The EchoUser Experience

Happy (belated) New Year, one and all - I do hope 2010 turns out to be a smashing success for everyone.

I figured I’d start things off with a video made by my friend and colleague Etan (@Zaqintosh).  It’s a concept for what an iPhone app designed to measure experiences (any experiences, from surfing a website to hopping on BART) could look like, and even though it’s crude, I think it gets the potential across.

Can you imagine if we were able to rate experiences on the fly, all day every day? I, for one, would love to track which ones get me up, and which bring me down.  The trick, I think, will be to get people used to rating their life experiences; Yelp’s easy because it’s tied to businesses, but it might not be obvious to people that rating a bad jog, conversation, taxi ride (due to traffic, not the cabbie) or plane ride is just as valuable as rating your local Starbucks.

In any case, without further ado, voila:

iPhone experience measurement concept - EchoUser

Dropbox and the Human Touch

A few months back I got an email from the crew at Dropbox reminding me to use their service.  If you haven’t tried it yet, Dropbox is a neat file syncing service that lets you back stuff up online as well.

Anyway, usually I hate reminders to use a service - I find them intrusive, and the repeat offenders get put on my spam list even if the service/product is actually pretty cool.

But Dropbox’s email actually made me smile:

It’s got three key attributes that make it much less annoying than other reminder emails:

1. It’s visual.

I get it, you want me to use your service. But please don’t show me a long bullet-point list of why you think you rock.  Dropbox gets this, and replaces long text with an image instead.

2. It’s funny.

The picture did actually make me chuckle.  It won’t win any best joke awards on BET and Carlin certainly wouldn’t be impressed, but in my book any laughter is better than none (and certainly better than a groan as I hit Spam). Further, it shows they have balls, which is always a good thing.

3. It’s human.

This is the most important part: the hand drawn image really lets me connect with the company.  Dropbox isn’t just a bunch of faceless programmers shoving their product down my throat - somewhere somebody actually sat down to draw this picture, and that’s a powerful thing.  So powerful that I actually pictured him or her doodling away with their tongue stuck out. Pretty cool.

Even though in the end the email didn’t get me to keep using Dropbox (I honestly don’t have a need for it), it did get me to take the time to write about it, which in the end is almost as good.

When San Francisco banned plastic bags 2 years ago, my whoops of joy could be heard across the Golden Gate in Marin.  Having grown up in the developing world I grew accustomed - sadly - to seeing plastic bags everywhere they shouldn’t be: the streets, clogging drains, polluting rivers, the ocean, even stuck on phone lines. Everywhere except in garbage cans. You can be sure that I for one wasn’t going to miss their absence at all.

So imagine my surprise when last week my local Delano’s bagger put my groceries in one of these:

That’s funny, I could have sworn that plastic bags are illegal in San Francisco. So unless I’m missing something, this shouldn’t be allowed.

On second look, the makers of the bag have done their utmost to convince everyone that this is anything but a plastic bag with the liberal use of clever marketing copy.  Phrases like “no trees were harmed in the making of this bag”, and a cute little “nutrition” box highlighting exactly how it hasn’t hurt trees are nice tries - but belie the fact that eventually this bag will no doubt end up in a dump, where it most certainly will hurt a tree.

I get what the folks behind the bag are getting at: we have so many bags in production already that it certainly makes sense to train people to reuse them, thereby preventing more bags from ending up in landfills. Indeed, these particular bags do seem more durable than their crappy white plastic counterparts, so I could definitely imagine using them for more than one grocery run - but let’s face it: I can count on one hand the number of people I know who bring eco bags to the store every time they go.  Heck, I have 3 such bags in the trunk of my car, and I still manage to forget them each and every time.

As luck would have it, these bags have an answer for our laziness, too - a message nudging us to take them to “participating stores” for recycling. Good idea in principle, until my roommate tried it: turns out our local Delano’s isn’t one of those stores.

Go figure.

A last minute glitch and I could not get international roaming activated on my cell phone. This was the first time I was going to be without a convenient access to a phone while on an international trip. I wasn’t happy…

First stop Hong Kong airport, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the complete airport WiFi enabled. I was able to use Skype on my iPhone to talk back home, check my emails and send updates to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far, so good…

My entire stay in San Francisco, I must admit I never missed not having cellular connection…it seemed like the entire city was WiFi enabled even though it was only in parts. Any restaurant, shop, pub I found myself in had WiFi so staying connected was a breeze. In all my years in the US and my trips there over the last 3 years, I never saw WiFi so entrenched in the ecosystem until now.

It goes without saying that WiFi enabled Internet access on mobile phones is the way of the future (Virgin America has even started offering WiFi on their domestic flights).

Suddenly, with broadband data access, 3G seemed a bit too slow, cumbersome and a hindrance to the overall user experience.

In almost all aspects of consumer consumption behaviors in India, there has been a leapfrog like trend where the Indian consumer has bypassed some of the technical/behavioral aspects of adoption due to the late entry of some technology or product. Jumping from having no phones to the cell phone, getting introduced to the Internet directly on the mobile are some classic examples.

Apart from the government run service providers, 3G in India is still some distance away. Can India leapfrog in this aspect of adoption as well? Can we jump directly from Edge to WiFi? One can argue that carriers like TTSL, Reliance and Airtel are well positioned with their already existing home based broadband service to provide blanket (to some extent) WiFi coverage in metro cities. This could earn them enhanced revenue from their broadband service and also help bypass 3G. They could focus on mid/high tier WiFi enabled mobile phones, and generate greater ARPU through a much enhanced user experience of their VAS services.

It will be worth investigating a two-tier strategy - A limited 3G rollout to cover the rural geography in India for enhanced voice/data services and WiFi rollout in metro cities for data services.

ATT logo

I love it when companies ask for customer feedback.  I’m that idiot that responds with an exuberant “YES!” whenever someone says “Would you like to fill out a survey/answer some questions/provide some feedback on your experience today?”.  Not surprising, really, given that studying and understanding experiences is my day to day. Besides, I consider it good karma - since we test a lot of users for our project work, it’s only fair that we return the favor!

Anyway, moving on.

I decided to give AT&T customer service a call the other day because my voicemails aren’t showing up on my iPhone.  I’m the only one of my friends with this problem, and after trying all sorts of quick fixes, as well as simply waiting (for AT&T to magically work - not a good idea, in the end), I broke down and called in.

There’s no need to go into the details of the call, though I will say that I got through to a person almost immediately (which is always nice), and even though “Marilyn” couldn’t fix my problem, she was very bubbly and earnest throughout the process.  It was more the end of the call that got me all riled up:

Marilyn: “Would you like to answer a quick survey about your experience today?”

Me: “Sure!” (note my excitement)

Marilyn: “Would you say I succeeded in trying to answer your questions today?”

Me: ::: silence as I tried to figure out the correct response :::

“Sure?”

Puh-lease.  My first thought was, “well, duh, why else would I call the customer support line other than to get you to try to help me?!”  The next thought that came to mind was the poor sod deep in the bowels of AT&T who will get all the “data” from this “survey question” and have to come up with a pretty chart to explain it to his higher ups. “But sir, we succeeded in trying, doesn’t that count for something?”

Not really, no. This example illustrates exactly why surveys are tough to get right: it’s all too easy to ask biased, misleading, or confusing questions - and sometimes, as with the AT&T case, all three at once!

Measure me this

Over the past few years, the buzz on the street in the development space (read: international development), has been all about impact.  What is it? How does it affect our bottom line? Is it related to success - and if so, how? Who’s involved? How to improve it? But most importantly:

How to measure it…?

Quite a few people have been thinking about this for awhile now, and first among them is Sasha Dichter from Acumen Fund.  His thoughts on the matter merely reflect a broader movement within philanthropy that is focusing on what it means to create a sustainable development space that is responsive to changes on the ground.  Of course, before measurement comes definition, and what a bugbear that has proved to be!  Sara Olsen at the SVT Group has spent years trying to answer this question, and while she has been generally successful in some ways, it seems that a cookie cutter solution will be hard to come by.

Read more…

Since the launch of the MotoCliq yesterday, my Facebook and Twitter have been flooded with hurrahs and comments about this cool new device. Seven years in Motorola gave me enough friends there and some of them were heavily involved in making this Motorola dream a reality. Great work guys!

The iPhone kick-started it all and now Motorola has joined the social networking bandwagon (many others have but very few deliver the experience worth mentioning) with it’s first Android phone. They have gone a step ahead (as should be expected) and created a great experience around integration of the various social networking sites in a very cool looking ‘Homepage Dashboard’. Sanjay Jha in his talk at Mobilize 09 said that ‘one-to-one’ communication is a thing of the past. Now, it’s all about ‘one-to-many’ and the MotoCliq is true to this tenet.

This is all good but what happens if ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’ are not ‘THE’ social networking sites anymore. The probability of that happening is low at least till the launch of Motocliq but same time next year and the story might be very different.

If changes in the human behavior at the high tier segment has forced companies to respond with the now social networking solutions, can they not extrapolate this behavior to the many many more low/mid tier user groups, provide customized social networking solutions, encourage this networking behavior and drive ARPU.

How do mobile phone companies respond to 2 basic questions?

• How do we keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of social networking sites
• How do we scale it so that such services are made available to the rest of the 80-90% low to mid tier cell phone users worldwide

Living in India the second question intrigues me more. For sometime now I have been thinking about a flexible mobile social networking platform that can be customized for different and specific user groups at the low and mid tier user categories.

Consider these user groups:

• Auto rickshaw/Taxi drivers across a city like Mumbai
• Truck drivers across India
• The millions of maids employed in every middle-class family of India
• The millions of farmers across various states in India

Now a few facts about the above user groups:

• They all have cell phones
• They do not possess an internet connection
• The cell phone is their main channel of communication and entertainment
• Their awareness levels of things around is very minimal and hence are an exploited lot
• They come from very specific user groups and normally communicate within their own group/community

With the above facts, a dashboard like networking application can improve the quality and extent of communication and also make them more aware, entertained and connected. It could eventually provide them with a better life.

I hope the mobile industry is already working on such solutions but I suspect the focus is very heavily bent on making the iPhone competitor. There is an opportunity waiting to be tapped. Any takers!

Imagine an annual sporting event comprising 8 teams packed into 5 weeks followed intensely by a billion plus hysterical fans. That’s the Indian Premier League. This tournament is only 2 years old and is already considered the 5^th most valuable global sports property (at $1.6 billion behind the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NASCAR).

The IPL has taken the global cricketing world by storm and is already threatening to change the very nature of the traditional sport of cricket. One of the most important things that the IPL has done is to combine the concept of T20 cricket with a tournament format that provides a high-energy, intensive sporting experience to the billions of fans. The franchise model based on the popular American sporting leagues has given enough off-the-field entertainment as during the game to the cricket crazy nation of India. One of the glaring differences between an IPL match and any other One-day/Test match is the overall glamour and glitz quotient.

As Mick and Felix go about exploring the opportunity to evaluate a major league gameday experience in the US, I think it would be interesting to apply the same methodology and evaluate how the IPL games fares. Given the high stakes and the keen desire to grow franchise loyalty the gameday experience plays a very critical role. The Kolkata Knight Riders are already considered the franchise leaders in generating profits due to the high glamour that Shahrukh Khan brings in. Since not all teams can match up to that, new and innovative ways will need to be thought out to grow profitability over the course of time. I suspect the Gameday experience; something that has been taken for granted for very long would be a key differentiator in drawing fans to the stadia.

I bought my last car sitting at home. The          test drive vehicle(s) drove up to my house (in  2 different variations!), I completed all the  paperwork while baby-sitting  my daughter and the check was picked up at  my convenience. I could have my new dream  ride delivered right at my doorstep, but  preferred to pick it up from the showroom.  What’s the big deal! One can argue that it  was a high value item and with the intense competition, it’s no unique trend. However, the other day, I had a ‘Maharaja Mac’ delivered to me, a bottle of shaving cream early in the morning when I realized I was out of it. It’s regular practice to expect things to be delivered to one’s doorstep no matter how small its value.

With easy access to labor and intense competition, ‘Home Delivery’, which was a key differentiator until some time back, has become a necessary trend especially with smaller setups and Kirana (mom-pop stores) stores. This trend has grown so much that larger players are forced to match up. Big players now have huge teams of sales/delivery people, who travel all day long going from customer to customer delivering bills, picking up deposit-checks, flowers, food-items and everything under the sun that one can think of.

‘Home Delivery’ (or at least the extent of Home Delivery) is a very unique trend and consumer behavior that is here to stay in India. This is one classic example of a regional trend that can be and is being targeted by various technology/solutions companies. The telecom industry in particular is all gung-ho about VAS (value added services → which accounts for almost 7% of all their revenues). According to industry reports, VAS is expected to be a $270 million spinner by end of 2010. ‘SMS’ and ‘Digital Music’ dominate telecom VAS today.

With 250 million mobile subscribers, 40 million fixed line subscribers, and 10 million Internet subscribers, it’s a no brainer that the mobile channel has the potential to be the ideal and most far reaching solution base in terms of services.

Telecom VAS in India can innovate in this area to become the preferred ecosystem for Home Delivery. The challenge is to customize it at the local (muhalla) level. Imagine an app that gives you the semantic of the various shops that you normally use and a quick easy way to browse inventory, order, and get the items delivered. For intangible items, the mobile phone could be the delivery mechanism itself. The challenge is to make it an experience where it is easier than direct calling.

Imagine a telecom brand that gets associated with Home Delivery. What a money-spinner!!!

Tough Love

Before I write this, I have to get one thing out of the way:

I love Patagonia.  Like, really.

I love them as a company, I love their stuff, and I tout their story to everyone I know (often by recommending Chouinard’s book).  I just received my green Prefontaine jacket this morning, in fact.  Other than the fact that I don’t actually own much of their gear - it’s a little pricey, let’s be honest - I’m a huge huge fan.

So it hurts me to say that I’ve come to dread hitting up the Patagonia website. Alas, my penchant for drooling over the MLC Dawn Patrol wetsuit backpack (now sold out) and amazing outerwear of all shapes and sizes, has been severely dampened, all because of someone called Taylor.

Now, for those of you who don’t know this, “Taylor” is the name of the pop-up live chat box that shows up just about every time I visit the website.  I usually ignore these things, but since I was having trouble finding what I wanted within the summer sale, I decided to give Taylor a shot.  What the heck, the people in the store are awesome, their clothes are awesome, so the online chat must be awesome too, right?

Not so much.  First, the person’s name isn’t really Taylor. I’ve used the live chat service twice now, and even though it says I’ll be speaking to Taylor, I always end up talking to someone else, usually with a nice bland American name (think Peter, John, Jane, etc.).  Come to think of it, the name Taylor is so neutral that I have no idea whether the person I’m talking to is a guy or a gal. Anyway.

So I finally get through to Peter/John/Jane, and everything starts out nicely, with polite hellos and a how-may-I-help-you.  The chat client seems a little slow to respond, but I chalk it up to an iffy connection (potentially on the India side, given how things are going!).  I then ask what in retrospect is a silly question, since I could’ve just searched the site for it myself:

“Hi Peter/John/Jane, could you help me find a backpack with a waterproof wetsuit pocket? Thanks.”

So I wait. And wait. And wait. All in, I wait maybe a minute, which might not be much in real world times, but on the web it feels like an eternity.  I wait so long, in fact, that I open a new tab, type “Patagonia wetsuit backpack” into my trusty Google search bar, and voila - halfway down the page, their it is: “MLC Dawn Patrol”.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Peter/John/Jane has finally come back with a “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your request.  Could you be more specific?”  Other than the heinously stiff language, it occurs to me that if A. Peter/John/Jane isn’t a rabid Patagonia fan him/herself, in which case s/he’d know of the bag I’m referring to, then B. why didn’t s/he just use Google like I did?  Needless to say, I sign off with a “Thanks!” and a bad taste in my mouth.

Later the same day…

I find myself on the Keynote.com website looking for information on usability products and services.  Interestingly, I can’t find ANY information on pricing for Keynote’s WebEffective service, so I decide to try the online chat option for the second time in 3 hours. Needless to say, the Keynote experience made John/Peter/Jane over at Patagonia seem like a cute little grandma in comparison, and has been matched in pure sales aggression only by the salespeople of a well known CRM company out there who we all love ::hint hint::.  Anyway, after a lot of back and forth, where I repeat continuously that I will NOT give out my phone number, and that ALL I want is some basic pricing information (even if it’s just a brochure), I finally settle on leaving my email, city, pant size, and favorite ice cream flavor.

Final word

When all is said and done, many companies live and die by their customer service experiences.  I recently heard from a friend doing work with a big tech company that every time a customer calls customer service, the company writes off the item as a financial loss. This is before the customer has even spoken to anyone!

My point is this: if you’re going to lose money every time a customer calls in, you’d better make sure you don’t kill two birds with one customer service rep, and lose both current profit and future business.  Word.