Archive for the ‘Customer’ Category

A Passionate Mentor Can Change the Game for Your Emerging Company

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Aug
17

Before I venture ahead into this post, I would like to extend an honest “Thank You” to everyone who has stood by me, towards raising up Until ROI. Though I may not be able to put all the names, let me try and recount all I can in the time I have:

My Mom, Kamal Sir (my graduate school professor), Avinash Raghava (the turning point of my professional life), Neha (a great support), Sarika (one who knows, I’d be too lazy to work on what she says always, till she scolds me bad :P ), Sonam Budhiraja (a great support to Until ROI), Akanksha Seth (a great friend), Gargi Sharma (a great support and a fantastic human), Geetu Mam (this is one lecturer whom I used to adore in college times :P , one lecture I never bunked)

The first turning point in life

Just a little over 3 years back I bumped online into someone who, with his insights and thoughts, actually helped me evolve as an individual. Avinash Raghava from NASSCOM. Avi has been both a mentor, guide and a friend of sorts.

I remember, when I had this super lucrative job offer from a large company, Avi called me up and actually helped me decide by saying: Paritosh, Job or Until ROI. And he said, if you utter Until ROI, well, we wont discuss the job part again. And we did not. And today Until ROI has challenges, but we are poised to create a success story, a part of India’s growth story!

Avi, as I call him, and many others too, extracted the best out of me by making me always push for raising my level of performance. And I am so thankful to him always for this.

The Second Time, Life Took a Turn

This one encounter with a gentleman called Rajiv Mittal, has been one of the steepest learning curves in my life. Rajiv Sir as I call him always, is a Mentor, not just to me but for Until ROI. He is one of the best people undoubtedly who you must work with once in your lifetime in the industry.

Rajiv Sir, has helped me evolve as an entrepreneur over the past 6 months and is now helping me transition into a well bred CEO. And Mind you, he’s not another mentor, who will come and share his insights. He actually has sat with me overnights, late at work, helping me work on various aspects of business, running a venture, raising capital and much more.

I am not sure about the others reading this blog, but how many times the mentor actually takes your work and does it?!

And well, in all honesty, its not really the fact that he’s just been a client, its a relationship on a different level. Try telling your boss/ mentor/ Chief, that I dont agree to you and go up against his views and put up a fight, well, chances are somewhere it snaps. With Rajiv Sir, its on the other level. We argue, we listen, we learn and at the end of the day Iv always actually seen that his experience wins. His insights into what may happen right/ wrong actually proves right.

For Emerging companies, having the right insights at the right time is very crucial and obviously you as an entrepreneur, must always be ready to learn and un-learn from such people in your life. Be open, and you will create magic faster!

I surely am excited to be on the path to raising up a successful enterprise and contribute to the nation’s growth :) thank you all again, look forward to your support always!

Single Available Women and Get Sexy Babes on Your Desktop for Free says Shaadi.com on facebook

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Nov
14

Come find the soulmate for your daughter or the dream woman for your son on a website which says in its facebook ad:

Single available women and Get Sexy Babes on Your Desktop for Free and Looking for a girlfriend??! SHOCKING?? Well, yes, it is. I know of many a parents who are in the search for the suitable matches for their children and this is what the social networking site facebook says about this famous matrimonial site.

Let me put things in perspective now. While going through the facebook Ads, and randomly clicking on an Ad which said Single Available Women, was not my thing, but when it said, find your soulmate today at Shaadi free, I was hooked.

Is this a DATING site, I am going to? This is how my profile will be shown on an Ad tomorrow? Is this where I wish to find the best match for my son/daughter who are my future?

Is Shaadi.com not even clear about who they want to target the site to?

I today question the working of these so called matrimonial sites. I remember one of my research team members doing a research on matrimonial sites, sometime back, while I was consulting a new free matrimonial website in India, though I never knew this is what they will resort to, for generating traffic to their site.

Would you ever want your daughter’s picture on one of these Ads, saying Single Available Women!

I understand and agree that “Single available women” simply says that we have single women who are available for marriage on our site, but I protest by saying that there are better ways of putting across the message.

I have my own personal profile on Shaadi.com, though I dont use it and neither I would ever, but today I have a major doubt on their ethics. I dont know if my personal details are being shared across with some other site?

Just to earn clicks if this is what a site can resort to, to earn money they can resort to sharing personal data as well?!

shaadi.com fb AD

shadifbshaadibandbajega

The above captured URL’s (which have been sent to me, by a great friend, who is the founder of one of the best Design companies, and hence could capture the fast changing and re-directing URL’s) are PROOF how Shaadi.com guys are using indirect re-directs through third party hosts, to make you land up to their “Sexy Babes on Your Desktop” register page.

I call upon followers to show concern, as this is a matter of high priority where a single mis-representation of someone’s identity could harm an entire families reputation.

SHOCKING: You and Your Online Brand Consultants – Positioned Towards a Perfect Brand Bust

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Nov
01

In my endeavor of establishing transparency and clarity in the, Ohh so amazing and new world of Social Media and Online Marketing, I am sure the series of posts I am doing now, will surely be an eye opener for clients.

Just sometime back, my strategy team did a search on the keywords, Social Media and India, and what we got were people who have sometime or the other in their professional lifetime, related to the Social Media industry. And since Social Media is not an age old concept, thus we started looking at the profiles of people who are currently into the profession.

To my UTTER AMAZE, the profiles, I was given were an absolute NO, if they were to handle my brand strategy not just on the internet but everywhere else. Interestingly, these people are recruited by not just the small Social Media ‘shops’ but the biggies in the business as well. Positioned highly, these guys are given fancy terms and well, the customer is sold!

Let me bring more clarity by looking at certain aspects of what my strategy team gave me, post the data analysis:

  • Education
    • Majority of these people have not done management (which I am not suggesting is necessary)
    • 80% of them, do not have the words, Branding Consultant, Marketing, Positioning, Product life cycle, etc in their summary/ profiles
  • Current
    • The current profiles are all Social Media Strategist, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Executive
  • Past
    • There are people from BPO, from Technology, Adventure Tourism, Operations who are handling your So called Social Media Branding and Online Branding and Brand Creation and what not
  • Experience
    • Most of these people are fresh (1-3 years) of experience and are running the show

In my personal view, I completely agree that innovative thinking, creativity are needed, but is it that you will hand over your brand in the hands of someone who does NOT even understand what Brand stands for?!

This revelation by the team, surely opened my eyes towards how is the New Media industry being structured and shaping up. We are playing on chances and one of running successes.

Reconnect to Your Roots, Reclaim Your Pride, Support Your Parents Back Home – A Midson Care initiative for the NRI – Startup Watch

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Sep
10

I have been supporting start-ups and SME’s, moving up the value chain. In my quest for innovative work and finding out new companies which are doing interesting work, I would now be featuring some of these Start-ups and fairly based companies from India, who Deserve to be!

Midson Care Logo(1)

Just a couple of days back I got a chance to connect with the Founders of a New Delhi based NRI CONCIERGE Services company Midson Care. There was so much to know and for me it was another world of opportunities that Midson has opened up for the NRI community.

If I am in the US and my parents back home in India need medical help or some sort of help, how do I do it, without being dependent on my relatives?

This was a question that Mr. Vivek Chibber (Co-Founder, Midson Care) asked me and well, in my personal capacity I have no answers, as I have had no such experience. But reflecting back at the question, I remarked, that such a service is highly critical.

Midson Care Presentation
View more presentations from Midson Care.

A parent in India, whose son/daughter is there in the US, goes through much. I never was aware of the level at which the parents are affected, once their children go abroad. Post listening to some practical stories which happened and the stress and trauma the parents and the children both had to go through, which essentially resulted in a rift in the strongest bond on the planet, that of a parent and the child.

Interestingly Midson Care, aas told to me by the Co-Founder, is that platform and bond between the parent and the child, that is why we are called – “Mid-Son”…the middle son :)

The concept really struck with me and hence I decided that I would want to support this cause and if this can lead to lesser number of parents going to old age homes, then I am ready to leverage my blog as a platform for the same :)

To know more about the Services of the company click here.

I would now be doing a series of posts on the same and request you to SPREAD the WORD if this leads to happy families and great relationships!

Are You The Starbucks or The Less Thank Truck Load Company?

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Aug
16

Sometimes I ponder over life and who things are moving. Its a Sunday and I am in deep thought about my company, where are we moving and how are we placed.

The question(s) which I want to get answered is: as a services company, are you defining productivity the right way as your clients deliverable(s) require? Do your employees really understand your business?

Thanks for Calling Yellow, Have a Nice Day

Case Study: Yellow Corp, a Fortune 500 company in the trucking business was going in a deep nose dive, which was found by Bill Zollars, who became the CEO of Yellow Corp at that time.

Problem Statement:

  1. What he found was that the company had no account-abilities and statistics for customer satisfaction.
  2. Employees did not understand the value and were just acting on the given orders

Current State of YRC:

This is the link to the amazing turn of events that have turned the fortunes of YRC

How did it happen?

Bill, understood one thing clearly, that the company is nosediving and competition was building up. People used to ask him, if the company will be around another couple of years? Bill had a strong look at the business and finally came out with the solution which had him telling the employees that they are no more competing with the competition in the trucking business, they are not a LTL/ trucking company.

We are a services company and need to strive to create systems to reach to what Starbucks does for its customers

Confused?

Well, Yes, Bill changed the entire positioning of the company for the employees, for them they had become a services company and hence the entire conversation with the customer changed. The entire focus shifted to the customer. People started listening to the customer and hence the products evolved there from.

Eg: On one of the occasions Bill went to a customer care centre of the company to hear the calls and he heard one of the agents answer a customer who wanted to truck his shipment from place A to B in 2 days. And the agent answered “We can do it in three days”. The customer again said but I want it to be done in two days. The agent had the same answer again. The customer finally remarked, I’ll call up someone else to which the agent said: Okay, thanks for calling yellow and letting us serve you. Have a nice day”

Well, if this is what you call serving, sure you are nose diving!

Being part of the Internet industry (read: social media) in India today and connecting with the leading players, I think, the flood of small companies which are creating ruckus in the market by introducing cheap services and setting wrong expectations with the client, will consume such companies itself.

The leading companies which have already set the Social Media ball rolling with the creme de la creme of the clientle would create an entry barrier for the smaller companies, strong enough which would take a good time to surpass and in such a time if these smaller companies dont scale up, with the right HR mix, I see them failing.

Thus the Social Media companies need to position themselves right in the market and itnernally with their employees aligned towards achieving the same goal seeing the same BIG picture!

Do your Clients Really Understand You? A Reality Check by Google

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Jul
29

I am Social Media Marketing Evangelist and over time a crucial aspect of the entire Social Media Marketing process has come into the picture which if inferred in simple terms makes you ponder over the most basic question:

Do Your Clients Really Understand Your Service/ What You Are Trying to Do?

As with the new buzz word and with a huge outreach new brands are coming onto the social media scene and products and services are trying to connect to the relevant audience, but somewhere I personally feel, many Online Marketing companies, are just trying to experiment with the customer, in the process, not really being one with the customer’s business objectives.

And there goes the entire effort down the drain, with the client dissatisfied and disillusioned at the end.

Listen to your customer!

I strongly suggest all marketers, expecially those in the online domain to listen to their customers. its highly crucial that you understand the customer’s business objectives and are on the same page as the client. Its necessary that you have a solid graps of business understanding of your customer, to be able to create solid and successful campaigns and create success stories in the online world.

What is a browser – A Google View