Seeing the World and Sharing Experiences

For those who like to travel and those who travel a lot we share experiences through social media. Instagram and Facebook are very popular as a platform to share mementos and memories. We immortalize our experiences no longer for our own viewing pleasure but also for the world… Sharing is wonderful, however in all the trips we make planning and organizing takes the most time and something that followers and friends in social media might not have a grasp of how much time is spent on such activity. Perhaps there is a way to make the experience much better, make planning and organizing easier in a way that it is as easy as to share a picture, a video for everyone’s enjoyment.

What if we can save a few minutes each day or even a few hours each day in planning our vacations, our trips or even as simple as finding the best place to dine based on our own individual preferences? What if we can do that as easy as sharing our experiences in Social Media? Wouldn’t that make our travels more enjoyable?

Do We Want to Know When Service is Not Going to be Available?

For those of us that consumes services, any kind of services we all do not want interruptions to those services. Just imagine you are in an airport and suddenly the entire flight control system goes down without notice, this will create chaos and delays and for customers frustrations, stress and unhappiness. Just imagine you are one of those passengers stuck in the airport and have an emergency to attend to, how would you feel? Same is true for basic services like electricity and water, now adays we are so used to seamless services that interruptions becomes a very big deal and a sources of frustrations. Having said that there are still countries where service interruptions are normal and for them they have adapted to that way of life, became part of the culture so service interruptions are just an annoyance. For those of us who are used to good and seamless services will we accept such mentality to be imposed on us in terms of service interruptions? Will you hire a service provider with this kind of mentality or culture?

In today’s highly mobile and digital world, mobile data has become a basic service. It is embedded in our daily lives that we can no longer live without it. How do we feel if suddenly there is no communications service, we can’t browse the internet, we can’t watch streaming videos, we can’t communicate instantly? It will feel like we are back to the stone age, it will create chaos and a lot of frustration to many and in some cases affected customers will churn and switch a different service provider.

Now service interruptions are unavoidable since as  a service provider there is a need to schedule maintenance, to improve services to ensure continuity of services. Would it reduce stress and frustration if customers are notified correctly of such interruptions? Consider Telenor in Sweden, they notify customers by SMS for scheduled interruptions, surely this is a good thing since as a customer you know when you will not have any services available. However as customers we also do not want to receive service notifications that do not affect us since it becomes an annoyance. Just imagine you are in the Maldives enjoying your vacation, then suddenly you receive service notifications every hour, won’t you be annoyed?

There is of course an ideal way of notifying customers for service interruptions, that is only notify customers who are directly affected by such interruption at a specific time. This can be done by Geo-fencing, the challenge of course is how to effective implement Geo-fencing without sounding like big brother watching every customer.

Customer Service and Humanity

In the past two weeks I flew in out of 14 countries, 16 flights in total considering return flights to Sweden… During this two weeks I observed very different levels of service amongst the various airlines.

The best was with Turkish Airlines, friendly and helpful cabin crew. The worse was with Malaysian Airlines with very rude cabin crew especially the flight from Manila to Kuala Lumpur. The low point was when the crew started telling passengers (actually I was one of them) that the toilets are unavailable due to the Pilot declaring emergency situation. However there was no seat-belt signs turned on and no announcement from the Pilot. In the background the crew were chatting and laughing together every time they command a passenger who want to use the toilet to take a seat. Considering that Malaysia Airlines is in a dire financial situation I can clearly understand why, their service is amongst the worst in the world and to make fun of passengers is such a very low point.

 

If Malaysian airline can not improve their service they will definitely go out of business no matter how much money the government will put in to rescue the airline. I have criticized Turkish Airlines in the past but their service have improved dramatically over the years and is now one of the best airlines in the world. What made the difference is putting a touch of humanity to their service…

When we look at customer service, for example in Telecom, each mobile operator would like to lower the cost but at the same time still deliver a wonderful customer experience. This is being achieved by providing customer are in various channels. One channel in particular is the most effective, directly from a customer’s device… where customer service can be automated and enhance but still maintaining the the human touch. Operators like DiGi and Malaysia and Smartfren in Indonesia are starting to implement this improved customer experience programs and are perfecting their user interfaces to give the most complete automated and humane experience possible.

Improving Farming Efficiency Through Technology to Help Local Communities

I recently came in contact with 2 brilliant gentlemen from Ethiopia who wanted to modernize farming in Ethiopia. Having been involved in the farming business, although considered in the upper 1% of farming categories I fully  understand the challenges most farmers face especially in underdeveloped and developing world where traditional farming have not changed much in a thousand years. Their aim is to revolutionize farming to increase yield using modern methods and employing wireless sensors. The question is will this succeed in remote rural areas in third world countries?

Lets look at the problem. Most farmers:

• Are poor, they hardly make enough of a living

• Employ traditional farming methods developed thousand years ago

• Uneducated and lacks knowledge of modern farming methods and techniques

• Can not afford to use modern farming tools even if they wanted to

• Are in debt and in the risk of losing their farms

For large farms employing machinery dramatically increase productivity since one person can tend a large area in the shortest possible time, hence timing planting and harvesting perfectly. For small scale farmers they would rely on cheap labor and their own hard work to tend the farm which affects productivity. For large farms investing in modern machinery makes a lot of sense. However with our aim to provide jobs we mostly employ a large number of people and a mix of manual labor and machine. Our aim is to employ enough people to alleviate poverty in the community. It is always better to teach someone how to fish instead of giving them a fish.

Determining soil composition, water purity, air quality helps in increasing yield from farmlands. This involved having the right measurement tools to determine which crops to plant at a particular season and what fertilizers to use. The only problem is small scale farmers are not able to afford buying such measurement tools. Perhaps a better solution is to establish a cooperating community of farmers who can share measurement tools and analytic to give everyone a good start.

Then there is constant monitoring to determine if crops required more water, better fertilizers. Having said that all monitoring tools are expensive so only large farms can afford to do so. How can monitoring solutions be shared for it to become cost effective enough for small scale farmers to afford?

At the end of the day farming is a business and businesses need to generate returns of investments. Our approach had been focus on changing the way farms are operated and better land use. For example we convert rice fields to fisheries since the returns are better, although the investment are higher. Utilizing sensors to monitor daily progress is good, however the data is useless without expert analysis and such knowledge is the primary driver to fully modernize farming, make it more efficient and improve returns.

Improving Lives One Message At A Time

All my life I have always strive for making the world a better place through technology, through philanthropy, through sustainable food production… When the world started calling with mobile phones I help improved quality of communications through automated planning. When the world of simple voice call changed to complex data communications I help improve quality of delivered services through secured on-device customer experience. Now in the world of Internet of things and converging media I am finding my calling. No longer as a trailblazer in introducing something new but by innovating on what is already available in front of us.

Being a trailblazer is never easy, in a lot of cases in world of technology the timing might be too early, there are of course early adopters but there are more skeptics. I started and sold/exited my companies, some I keep on growing and investing on specially the ones that directly help people to have better lives. Now I am at a crossroad, do I want to continue being a trailblazer or do I want to innovate? How can I make a better difference in the world, in the life of many? How can I be a better contributor to make this world a better place? How can I be of better service to more people?

Looking at today’s world where communications and information makes the world go round, I am inclined to at this moment to help make this world a better place in my own small way where everyone can communicate and have access to information for free whether they have internet connection or not. Internet.org have taken the the stand for free internet for  everyone, following that why don't we aim for free access to information and  communication? At the end of the day communication is free, nature never intended it to be a money making venture…. So why don't we follow the cues of nature and provide free communication and information to everyone….

The Future of Instant Messaging

In the past weeks several instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp, WeChat,  have started to offer voice calls, the trend of messaging applications offering voice calling capabilities is nothing new. Tango, Viber, Line all have offered voice calls before WhatsApp even thought of it. Is voice call the future of instant messaging? We as consumers use instant messaging applications for one simple reason, messages are delivered instantly, then comes the addons such as emoticons… With voice calling being introduced is it still right to call it an instant messaging application?

In a world where instant messaging are provided in various ways including messages that disappears, messages that are secure what do we as consumers actually like? We have seen very fast adoption of WhatsApp because it was a simple messenger, we have seen Line generates the highest revenue per user since it tickles our fancy. Having said that messaging applications are converging into the same set of offering . Will there still be a need for differentiators for one application to be the adopted globally?

What about going back to basics, messages that are delivered instantly even if you are not online? Now, how about adding the beauty of instant messaging by delivering those messages free? While we are at it why not do the same for voice calls? How about voice calls that are free even if you are not online? The question is going back to basics enough to be the dominant instant messaging application of the future?

How to gamify a boring customer service app?

Enabling mobile service providers to empower their customer services  in delivering the most effective customer care services in the world is the easy bit. The biggest challenge is how to make such service delivery adopted by users. One strategy is through the use of mobile applications. Most if not all mobile service providers today already have mobile applications and already deliver some form of customer service through mobile applications, now how can you add value in order for the application and service to be constantly used by mobile customers? In the world of mobile application other than delivering the right features gamification strategies are being employed to get users to use the application like they do with games, to be used a lot, make it engaging, make it satisfying, make it addictive.

So how do do that on boring mobile services?

One way that  is done in every industry but most importantly in retail and travel is loyalty program. So adding a component of a loyalty programs to customer service can in theory encourage users to use the service more. The truth is most if not all loyalty program are only used when it is needed, for example when shopping or traveling. So the next challenge is how to make a loyalty program engaging enough for users to use it at least 3 times a day…

Other than a loyalty program what can be implemented by a mobile service operators what can be done? Can it be any of this suggestions?

• Personalization
• Share location
• Share results in social media
• Add friends
• Send messages to other app users
• In app purchases
• Send gifts
• Chat
• Wall Post
• Transfer loyalty credits
• Promotions
• Recruit users
• Game
• Credits for using operator services

Avoiding accidents

During the Xmas weekend I was driving from Helsingborg to Germany in an SUV filled with luggage and 3 kids on board…. Having driven this roads hundreds of times I feel like I know it like the back of my hand… Having said that this weekend was the second time a car in front of me crashed violently while driving on a German highway (A1) where there are no speed limits (in most parts).

This is how it happened…. I was driving at 180 km/h when two cars passed me by (Golf R and BMW 5). When the BMW was about 3 seconds from me it blew a tire, spin in the middle of the highway twice and hit the barrier on the side of the road…I managed to avoid collision and saw that the occupants in the BMW that crashed into the barrier looked OK, and the other car driving with it had stopped and so are other cars. Having 3 kids on board I decided to drive on and report the incident. What amazes me is that my daughter pointed out that the car is doing strange 2 seconds before I saw it happened, did she saw it happened before it actually did? Was  I too slow to realized what’s happening?  The question is such an accident avoidable in the first place?

In cars we avoid accidents both by prevention and reaction. Prevention by ensuring cars are always in the best condition and working order, while driving defensively and carefully. Reaction by ensuring you are always alert, always know what’s happening around you and what’s happening to your car from how the tire feels when it is in contact with the tarmac to how the engine sounds when you press on the accelerator and from how the brake reacts when you press on the brake pedal… This we do everyday sometimes out habit, in a lot of cases due to several years of practice…

Now when it comes to mobile networks, are there really accidents? Sometimes the network goes down, is this an accident? In a professionally managed mobile networks, there are no accidents. Any network problem is caused by inefficiencies in planing and maintaining that network. Consider how a passenger in a car feels while going through an accident… now treat that similarly as as a mobile user when the service suddenly fails in  the middle of an important conversation or while using online communications…. Its traumatic….

As a service provider how can you avoid this accidents? How can you ensure your mobile subscribers are not having a traumatic experience?