Greek Complexity

Lenskart spam

As regular readers of this blog would recall, I talked about Lenskart.com a few days ago and wondered whether people would buy eyewear online. They must be reading my blog closely because, to convince me that my misgivings are unfounded, they've put me on their spam, ah, mailing list. Ok, I'm joking, of course.

I mean, I'm joking about their trying to convince me. I'm not joking about the email itself. I did get an unsolicited email from them touting their wares. Not just glasses but also watches, wallets and ladies' handbags. The email was sent not to my murli.net email address, which might be sort of understandable if this was a robot crawling the web for mentions of Lenskart, but to my work email address. How did they get this? (I do know the identity of one organisation that has sold my work email address to third parties in the past, but that's a story for another day.)

I wonder if their investors IDG Ventures know that their newest investee buys email addresses in bulk for spam purposes. I also wonder if one of the metrics presented by management to their board is "unique users" or "prospects contacted" or "email list size" or some such, whether people like me are (inappropriately) counted as part of this and whether -- listen closely now -- this metric determined to some extent the valuation that IDG assigned to the company.

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Update: The funny thing is, the email ends with the following:

"Call: +91 8860004379/97 It's almost as amazing as our customer service."

Yes, I've no idea what that means.

Seeking PR firm for long-term engagement with portfolio company. Must have strong media connections in Asia, ideally in the telecom industry or, less ideally, new media/Internet.

Update: don't need any more referrals. Thanks to all who responded.

Making the best of a bad situation -- without resorting to spin

Received an email a couple of days ago that I thought was very quote-worthy. This is from an online service called Boomerang that went down briefly after a major disruption to Amazon's cloud-computing platform (which this service uses). Here's what the letter reads:

Notice of Boomerang Service Disruption (Apr 22) and our apologies

As some of you noticed, Boomerang service was unavailable this morning. We were impacted by a widespread outage of our hosting provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS). To minimize the disruption, we have been able to mostly restore the service from our backup.

While the service was down, we weren't able to deliver the messages you scheduled to go out during that time period. If you have messages scheduled to go out today (in particular this morning), please check in the Boomerang-Outbox in Gmail and send them manually.

We were also unable to get to the messages that were scheduled within the last 9 days since AWS has not recovered so far. When Amazon AWS services resume normally, we hope to be able to recover the missing messages and deliver them as you scheduled. We apologize for the problems and inconveniences and we hope to be able to resume delivering all scheduled messages soon.

How to make sure all your messages are sent as scheduled
Please click on Boomerang-Outbox label in Gmail and check to see if there any messages that needed to go out. You will need to send them manually (compose a new message, copy-and-paste the content from the message you scheduled, and send it through Gmail) if you don't see them under Messages to Send Later section of Manage Boomerang page at [URL] .

How to make sure all your messages are returned
Please click on Boomerang label in Gmail and check to see if there any messages that should be back in your inbox.

How are we going to make Boomerang more reliable?
Like many startups, we entrusted AWS with virtually our entire infrastructure, including both our production servers and most of our backup systems. We hoped that their systems were independent enough to see us through if something went wrong with one piece of the service, but today's problems reminded us that data centers at that scale are very hard to make independent.
We should have had a better plan in place, and we'll be making one. We'll be working very hard to improve our redundancy in the upcoming few weeks, both because we want you to be able to rely on us to get your messages to the right place when they need to get there, and because mornings like this are making me bald and giving me wrinkles.

Again, we are very sorry for this disruption in our service.

Sincerely,
Alex Moore
CEO

Very, very nice. Why do I like this letter so much?

• Clearly communicates the problem
• Takes ownership, no excuses and provides an apology. This letter is the written equivalent of looking someone in the eye.
• Offers an immediate solution
• Tells you what they plan to do on a longer-term basis to prevent problems
• Responsibility at the highest level with the CEO, not a head of PR or, worse, a PR agency signing off

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Yes, I have to finish that travelogue series I began a couple of weeks ago but life keeps interrupting!

SaaS is not Pure Profit, says Yongfook.

Correct. What people who say this actually mean is that each new customer is pure *gross* profit. Which is not at all the same.

This is one of those times one feels like accountants actually contribute something to the world!

Pleasantly surprising customer service

It may surprise readers of this blog to know that I'm not just a nit-picking armchair-theorising pain-in-the-unmentionables. Occasionally, I even Give Credit. Incredible but true.

There are two examples that I'd like to highlight today as examples of a superb attitude to customers:

Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA)

No matter what one says about bureaucracy and a rule-book mentality in Singapore's government, one also frequently experiences pleasantly surprising efficiency, customer orientation and even flexibility.

As a road cyclist, bumps on the road are something I'm always aware of. When riding in a group at speed a few inches behind someone else, one person swerving or braking to avoid an unexpected hole is enough for disaster to occur behind them. So when I do see a pothole in the road, I generally note down the number on the nearest lamppost and report it to the LTA.

Now, if one weren't familiar with the LTA, one might expect that the problem would be fixed "in due course". One pothole doesn't mean a road is falling apart and might be treated with relative nonchalance.

Not in Singapore.

Not only does the LTA alert their road contractor immediately, they even call back within 24 hours to confirm that the job is being processed or has been completed, and, get this, thank the person who reported the problem. On the occasions I haven't been able to take the call, they've tried a few more times to call back, simply to thank me for the report. I've reported potholes and other road hazards several times and am always tickled to see that they expect to thank me rather than my thanking them for doing a prompt job. I do thank them in any case, of course.

Why do they do this? Who are they accountable to? I don't know. But I'm not complaining!

The Economist

So I'm a subscriber to various free newsletters sent out by The Economist. I'm not, however, a paying subscriber to the website or the print issue.

One of the newsletters comes with the subject line, "From the desk of John Micklethwait, Editor". I've always thought that a pretty useless subject line. The From field of the email tells me already that the email is from The Economist so do I really need a reminder in the subject line too?

So I shot off an email to them. It came across as quite snarky in hindsight even though I didn't mean it that way. Witness:

Hello,

I have been an Economist reader for years now and read the paper version, the website and your email newsletters. However, I signed up for the email newsletter that comes "from the editor's desk", so to speak, only relatively recently.

Can I ask you: how useful do you think it is to send out a newsletter with the subject line, "From the desk of John Micklethwait". Why should any reader care whose desk a newsletter comes from? Wouldn't it be more useful to insert one or two major headlines in the subject line instead?

As masters of clear communication and to-the-point-ness, I'm sure you appreciate the point I'm making.

Murli Ravi

Really snarky, huh?

But guess what -- they responded within hours. Not the 48 hours they promised but just 4 hours later. And I know that the email wasn't written by a robot because, although its contents were pretty generic, it was addressed to me by name, even though I hadn't provided my name in a machine-readable format.

How many hundreds or thousands of emails they must receive every day! And I'm not even a subscriber. Wow.

Real-life bloopers

Just stumbled across 14 of the stupidest things ever said in sales meetings, of which my favourite has to be:

8. “How many times do people have to see it in sitcoms before they stop saying ‘when is your baby due?’ to an obese woman.”

I should compile one of these lists too. For people coming to my firm to raise funding for their companies and then saying unbelievably stupid things. Fortunately, it doesn't happen that often.

Speaking of SIA

They're losing the plot. Service-wise, I mean. Getting to one's destination on time? No problem. Ever.

But the fall in service standards is another story. The other day, I had a problem with my video screen. This is something that's not uncommon these days, depending on the route one is flying (read: the plane they allocate to that route). What's unusual though is the reaction of flight staff.

When I asked a crew member about the problem with the screen at my seat, he looked at it casually, shrugged, said "It's an old plane" and walked off.

When this happened on my previous flight, I wasn't even given that excuse. Or any excuse.

Interestingly, my statistically nonsensical gut feel is that the younger crew actually come across as more contrite than the older ones. And among the older crew, the women come across as more genuinely apologetic than the men.

My theory? From first-hand observation, it's pretty clear that the female crew do much more work on the plane than the men. Yet, I'm told, the men find it easier to get promoted than the women. That's because there are many more women than men working as flight crew. Also possibly because some women leave the crew when they get married, but that's just a guess. Could this result in a general sense of complacency among senior male flight crew?

Free wine? Deluxe home? $10K a month?

All of the above on offer and in return:

we’re looking for someone (maybe you) who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live: the Sonoma County Wine Country

say the folks at the Murphy-Goode Winery in California. Applications due June 5th, 2009.

And here I am plugging their message for them at no charge!

Replacing banks with... people?

A few days ago, a colleague sent out a news article by email to a bunch of us. My boss responded with:

Not resorting to hyperbole - but this is the most brilliant idea I've read in a long time.

I am being a little aggressive here, but this is the biggest threat that banks will ever see to their model.

It will take 10 years, but this IS the bank of the future.

This may well be to the consumer lending business what the ATM was to retail banking.

What was he so excited about? Something definitely worth getting excited about:

Prosper's users lend money to and borrow money from other people on the site at what the company says are better interest rates than those available through traditional financial institutions and without some of the risk that comes from typical person-to-person loans.

"We looked at eBay and said, 'Why can't we do this for money?' " said Chris Larsen, Prosper's chief executive.

He noted that consumers make, at most, about 4 percent on their savings accounts, which banks then lend to credit card customers at 14 percent or more.

"That's just a huge spread," Mr. Larsen said. "We think if you allow people to participate directly, it's a more efficient marketplace. People can make a better return on their deposits, which then become the source of credit to others."

Borrowers can also join or create groups with defined interests or characteristics that, they hope, will make them more attractive to some lenders. Prosper's group leaders receive a commission on the group's lending and borrowing activities, which they sometimes share among the group. "If the sites are able to recruit strong group leaders with strong affiliations, they shift the marketing burden to those people, who have the incentive to go after others to become part of the group."

The community aspect of the site, Mr. Larsen said, is an important component. "It's satisfying to place money in little bits with people who have stories, and in groups that you know and trust and want to support."

Link: It's Like Lending to a Friend, Except You'll Get Interest

I think this will turn out to be as big a phenomenon, or perhaps even bigger when all its implications are considered, as mortgage-backed securities were in the '80s.

I went to Prosper's website and Larsen's point about the community aspect certainly rings true. The human touch (I'm all about the human touch today, it seems!) was apparent in listings like this one:

Requested:	$10,001.00
Lender rate:	4.50%

Description

I just want to put in a new sink and john and shower.

Sprint "gets" blogging

A few days ago, I received an email from Sprint, the US phone service provider. They have started something called the Sprint Ambassador Program, in which they offer a bunch of freebies in return for, well, nothing. Here's what they wrote:

We recently launched the Sprint Power Vision (SM) Network and want to provide you with the full experience, at no charge. Sprint Power Vision Network enables customers to download data at faster speeds and experience new data products.

So what's the deal?

As a qualified participant, we will send you one Sprint Power Vision phone and provide you with six months of all-access service (at no charge). You’ll have access to the Sprint Music Store(SM) live TV broadcasts, gaming and more.  Yes, you will also have unlimited free calling and data service.

So what's the deal, I echoed in my own head. Is this a scam? Is it just spam? All they wanted in return was "your candid feedback (you decide how much and how often)".

One reason to think it wasn't spam was because the email implied that I was being invited to participate because the Sprint Ambassador team had visited my blog, and that I had been shortlisted as a result. Moreover, the email was sent to an address (blogfeedback [at] murli [dot] net) that is only available on my website and which has to be manually copy-pasted into an email. Spambots haven't harvested it so far. And combined with the fact that the email was addressed to me personally (firstname-lastname), I was fairly sure that this wasn't spam.

To find out whether it was a scam, I shot back an email of my own.

Thanks for your kind offer. I'd love to participate in the program, except that I'm not based in the US.

I may be in the US later this year and I'd be more than happy to participate then if that's possible.

In response, not an auto-reply, but an actual person. Wonder of wonders.

The upshot was that I can't participate in the program (because I'm not a US resident) but that's not the point of this post.

I found many things impressive about this entire exchange:

• I have never written about Sprint on my blog.  But I have written about telecoms. Looks like Sprint searched for blogs related to telecoms and shortlisted some bloggers to receive invitations to join the program. The very fact that they're taking blogs this seriously is impressive.
• That alone would have impressed me. But then their offer wasn't a traditional big-company marketing tactic either. Lots of freebies and not much asked for in return. (I thought Starhub did a very good job in recruiting trial users --like me-- for its i-mode launch in Singapore, and Sprint trumped even their offer.) Looks like they understand bloggers better than most people would credit big companies for. Look at the result: I haven't even taken up their offer and yet here I am blogging about them. Zero cost to Sprint and God knows what the dollar benefit has been to them so far.
• Last, the whole email exchange had a human touch to it. An actual person at Sprint (not a bot) took the pains to find relevant blogs, read through them, then manually search for the names and emails of shortlisted bloggers. Someone also responded personally within a matter of hours to my email, even though it was probably about 10 pm when I wrote to them. I think the human touch is particularly important for bloggers -- many of my compatriots are merciless in their criticism of form replies.

Well done, Sprint.

If any other bloggers received similar invitations, I'd be interested to know what their experience was like.

Guess which phone company I'm going to call first if I ever move to the US.