the last few months. For the uninitiated, SMAC stands for Social-Mobile-Analytics-Cloud. SMAC … Read more

Why Twitter Has Become My First Port Of Call For Seeking Customer Service

On a recent tweetchat about customer service, many tweeples felt that social media was only suited for escalations. Not me. I use social media, especially Twitter, as the first port of call to complain to brands. That’s because: Telephone means having to listen to hold music and navigate through convoluted phone trees. This is painful and … Read more

Five Reasons Why PayTM Is Miles Ahead Of Its Competition

With over 100 million users a year ago, PayTM was already ahead of its digital payment competitors before the November 2016 demonetization of high value currency notes in India. On the back of the push for #CashlessIndia consequent to #CurrencySwitch, the Alibaba-backed mobile wallet has increased its lead over its other mobile wallets (e.g. MobiKwik, PayZapp) … Read more