Lessons For Marketing From Spectacular Comeback Of QR Codes Via Mobile Payments

The world’s leading mobile wallets use QR codes. This includes Alipay and WeChat Pay in China, PayTM and PayZapp in India and Starbucks App in the United States. QR code has been popular in China for the last 4-5 years. In India, the nineties-era technology has become very visible in the last one year, driven by … Read more

Loss Aversion: Using Negative Messaging In Marketing

In Loss Aversion: Why Negative Messaging Works In Marketing, we saw how the Loss Aversion principle in consumer behavior makes negative copy effective. At the end of the post, I’d cautioned vendors against using negative style in content indiscriminately and implored them to handle campaigns based on negative copy with a lot of care. In this … Read more

I’m The Proud Author Of A Book!

I’m happy to announce that I’ve published a book! Entitled FROM DISLOYALTY TO OMNICHANNEL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT, my book is available in Kindle and EPUB formats. In this eBook, I trace the arc of loyalty programs run by brands during the last 5-7 years and predict the trajectory of their customer engagement management strategies over the remaining … Read more

Hey Robin Cook: We Want Another One But Not Like The Other One

In Robin Cook’s latest novel HOST, patients go into a comatose state during simple surgeries. Click here to read my review of this medical thriller. After reading the novel, I had a vague sense of déjà vu feeling. I thought it had a striking resemblance to the author’s 1977 bestseller COMA. So many years later, … 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

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

Overcoming The Space Time Challenge in CEM

In Omnichannel Couponing Drives CEM Success – Part 1, I’d highlighted the space challenge in the couponing phase of a CEM program. To recap, this comprises issues that range from where to insert the code and how to make the code large enough to be visible but small enough to fit on the existing package … Read more

Do You Face Online Jingoism? I Do

The Internet is full of jibes on people’s nationalities. They appear on articles, blogs, reviews and comments. Often sarcastic and sometimes venomous, they run down the author’s or commenter’s nationality without any provocation. Let me quote a few examples of such remarks.  (A) BLOG The Finextra article titled Brits expect cashless society within 20 years is … Read more

Why Are Reviews So Powerful In Social Media Customer Service?

Since I wrote Customers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But The Call Center Hold Music, many more brands are providing customer service via social media. Some of them are doing a great job at it even though it’s early days e.g. Bajaj Allianz GIC (@BajajAllianz), Hootsuite Helpers (@Hootsuite_Help), Ministry of Railways … Read more