Retail

Ten Ways – Er, Only One Way – To Slash SMS Costs

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In Whither Cross-Selling And Upselling With eBills And eStatements?, I’d written about how I got hit by exorbitant SMS costs and how I solved this problem by ordering an SMS Pack that gave me 1,000 SMSs for only INR 35 per month. Things were fine for a few months. Then, suddenly, I again received a biggish … Read more

Web – The Forgotten Channel?

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According to the World Retail Banking Report 2012 co-authored by Cap Gemini and EFMA and a few other research reports published recently, customers are viewing the Internet as one of the two most important channels of retail banking worldwide, the branch being the other. OTOH, many banks, nonbanking financial service providers and others are virtually treating … Read more

Your QR Code Works. What Next? – Part 2

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Following on from Your QR Code Works. What Next? – Part 1, we illustrate a few more best practices of QR code based CTAs (Call To Actions): INTRASOFT. The ad offers download of the company’s financial results by scanning the accompanying QR code. Since financial results are bulky, we presume that the ad chose to employ … Read more

Retail Winners & Losers Amidst Skyrocketing Real Estate Costs

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The Indian retail landscape has witnessed tremendous churn in recent times. Skyrocketing real estate costs have rendered large swathes of big box and mom-and-pop retailers unviable. In Superior Customer Insight Is Key To Winning Round 2 Of The Indian Retail Battle, I’d quoted the owner of a famous department store in Pune, India. He lamented … Read more

TransPromos Help Billers Grow Advertising Revenues

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Electronic delivery of bills and statements promises to save stationery, printing and postage costs for banks, mobile network operators, municipalities / boroughs, utilities and other types of billers. Attracted by the cost savings potential, a large number of billers have adopted eBilling / eStatements technology in recent times. To actually realize the savings, many billers … Read more

The Business Case For Social Media Customer Service

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In a previous blog post titled Customers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But The Call Center Hold Music, I’d written about customer service via social media and how it could be a great experience for customers of airlines, banks, insurers, mobile network operators and other service providers. We now look at … Read more

How Can Organized Retailers Respond To Showrooming?

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‘Showrooming’ is being projected as a new threat posed by e-commerce websites to organized retailers’ brick-and-mortar stores. Showrooming can be defined best as “the consumer practice of using a retailer’s stores as a show room, to look, touch, and feel (not to mention partake of the retailer’s employee expertise, such that it might be), but … Read more

Customers Of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But The Call Center Hold Music

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Around the end of 2009, my HP OfficeJet printer broke down. I logged a call with the local office of Hewlett Packard’s service partner. I got no response for three days. I gave up with the vendor’s local office and decided to escalate my complaint to its head office. Thankfully, the company’s Vice President for … Read more