|In: Review|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

What would be widely selected option for the Poll Question – Which is the job category where the job security is Almost guaranteed ?. Without even looking for the Poll Options, you would have mentally decided that ‘Government Job’ is the most secure job option in India 🙂 Before the advent of the Private Organizations in India, there was natural inclination towards Govt Jobs since it was considered a matter of pride & prestige to secure a job in Government sector.

However, with the flurry of Private Companies, the enthusiasm among the youth to join government sector jobs drastically reduced. One of the main reasons was the lack of information about the jobs available in the sector [across various industries like Banking, Finance etc.] and rampant corruption in those jobs. But situation seems to have changed after the BJP Government came into power 2 years back, the main reason being many entrepreneurs [like Nandan Nilekani of Infosys fame, Amit Ranjan of Slideshare fame etc.] have played major role in the transformation of the government to ‘Digital Government’. Though Nandan Nilekani was from Congress, his legacy i.e. Aadhar or UIDAI is still playing a crucial role in life of every Indian. PPP [Public Private Partnership] is definitely making things more transparent and execution of government projects much faster !!!

Image Credit - Sarkari Naukri
Image Source* – Sarkari Naukri

There is awesome news for people seeking jobs in the government sector, over two Lakh posts are estimated to be created by the Central government in it’s various departments [Source* – ET] If you are an engineer planning to pursue UPSC, than this is the right time to switch to your dream career 🙂 You may ask, why are we discussing about Sarkari Jobs – One of my colleagues wanted to move to Government Job since he had interest in it but due to family pressure he landed in Engineering 🙁 While looking out for an appropriate job, we found that there is no dedicated source that lists latest govt jobs until we came across Sarkarijobmilegi. Sarkarijobmilegi.in provides latest Govt Jobs in various government sectors namely Bank Jobs, Teaching Jobs, Railways Jobs, Police Jobs, Defence Jobs, UPSC Jobs, SSC Jobs, Public Sector, PSC etc.

Since the site as well as the Android App was quite helpful to my ex-colleague, we decided to do a thorough review of Sarkarijobmilegi – One stop site for all your Sarkari Job requirements!!!

Sarkarijobmilegi : Niche vertical job website

Unlike other job sites that have jobs catering to numerous categories, Sarkarijobmilegi is a fresh breather since it’s target segment is pre-defined i.e. Only Govt job aspirants. This makes the user-interface also minimalist & less cluttered. Blog kind of interface makes navigation, search and performing other activities on the website very easy!

Sarkarijobmilegi : Government jobs listed across sectors

Whether you are a 10th pass-out or 12th pass-out and aspire to pursue government job that match your skills, this site has the answer. It tries to cover each and every category of government jobs. Be it job in any particular sector or job in any particular State etc, you would ideally find it on Sarkarijobmilegi.

Some important government sectors include Bank, Railway, SSC, UPSC, BHEL, Insurance, Medical, Media and they have it all covered. You can can also filter Latest Govt Jobs by State/Qualification/Job category etc which makes searching for the RIGHT sarkari job all the lot easier 🙂 For example: You can find all the Revenue Department jobs here

Sarkarijobmilegi : Differentiation via Hindi Videos

With the advent of 4G and the growing penetration of internet, it becomes very critical to capitalize on all the sources that can provide useful information to the user. In case of Sarkarijobmilegi, they use the medium of videos to dish out latest information on Government jobs via their YouTube channel

If you are a government job aspirant, you can subscribe to their channel [videos are in Hindi which also increases the overall reach] and get updates about the Latest Govt Jobs

Sarkarijobmilegi : Job Alerts on Mobile

As mentioned in the previous point, tapping every user-channel for better user conversion is very essential. Sarkarijobmilegi also have an Android App where you can view any of the Govt jobs at the click of a button. Their YouTube channel is  also embedded in the App so that you can get latest informative videos on Government jobs.

In case you do not want to miss out on any government job posted on Sarkarinaukrimilegi, you can subscribe to get Push Notifications for latest job posted every day. The great part about the Sarkari Naukri App is that it works even without the Internet which means it might occupy some more space in your device [for offline storage of data]. We tried the app on low-end & high-end Android phone(s) and did not observe any noticeable difference in the performance of the Sarkari Naukri App..

You can also join their Facebook group to connect and get necessary support from other job aspirants. If you aspire to get into government job and want to stay updated with the jobs, job related news etc. than do give Sarkarinaukrimilegi a spin !!!

If you have used Sarkarinaukrimilegi for landing to your dream #Sarkarinaukri than do leave your feedback in the comments section…

|In: Android|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Cheetah Mobile Security Research Lab has issued warnings against a newly found mobile phone Trojan family, which has been dubbed Hummer. During the first half of 2016, the Hummer Trojan infected nearly 1.4 million devices daily at its peak. In China alone, there were up to 63,000 infections every day. According to collected evidence, this Trojan family has something to do with the underground industry chain in China.

Security researchers claim that this Trojan family is one of the largest ever, with millions of Android phones infected around the world. Based on Cheetah Mobile’s estimation, if the virus developer were able to make $0.50 USD [the average cost of getting new installation] every time the virus installed an application on a smartphone, the group behind this Trojan family would be able to make over $500,000 USD daily.

When a mobile phone is infected with the Hummer Trojan, it will root the device to obtain administrator privileges of the system. It will then frequently pop up ads and silently install unnecessary or unwanted applications (even malware) in the background, which consumes a lot of network traffic. Since the Hummer Trojan can gain the highest control over the phone system, ordinary anti-virus tools are not able to clear the Trojan thoroughly – even performing a factory reset on the device won’t get rid of it.

Cheetah Mobile has updated its anti-virus products, CM Security and Clean Master, to ensure users won’t be affected by Hummer. For those who are already infected with this virus, Cheetah Mobile’s Trojan Killer app is available for download on the Google Play Store [and can be downloaded from here] will be able to help users remove this Trojan family from their device easily.

Tracing the source of the Hummer Trojan family
After analyzing the samples, security researchers from Cheetah Mobile discovered the domain names used to update the Trojan. From the beginning of 2016, the group behind the Hummer Trojan family started using 12 domain names to update the Trojan and issue promotion orders.

Through the Whois history information, researchers found that several of the domains are linked to an e-mail account in mainland China. The researchers believe that this Trojan family originated from the underground internet industry chain in China, based on the Trojan codes that have been uploaded to an open-source platform by a careless member of the criminal group behind the Trojan family.

Hummer is now the #1 Trojan across the world
According to data collected by Cheetah Mobile Security Research Lab, between January and June 2016, the average number of Hummer-infected phones is 1,190,000, which is larger than any other mobile phone Trojan.

The Hummer Trojan is spreading throughout the world. India, Indonesia, Turkey, and China have seen the largest number of infections. Below is the list of the top 25 countries that have been affected by the Hummer Trojan family in 2016.

Since India has the most Hummer Trojan infections, Cheetah Mobile Security Lab investigated deeper. Among the top 10 Trojans affecting most users in India, the second and third are members of the Hummer Trojan family, and the sixth is a Trojan that’s promoted by Hummer.

The Hummer Trojan family members are embedded with a root module, and the latest variant has as many as 18 different root methods. Again, once a phone is infected, the Trojan gains root privilege, which makes it very difficult to delete.

This Trojan continually pops up ads on victims’ phones, which is extremely annoying. It also pushes mobile phone games and silently installs porn applications in the background. Unwanted apps appear on these devices, and they are reinstalled shortly after users uninstall them. Cheetah Mobile Security Research Lab made a test with the Hummer Trojan, and the findings were astonishing : In several hours, the Trojan accessed the network over 10,000 times and downloaded over 200 APK’s, consuming 2 GB of network traffic.

Cheetah Mobile’s Trojan Killer app is available for download on the Google Play Store and can be downloaded from here

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

With a focus on bridging employability gaps within the industry NASSCOM has partnered with Autodesk Inc., a world leader in 3D design technology, with a new standardized course-ware Product Design Engineer- Mechanical, so as to enhance skilling in this field. This course-ware will empower students in India with the required competencies at the entry level within the larger occupation of Product Engineering Design in the Engineering Research & Development [ERD] sub-sector of the industry. This course-ware will help create a skilled talent pool, trained on global standards, with the ability to usher in a design-led future of making things.

To ensure the creation of an academic course that is both relevant and viable, NASSCOM partnered with key industry stakeholders namely-ANSYS, Autodesk, Geometric, Imaginarium, JCB, L&T Technology Services, SQS, Tata Technologies and TCS. Their inputs have significantly enhanced the design of the curriculum and course-ware, which also addresses the need for faculty support, and seeks to achieve this by acquainting trainers with the latest advancements in pedagogy.

Tim Scanlon, Global Engagement Lead, Autodesk Education Experiences (AEX), said

India needs an evolved education ecosystem built on the foundations of design thinking. This will ensure that the skill-sets possessed by the workforce is relevant and in-sync with the changing requirements of the manufacturing sector. Autodesk has many global initiatives aimed at enabling design skills, right at the grass-root – the students, who eventually join the industry and fuel the growth of national economies. The partnership with NASSCOM will help us in empowering design and engineering professionals and students in India and make them ready for the Future of Making.

Pradeep Nair, Managing Director Autodesk India & SAARC, said

The manufacturing sector in India is evolving and making rapid strides towards the future. Students and professionals need to possess the relevant technology skills that can enable them to be industry-ready and capable of driving innovation in product design and engineering. Fusion 360 is a highly advanced design tool that combines industrial and mechanical design, collaboration, and machining in a single package. The course-ware based on Fusion 360 will not only up-skill the students but also enable them to dovetail into the evolving requirements of the manufacturing sector in India. Through our collaboration with NASSCOM and IT-ITeS Sector Skill Council NASSCOM, we aim to contribute in up skilling the huge talent pool in India.

R. Chandrashekhar, President NASSCOM, said

Through this tie-up we hope to provide Indian students an opportunity to upgrade their knowledge in the domain and be at par with global industry standards. NASSCOM is confident that this course will help enhance the skills of professionals in the industry making them market ready.

India is one of the world’s largest population base of employable youth and is poised to become a sought-after destination for those seeking higher value add and specialized services. Per industry figures, the manufacturing industry contributes nearly 15.1% of India’s GDP and its contribution is expected to be around 25-30% by 2025. The sector is expected to reach USD 1 trillion by 2025 in the process creating 90 million jobs. This initiative is a collaborative effort with NASSCOM, Autodesk and other industry members, is of great importance for all stakeholders concerned – the industry, academia, and the students. This initiative is expected to build new employability standards, bearing in mind the changing scenario of talent demand and supply in the industry. 

About Autodesk

Autodesk makes software for people who make things. If you are ever driven a high-performance car, admired a towering skyscraper, used a smartphone, or watched a great film, chances are you’ve experienced what millions of Autodesk customers are doing with our software. Autodesk gives you the power to make anything. For more information visit Autodesk

|In: Android|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Swipe Technologies, India’s leading mobile internet company has launched a premium tablet experience that is reckoned to set a disruption in the category. Swipe X703 is a combination of innovation and technology with splendid IPS display to provide crystal clear images and a number of other compelling features that will make the tablet highly desirable for all, especially, India’s aspiring young population.

The new tablet’s highly efficient processor enables fluent multitasking with minimal lags. It is equipped with a powerful battery that never lets you run out of the juice with its triggered performance. 10.1 inch is a size which is used in not only consumer segment but also in education & enterprise segment due to its reading and multimedia experience yet being very lightweight and portable in comparison to bulky laptops.

Launching the new Swipe X703 tablet on 4th June, Shripal Gandhi, Founder and CEO of Swipe Technologies, said

As a leading player in the smartphones space in India, we are committed to offer superior products to our customers every time. After tremendous success of our previous products, it is important for us to live up to our customer’s rising expectations. We continuously seek feedback from our users and incorporate them in our new offerings. Swipe X703 is an outcome of such customer engagement and it is ready to take the experience to the next level. It is a combination of innovation and technology that is designed to provide an ultimate tablet experience to its user.

What makes Swipe X703 unique is its 25.65 cms [10.1 inch] IPS display, which offers wide viewing angle along with a splendid colour resolution. The Swipe X703 offers unmatched entertainment experience with its rich, detailed and crystal-clear colors. Its brilliant display resolution of 1280*800 pixels vastly improves your gaming & video watching experience. You can even watch your favourite TV series on this tablet with smooth streaming and amazing clarity. Its extensive screen display also provides rich detailed fragmentation to every shot that you watch.

It’s 1.3 GHz Quad-Core processor provides a smooth support for multitasking so that you can easily switch between multiple applications. It also allows you to easily stream and watch videos directly from YouTube and other video-streaming applications. It’s 1GB RAM provides an enhanced trigger to effective speed of multitasking.

It is designed with great care to capture your fondest memories with its 5MP rear camera and save your pictures on its 8GB of internal memory. The rear camera is designed in a way that you cannot miss out a single shot of perfection with rich details and fragmentation. The Swipe X703 tablet is also equipped with a 2MP front camera to click endless selfies whenever you want and wherever you are. You can upload your latest selfies and stay connected and updated socially.

Swipe X703 Tablet comes with a powerful 6000 mAh battery. The splendid back-up support of this battery allow you to play games, watch movies and videos, browse on the internet and attend long calls seamlessly. The battery is designed in such a way that you can keep going with your work all day and night long without fresh recharge. It also uplifts your user experience with the latest Android 5.1 Lollipop Operating System. The in-trend Operating System provides better Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity along with an effective maintenance of output profiles. It is designed to ensure optimum device protection all day and night long.

Swipe X703 tablet from the House of Swipe is available exclusively on Snapdeal from 4th July 2016

About Swipe Technologies

Swipe Technologies is an innovation-centric mobility solutions company, having started its operations in July 2012. Within a short span of time, Swipe has become the leading tablet and Smartphone maker in India. Swipe was started with an aim to bring exciting devices in the growing Indian market and today, it is the leading consumer brand with key innovations across products, pricing and customer support.

Founded by technocrat Mr. Shripal Gandhi, Swipe raised $5 million in May 2014 from the Venture Capital firm Kalaari Capital. For more details, please visit JustSwipe

|In: Android|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

Planning road trips in India just became a little easier. With the latest update on Google Maps on Android [coming soon to iOS], now you can plan your road trip with multi-stop directions.

Just open the app, enter a destination, tap the corner menu, and then click “Add stop”. To rearrange the order of your stops, tap and hold the three dot menu to the left of “Add stop” and drag it to the position you want – you can even search for types of places like petrol pumps, ATM’s or restaurants like you normally search. You can add as many stops as like and once you’re done, tap “Finished” and your multi-stop routing is complete. When you enter navigation mode you will have the same seamless driving experience you are used to, whether you are running errands or hoping beaches in Goa.

A lot of the fun of travelling is the memories created while exploring new places with friends, family or even solo. Pictures are a traditional way to remember those moments, but now with “Your Timeline”, users on Android can preserve their travel memories and info in a new way. Google Maps users that have the Location History enabled can open Your Timeline, select a date from their recent vacation or everyday life and add notes to help remember what they did that day-or save important notes for later.

Sanket Gupta, Product Manager, Google Maps, said

No matter where your travels take you this monsoon season and beyond, these new Google Maps features will get you there and help keep track of all the memories you make along the way.

Download the latest Google Maps for Android from here

|In: Spinny|Last Updated: | 1 Comment

Spinny, the online used car marketplace that recently acquired its rival HopCar, has introduced data driven algorithmic engines – ‘Spinny Star Price‘ and ‘Spinny Star Rating‘, which the company stresses will further help simplify the entire process of Buying and Selling Pre-Owned Cars online.

Image Source - MySpinny

Image Source* – MySpinny

Niraj Singh, CEO & Founder, Spinny said

For an individual, it’s very difficult to correctly predict the right price of any car. The information asymmetry prevalent in the used car market often leads to cases of over-payment & underpayment in a transaction, leaving the buyers & the sellers unsatisfied. The Spinny Star Price helps tackle this issue. While there are other algorithms available in the market, the Spinny Star Price engine, provides reasons behind how the price provided has depreciated to its current value from the car’s original on-road price.

Spinny price engine leverages artificial neural network model to accurately predict the price of a used car. According to Ramanshu Mahaur, CTO & Co-Founder

The engine takes in account more than 500K data points from actual car transactions, to provide a precise price range of a used car based on it’s condition, demand-supply match and sale’s channel. It has also been trained to dynamically correct itself by accounting for events like new model launches, changes in taxes, and the seasonality of demand and supply.

Spinny claims that the Pricing Engine is already powering more than 1000 transactions a month and has been garnering positive feedback from its users since its closed beta launch 3 months earlier.

The Spinny Star Rating engine, on the other hand works as a scoring mechanism to assist people in finding and comparing different cars. The algorithm behind takes hierarchical anatomy of car to see how each part and its functionality affect overall structure and performance of the car. Factors which affect the desirability of a car such as registration dates and current number of owners are also fed into the rating engine. Taking all factors which affect the buying decision for a buyer, the Engine calculates a final score for each product listing which indicates how good a deal is.

For a long time, the Used Car market had lacked a standardised method of Price discovery and validation that has kept many buyers and sellers from involving in used car transactions. The introduction of the Spinny Star Price and the Spinny Star Rating is a step in the right direction by the company to simplify the way used cars are bought and sold in India.

Do give Spinny a try & share across your feedback/experience in the comments section…

|In: Interviews|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

How many times have you encountered a situation where you are looking for Quotes from famous people or everyday quotes etc. and when you eventually search on Google (or Search Engine of your choice), you are bombarded with tons of websites, you might find the Quote but it would again be from an un-trusted source. The information around contemporary quotes is completely scattered and this is the problem that Paris based startup Storyzy (a Trooclick brand) is trying to solve for Information hungry internet consumers !!!

Today we have a Q&A with Stanislas Motte, Co-founder & CEO of Storyzy. We discuss about various aspects of Storyzy, Importance of Content, Entrepreneurial culture in Paris and much more.

StoryZy-new-logo

Can you give a small background about Storyzy and it’s founders ?

Storyzy is a Trooclick brand. Trooclick was founded in November 2012. The original goal of Trooclick’s founders was to create an automated fact-checking algorithm. The created and launched a plug-in that would fact check financial news articles, but the results were surprising – there were almost no voluntary errors. The team realized that, although errors are interesting, it’s omissions that are even more juicy. What people say, and what they don’t say, are quite revealing. So the team decided to make a pivot in late 2014 to the extraction of reported speech (quotes).

Trooclick was founded by a team of four. For, Stanislas Motte (CEO), Trooclick (Storyzy) is his second company. His first, Diora News, was one of the first news agencies that specialized in mobiles (in 1999). He sold DioraNews to Buongiorno, the world’s third multimedia mobile service company, owned by NTT DoCoMo. Pierre-Albert Ruquier (CMO) has 15 years experience in digital information and news distribution; he was also co-founder and associate CEO of Diora News. Arnaud Jacolin (CFO) is the former financial controller (French subsidiary) turned CFO of Buongiorno where he oversaw a more than $46 million growth in 2010. Ramón Ruti (CTO) contributed to the launch of iTouch Movilisto, a publisher of mobile content listed on the London stock exchange. In 2008, following the purchase of iTouch Movilisto by Buongiorno (bought out by NTT Docomo), he was given the direction of an international team of 15 engineers.

Can you explain about the features of Storyzy and how it can help content publishers with their content ?

Storyzy is the only systematic source for contemporary quotes. It searchable by keyword and topic and always provides source information for each quote (the article, or articles, where the quote can be found) and a date (publication date of article). There is no other quote database (that we know of) that specializes in the systematic indexation of contemporary quotes. For content marketers, Storyzy is helpful for content curation.

Currently, how many sites (approximately) does Storyzy index in order to extract the quotes from the articles ?

The Storyzy algorithm indexes more than 60 thousand publisher websites on a regular basis.

How does your back-end service ensure the genuineness and originality of the quote extracted from any particular website.

We have integrated a sort of automated editorialization into the Storyzy algorithm, which is divided into essentially 3 parts. The first part is all about grammar : The algorithm discards any speeches (quotes) that are not syntactically correct. With the well-formed speeches, two things happen. On the one hand, the speeches are giving an “interest” score. To this the algorithm identifies instances of subjectivity, informativity, comparison, forecasting, etc… the presence of these elements in a speech gives the speech points. This point system allows the algorithm to essentially “rank” quotes based upon a set of assumptions – it can raise to most interesting quotes to the top of a list.

On the other hand, the algorithm is capable of categorizing a speech as being either subjective or objective. In other words: is the speech primarily informative (i.e. “The sky is blue”)? Or is the speech more opinionated (i.e. “I think the sky is beautiful”)? Using the “interesting quotes” points system and the subjective/objective categorization, the Storyzy algorithm is able to highlight the most original and interesting quotes out of a large group.

When it comes to the genuineness of a quote – whether it is correctly attributed to the correct person – our system is only as accurate as the journalists who write the articles from whence the quotes are extracted. Every ounce of information found on Storyzy is extracted from the context of news articles. We are not in the business of fact checking [not anymore], our job is simply to generate structured news data directly from the text of news articles, and to compile data into a user-friendly interface.

Twitter has changed the way news/information is consumed, how exactly is Storyzy different from services like Twitter

Storyzy’s approach to news is unique because it is quote-focused. There are dozens of websites where you can go find motivation or inspirational quotes. The difference between Storyzy and these types of websites is that Storyzy is focused on the the quotes of today. On Storyzy, every quote comes with a date (publication date of associated article) and also with a source (or sometimes many sources) – two things that you don’t find on your typical “find a quote” website. This is important because it allows users to find contemporary brand-relevant quotes to curate and promote their brand message. We like to think of it as a new spin on reactive marketing : Inserting your brand into the buzzing conversational topics of the day [on social media, in the news, or elsewhere].

Can you touch base on the StoryzyAPI [it’s Usage, Pricing, etc.] which can be used by 3rd party dev’s, organizations, bloggers etc.

The Storyzy API has essentially 2 functionalities. The first gives users access to all of Storyzy’s data : quotes, people [plus their affiliation and photo when available], organizations and more. Users can recuperate information from the database via a keyword search or they can recuperate a 24 hour news cycle all in one go. The second gives users access to Storyzy’s engine : they can input news articles [one or more at a time, in almost any format: raw, binary, or a url] and the engine will extract and consolidate, all the news data from each article. The API is available on Mashape under a tiered pricing plan. User can make a small number of calls for free each month, the price goes up by a function of usage and difference endpoints have a different weight (in terms of pricing), due to the fact that the amount of data they deliver varies significantly. Storyzy is open to discuss pricing solutions and can be contacted at api@trooclick.com

Can you explain the revenue model of Storyzy ?

Storyzy’s revenue model is freemium. In 2016, use of the Storyzy interface [and all associated features and functionalities] will be free and use of the Storyzy API is paid. In 2017, premium features and functionalities will be added to the Storyzy interface, possible examples include: historical information, analytics and data visualizations, customized image and video creation, etc… These ideas are all presently being tested with our early adopters.

Can you touch upon Storyzy’s association with GEN Summit that is scheduled for June 2016

To give you some background, the Global Editors’ Network is a cross platform community of editors, committed to sustainable, high-quality journalism. We are delighted to be working in partnership with the organization at this year’s summit, which will bring together the trends set to define journalism in the year to come. We will also be exhibiting beside a number of industry leaders, including Google, the Knight Foundation, Russia Today and many others.

Is Storyzy/Trooclick bootstrapped or funded (angel/VC funded) startup ?

Storyzy [Trooclick] is not yet venture-backed, but does have the financial support of the three French banks. Trooclick’s founders personally invested $1 million in the company since its founding.

What are your thoughts on the way Digital Media is consumed [and future of Digital Media]

At Storyzy, we think it’s clear that it’s important for media companies and publishers to “go with the flow”. Things are changing, new social platforms, new content formats, new everything – every few months. The media companies that survive and flourish will be those that are willing to adapt their methodologies quickly to changing consumer habits. The companies that fail will be those that cling to the past.

Importance of Video in Marketing & Digital Media Consumption

The importance of video marketing cannot be overstated. We have a instagram account. An average photo post gets about 40 likes. The average video post get more than 1000 views and hundreds of likes. Need we say more.

Some thoughts about the startup eco-system in Paris ?

The startup ecosystem is Paris is great. The number of startups in the neighbourhood has grown tremendously in recent years. For example, Storyzy’s office is located in one of the many, brand new startup incubators in Paris. We share the building with probably close to 50 other startup companies.

Some marketing tips for startups ?

Curate news quotes of course! 😉 But quite frankly… curation [either on a blog and/or social media sites] is an excellent solution for the time-poor start-up. We all know that content marketing works – but content creation is usually a large investment. Content curation is a great compromise. In fact, we have written a post about it and you can Marketing Tips for Startups Our golden rule: Think hard about your target audience. What matters to them ? What would be useful to them ? That’s what you should curate and create.

If you have any questions for the Storyzy team, please leave a comment or email your request to himanshu.sheth@gmail.com

|In: Marketing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments

According to new research from Accenture, fifty four percent of Indian consumers prefer dealing with human beings over digital channels to solve customer services issues. The report also found that 88 percent of consumers have switched provider in the past year due to poor customer service, with internet service providers, retailers and banks being the worst offenders. In India, the estimated cost of customers switching due to poor service is $412 billion.

Image Source – Accenture

The Accenture Strategy report, Digital Disconnect in Customer Engagement, is based on the company’s eleventh annual Global Consumer Pulse Research, which gauges the experiences and attitudes of 24,489 consumers around the world about marketing, sales and customer services. 550 Indian consumers were included in the sample.

Raghuram Devarakonda, Managing Director, Advanced Customer Strategy, Accenture Strategy said

Companies have lost sight of the importance of human interaction and often make it too difficult for consumers to get the right level of help and service that they need. Companies wrongly assume that their digital-only customers are their most profitable, and that customer service is a cost. Consequently they over-invest in digital technologies and channels and lose their most profitable customers – multi-channel customers – who want experiences that cover both digital and traditional channels.

The importance of human connection in customer services

Human interaction remains a vital component of customer satisfaction, even in the ‘digital age’. 54 percent of Indian consumers prefer dealing with human beings over digital channels to solve customer services issues and get advice [70 percent]. Another 63 percent of consumers say they are even willing to pay a higher price for goods and services if it ensures a better level of service.

Physical or in-store experiences are also highly valued amongst consumers. 51 percent agree that in-store service is the best channel for getting a tailored experience and 49 percent say they are more willing to be sold new or upgraded products when receiving a face-to-face service compared to online. Another 44 percent say they would rather go to a store first than use digital channels to get advice on the best products and services.

Raghuram Devarakonda, Managing Director, Advanced Customer Strategy, Accenture Strategy added

Indian companies have reached a tipping point in their customer’s digital intensity and need to re-balance their digital and traditional customer services investments if they want to improve loyalty, differentiate themselves and drive growth. Companies abandon the human connection at their own risk and are facing the need to rebuild it to deliver the varied and tailored outcomes that customers demand.

Improving customer experience

The Accenture Strategy report reveals that there is huge room for improvement in the delivery of today’s customer services. 57 percent of consumers admit that it is frustrating dealing with a company that does not make it easy to do business with them. Another 65 percent expect customer service to be easier and more convenient, and 83 percent want it to be faster. Complaining on social media about poor customer experience is the norm for over half [53 percent] of consumers who admit taking to social channels in order to vent.

Once a provider loses a customer, 52 percent of consumers will not go back. But there are measures companies can take to hold on to them. 81 percent of ‘switchers’ feel the company could have done something to retain them. 74 percent report that if companies could provide customers with better live or in-person customer service, it would have impacted their decision to switch provider.

How leaders of customer services succeed

Organizations that want to re-balance their digital and traditional customer service channels should look to:

  1. Put the human and physical elements back into customer services : Rethink your investment strategy. The focus should be on delivering satisfying customer experiences – not methods of interaction. Ensure your channel management approach delivers integrated experiences.
  2. Make it easy for customers to switch channels to get the experiences they want : Build customer service channels that enable consumers to fluidly move from digital to human interaction to get the outcomes they desire.
  3. Root out toxicity : Define and address the most toxic customer experiences across all channels. These experiences can directly impact profitability. Identify the experiences that have the greatest potential downside and leverage those insights to guide an investment strategy.
  4. Guarantee personal data security : 80 percent of consumers say it is extremely important that companies protect the privacy of their personal information. By not selling or sharing customer data with other companies, and guaranteeing that safeguards are in place to protect it, consumers will be more willing to hand over personal information which can be leveraged to deliver better experiences.

Accenture’s Digital Disconnect in Customer Engagement report can be downloaded from here. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter @AccentureStrat #GCPR

About the Research

Accenture Strategy’s Global Consumer Pulse Research is an annual online research project that assess customer attitudes towards marketing, sales and customer service practices & customers’ behaviours in response to companies’ practices. The 2015 survey includes online responses from 24,489 consumers in 33 countries including India. Respondents were asked to evaluate their experiences of up to four industries out of 11 industry sectors: retail banking and financial services, wireless services providers, consumer goods retailers, gas and electric utility providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, property and casualty insurance providers, fixed service providers (excluding cable and satellite), healthcare providers, hotels and lodging, life insurance, and cable and satellite service providers. The survey was fielded in August and September 2015