Why Do People Trust Reviews Even Though Half Of Them Are Fake?

On job sites like Fiverr and Upwork, you’ll find many job listings for writing fake reviews. Interestingly, on the same platforms, you’ll also find many job listings for removing fake reviews, like the following one: From personal experience and anecdotal evidence, many online reviews are fake. Regular readers of this blog know that I don’t … Read more

The End Of Google Search Is Not Nigh

I go directly to the websites of my favorite brands whenever I shop online e.g. Amazon for products, Cleartrip for flight tickets and hotels, Housing for real estate, Play Store for mobile apps, Product Hunt for software and websites, StockImages for images, and so on. I can’t remember the last time I went to Google to … Read more

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