The other day, I went to CTC (Coffee, Tea & Company, Lahore) to buy a cake. Over there, I mentioned that I was taking the cake to Islamabad by road. The person serving me (I later on found out, that he the owner), immediately asked me, where I was going & how much travel time. He then recommended that, I buy Chocolate Fudge Cake. He said that, ONLY that cake would stay ok for 8-10 hours travel time (by the way, that particular cake stays nice for 2-3 days in a fridge. All other cakes would spoil due to lack of refrigeration during the expected travel time. The Chocolate Fudge Cake is among the cheaper items in CTC. The guy could have sold me a more expensive item, but wanted a long term relationship through better customer services.

Usually in our Country, however, we believe that Customer Services are the pits and CSRs enjoy the status of pariahs in their organizations (whatever that Organization maybe). How often have you met a CSR (in any setting) and when he mentions that, he is a CSR, you have mentally considered him to be moron and left him there & then.

This is particularly true in Telecom Companies, where most cuts are made in the CSR Departments, whenever there is a need for cost cuttings. Now, as a consumer, you actually pay for the privilege of calling customer services (well, one must be charitable, that is the first thing, the recording tells you. Its not like that, you were uninformed). I might be wrong, but isn’t good customer services a competitive advantage? Isn’t it something, which distinguishes you from the rest of the pack? It makes you wonder, what the marketing guys were smoking. They spend a fortune on advertising & promotion, especially competing in the Dance-a-thon. The aim of these Dance-a-thon is, what I have understood so far is, "How Many Dancing Guys & Gals Can We Include in One Commercial". About the message, I have no idea, but the dance-a-thons are nice and you learn some really nice dance steps, which one can then use to impress family & friends at functions.

Some examples of CSR:

a. Staying online for about 45 Minutes hearing MUZAK & being told that, the call was important, while waiting for a CSR to pick up phone (reason for call: GPRS Service was not working. reason for CSR not picking up phone: he was busy serving other customers). Well, the waiting was not that bad, as managed to watch the entire episode of "Numbers" on TV.

b. Spending 75 Minutes calling the Customer Services Line and not being able to get through. Then being told that, you have reached the max number of phone calls and should try after 24 hours.

c. Spending 2 days trying to get GPRS activated and hearing that, the complaint has been forwarded and you would hear from us. After 48 hours, giving up hope and calling an acquaintance and telling him the problem. Result, problem solved in 60 minutes.

Result:

a. One connection bought, SIM lying somewhere for the past 15 Months.
b. One Connection to be bought cancelled just before purchase.

Marketing Guys, I don’t know about you. But as a marketing professional, for me Customer Services are highly important. Good Customer Services can make or break a relationship. Would paying 30K a Month to 100 CSRs for a year (36 Million Rs) be that high an expense? It might be actually cheaper than running Dancing Ads after ever over / every wicket in one Match of the IPL.

PS If you need an authority to convince the Management about the importance of Customer Services. Check out Seth Godin’s Post here (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/06/learning-from-f.html)

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Confiz Systems recently unveiled their second product targeting the PK Market. Mango is a "SMS based social network" for the masses. It is somewhat similar to Twitter, but not focused on micro-blogging - rather they let people mass-send SMSes to their friends or to special groups.

A number of our readers are already aware of this startup, and some were quick to point out that this is very similar to Chopaal.pk. Both Confiz and Chopaal were incubated out of LUMS but there is no clear indication to imply that the idea was shared.

I’m not a big SMS user, but I can see this application taking off in this market. First of all they’ve designed it so that the app will spread virally because people can sign up and sign their friends in with just an SMS. The value to heavy SMS-users is the money they save from sending fewer messages to reach most of their friends, added privacy via number protection, and a more streamlined way to communicate with each other because you can just set up a "anyone for lunch" group rather than sending out a number of sms’s to different people. Groups based on different topics of discussion just seems to make sense.

For local Twitter users, Mango and Chopaal both offer a similar system (create a group and communicate) but with a local number instead of the UK number to sms to.

An example that is very similar in a nearly identical context is SMS Gup Shup based in India - although initially called a Twitter clone, they allowed people to join networks quickly and virally through sms alone (and without going through a website registration) which has led them to gain 7-times the userbase of Twitter. SMS Gup Shup recently raised $10M in funding from Charles Rivers Ventures and Helion Venture Partners

Good luck guys and keep us posted on user uptake.

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The web application will contain different modules to allow university career centers to liaison with the industry, track their alumni and more. Based on the vague set of marketing jargon I could find on the web, these are the modules that should be available to each university:

• Job postings by industry HR managers for students, alumni etc
• Lets students … er.. create CVs (honestly you had to wade through 2 paragraphs of marketing-speak to find that) - including a brief “graduate synopsis” summary
• Employers can search for particular skills, or create a graduation book dynamically
• Alumnis can also … er.. create CVs and update their info (employer details etc).
• A professional network interface to connect people together
• Faculty Profiles, Research interests and papers.
• Internship Portal

So in other words, Rozee just received Rs.12.19M to pretty much take their existing set of tools and tweak them to make a white-labelled hosted solution out of it to offer to 85+ universities in the next 18 months. As you can imagine, white-labeling an existing product is a fairly straightforward task taking no more than a few months.

This also represents growing confusion in the hiring market now because of a sudden abundance of platforms for job placements - from 2-3 to 30+ - which is likely to segment and confuse job seekers as well as complicate life for recruiters.

Brightspyre’s early foray into university-specific job boards is already showing signs of employers being confused about having to manage multiple job boards - add those to PSEB’s recent Internship Portal (also created by Brightspyre) and we can see type of disintegrated and fragmented online future we’re heading towards in the recruitment space.

For more information about this, read the ATP story linked below — though I have to warn you, that story is written by the Marketing Manager at ROZEE and is chock full of sickening marketing jargon — seriously, this jargon is actually worse than the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator - some brilliant quotes from it below.

“…a first-of-its-kind web-based technology has been developed to create a Campus Career Portal.”

The Magic of Technology

As Arthur C. Clarke said,

“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,”

very effectively empower universities to achieve economy of scale that lowers the cost of higher education for the common man, through effective and revenue-generating linkage between industry and academia. The use of technology consequently enables better placement of jobs for graduates as well as a greater ability to showcase faculty talents to sponsoring industry members.

*GROAN*… how can someone let them butcher Arthur C. Clarke’s vision by linking it to a job portal!?

I’m deeply disappointed at ATP for letting a marketer corrupt their real-estate’s high standard with B.S.

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This latest competition is being held under the auspices of Ministry of Youth Affairs, in collaboration with islamabad Chamber of Commerce and industry.

To be eligible, you need to be between 15-29 years of age and a citizen of Pakistan either individually or as a team. It has to be original and ensure there are no IP violations by submitting an affidavit to this effect.

Prize money for top 10 proposals are Rs. 50,000 each alongwith a certificate.

Deadline is 29-08-2008 and guidelines can be downloaded from www.moya.gov.pk. You can submit your proposal electronically at soic@moya.gov.pk and submit 5 hard copies and a CD physically to the ministry. Contact person is Ms. Rabia Muzaffar, Research Officer, Ministry of Youth Affairs at 051-9213106.

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This is hilarious… but on a serious note - do news companies really have a conflict of interest here - in the example above… is it the interest of the news corp to mention credit card fraud? Its not really their interest to do that - just their job.

Should a newspaper who writes something negative about a company also not accept ads from that company? Obviously not? But what about placement of these ads?

A very common strategy in print in practice here, is that in case you have a devastating news about your company that is about to be published… spend millions to sponsor front half-page ads (the most expensive ones). If you take up half of the front page, the bad news is likely to be shifted to the second page, where its likely to not be read that often.

Ethics anyone?

Your thoughts below.

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Specifically these are things that might seriously discourage the outlook of people like us.

Before I add my own thoughts on it though - I want to hear from you. What’re you seeing happening online around you or within tech / innovation recently that makes you depressed?

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Other ISPs who also used PTCL backhaul - such as Nayatel in Islamabad - are also affected.

If someone knows more about progress here, please share in the comments.

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The beauty is that JustMeans isnt only focusing on helping with the process of hiring (i.e. helping you get more resumes, parse resumes, schedule interviews or what not ) but they’re focusing on something that is much much more valuable to me today - they’re helping companies create a better brand or impression among candidates; helping companies find the right candidates who will be a long-term fit; and most importantly helping generation-Y find more meaning in their work.

Their approach is that (1) they allow companies to build a rich information portal that describes them and whatever is unique about them and sets them apart — this really goes well beyond the "company name and profile" standard. (2) They actually allow anyone to start discussions with different people from the company… not just the HR or PR people but any of the employees who’re part of the company’s "network"… and these conversations are also available on the portal or peruse when researching that firm.

Through conversation candidates can likely discover who that company really is and what they believe in… candidates can discover well before applying to positions whether or not that company will offer intellectually stimulating work, a respectful work environment, or a vision to be happy to be a part of, a lunch-menu that feeds a demanding stomach…. whatever you choose as qualities of the "perfect job". In that way they are much more likely to discover a company that they would gel with much better.

JustMeans basically helps to filter candidates down to people who’re actually interesting in the firm on merit, so that when that firm opens job positions they are likely to find just the right talent for their firm.

I had the chance of speaking to their CEO Martin Smith and the amount of leadership and domain insight he demonstrated was remarkable. According to him, any successful platform or trading floor reduces the total transaction costs against which value is purchased, and JustMeans is helping to reduce the transaction costs of finding more meaning in your work. Read the full interview at Social Bridges.

Now, for the dozens of job boards locally trying to cash-in on a bandwagon - why cant anyone think beyond whats already (not) working and try to solve the deeper issues of the average company trying to attract good talent. Can we think beyond logos as a way of attracting those people and help us build employment brands? Pretty please?

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Government of Pakistan has initiated a broad based consultative process to formulate National IT Policy for the next five years. In order to make a realistic and practical policy the Government intends to involve all the stakeholders in this consultative process. Kindly send your comments to asaeed at moitt.gov.pk latest by 31st of July 2008. You can post your comments as well on virtual group at http://www.nidu. gov.pk/forum

You are kindly requested to give your inputs which may not be restricted only to the following questions:

• What opportunities are available in national and international markets which can be availed by having right policies in place for the promotion of IT Sector of Pakistan?
• What steps are required and what quantifiable targets can be set in the policy for IT sector to:

• Increase IT Exports
• Stimulate Local industry
• Support local entrepreneurship
• Develop Human Resource
• Improve IT infrastructure
• Integrate IT education
• Enhance e-services
• Promote e-commerce
• Explore innovative digital opportunities

• What impediments are to be removed to have a better business environment in Pakistan in IT sector?
• What steps are to be taken for the overall promotion of IT sector and IT Businesses in Pakistan?

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The 10 startups are:

1. Pinger
2. Pownce
3. Qik
4. Dash
5. Ushahidi
6. QTech
7. 33Across
8. Peer39
9. Mashery
10. Anagran

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