{"id":23,"date":"2011-10-20T13:35:59","date_gmt":"2011-10-20T08:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=23"},"modified":"2020-07-03T17:21:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-03T11:51:47","slug":"differentiate-your-product-by-going-the-extra-mile-%e2%80%93-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/20\/differentiate-your-product-by-going-the-extra-mile-%e2%80%93-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Differentiate Your Product By Going The Extra Mile \u2013 Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I wrote\u00a0Differentiate Your Product By Going The Extra Mile – Part 2<\/a>, I\u2019d meant it to be the\u00a0second and concluding post. But, I recently came across a few more updates \u2013 some positive and some not so positive \u2013 on this subject that I thought I must share, hence this third part.<\/p>\n

One, as I\u2019d guessed, recent realtime SMS alerts sent by banks in India for credit card transactions are the outcome of government regulation applicable across the industry.<\/p>\n

Two, credit where credit is due: I\u2019ve since come across one bank \u2013 Kotak Mahindra Bank \u2013 that has been sending out realtime SMS alerts for over three years for credit cards and eight years for debit cards. I\u2019m sure there might be a few others who have been doing so. I encourage readers to share their knowledge about these banks by leaving comments at the end of this post. Kudos to them for delivering such customer-friendly products well before they became regulatory requirements. To me, it hardly matters whether they\u2019re doing it out of kindness of their hearts or a selfish desire to cut down fraud losses, as some have suggested in response to my previous post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Three, when I recently received the following SMS alert from BANK1, I discovered one more scenario in which BANK1\u2019s product failed miserably and made my blood pressure shoot up instantly:<\/p>\n

BANK1: Thank you for using your credit card for INR xx,xxx.00 on 15-Oct-2011.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was at home when I received this alert, I hadn\u2019t done any online shopping, and I definitely haven\u2019t setup any recurring transaction of such a large amount, so I was almost sure that this was a fraudulent transaction. A five figure amount didn\u2019t help quell my anxiety either. It was only a couple of hours later when my wife returned home that I learned that she\u2019d used her BANK1 addon credit card to pay our daughter\u2019s school fees. Therefore, it eventually turned out that there was no cause for concern around this transaction. (In case you\u2019re wondering why\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0should be getting the SMS alert when\u00a0my wife\u00a0<\/em>uses the addon card bearing her name, BANK1 and all other banks I deal with, send account alerts only to the primary cardholder regardless of who uses the card.)<\/p>\n

Let me call this usage scenario\u00a0Addon Card Present One-Off<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>. Since addon cards are quite popular in India, this scenario is far more common than the previously described\u00a0Card Not Present Recurring<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0one where BANK1\u2019s product was found wanting.\u00a0By failing to support\u00a0Addon Card Present One-Off<\/em>, BANK1 is going to cause angst to many more cardholders.<\/p>\n

To me, this is the tipping point at which I\u2019m led to the conclusion that\u00a0\u2018no alert is better than a bad alert\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already written to BANK1 via their Internet Banking portal asking them to either enrich their SMS alert to include the merchant name or stop it altogether. Based on past experience, I\u2019m mentally prepared to receive at least 2-3 emails with statements of platitudes like\u00a0\u201cwe take your complaint seriously\u201d, \u00a0\u201dit is feedback like yours that helps us improve the quality of our service\u201d, blah, blah, blah<\/em>. Hopefully, by the fourth attempt, they\u2019ll get my point. Depending on what they do afterwards, I\u2019ll either hold on to this card or ditch it when my anxiety gets the better of my loyalty.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wrote\u00a0Differentiate Your Product By Going The Extra Mile – Part 2, I\u2019d meant it to be the\u00a0second and concluding post. But, I recently came across a few more updates \u2013 some positive and some not so positive \u2013 on this subject that I thought I must share, hence this third part. One, as … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b2-product-v-services","category-bfsi","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7085,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/7085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}