“Before going to my review, Let me congratulate the MS team for putting this product exactly in 1hr and 45min. THAT’S WHAT I CALL LIGHTNING SPEED”
“Customers are King…Keep the customers happy and you have $ rolling”
This site when it started knew everything about the above saying but some where down the line lost the essence of servicing the customer.
For the P2P like our very own MS, their needs to be a survival model which again totally depends on the customer. Customers are becoming smart now a days with sites like MS and Epinions things are getting really to the customers groove. For any information people now don’t go to some company promoted sites where you have companies helping the customers. But now a days people really believe in sites like MS. For me , before watching a movie, I used to read Rashid Irani’s critical review but I used to get disappointed, but now I have got MS for that, I don’t watch a movie unless and until someone writes a review here on MS. No doubt, its become addictive.
Planetcustomer.com (PC)
PC was recently took over by the Eventures funded Customerasset.com which is a web based contact centre based in Bangalore, which is handling the online customer service for sites like Fabmart & Sifyshopping mall.
PC started with a bang last year in April, when they launched this site and started promoting in a huge way by giving out gifts like Nokia mobile phones and Siemens Handset. This site is all about customers and customers and customers whether it is a product grievances or product feed back.
Though, when first time I saw this site, I felt it was a copy of Epinions.com. But actually, I have no problems with copying the site, because if you see like that rediff.com looks like Excite.com.
Whenever things come up people tend to imitate but only sites with good and proper business model will survive.
The best example is Google and Raging.com. Raging is the copy of google.com, raging is managed by altavista.com. The story we all know, google is still the best.
People started registering on this site and they were getting good responses, looking at this popularity they got hold of another site called productorium.com which as I heard was ghost funded by Rupert Murdoch. Now productorium.com and planetcustomer.com are merged.
Product Reviews
This site is similar to our very own MS because, here you can give reviews on products and services, but don’t even think of going to this site because their products are never updated, still they have only rediff and chequemail as their email products listed, I had given so many suggestions but no use because they are never updated.
The worst part is you cant update your review and once you put your review it is not put properly as all the effort you took in formatting goes waste all the text is taken as one paragraph.
Sometimes Slow and steady loose the race
The site is pathetically slow, it takes ages to load and by the time it comes on your screen you loose interest.
Surveys
There are some stupid surveys; you wouldn’t want to waste the time.
There are some other features like product comparison, ask the experts which are of some importance.
Shop Locator
The best part of the site is the shop locator where, if you want to find the shops for some product like TV and you want it in your area, you can find that at Planetcustomer.com. But again as I said they never update their site, so don’t expect the information to be their. I was trying this small test.
Product à A/c
Company à Hitachi
Area à Mumbai, Vashi
It gave me no records found.
There is a possibility that they must not have tied up with the dealers, but when they are on the net, they should give accurate and complete information, because they cant expect the customer to waste so much time on the net and they going out with nothing.
What has happened is that they have put their legs into many things and they are lost somewhere in that.
Feedback to Companies
This again was really a good concept, wherein you write feedback about the services and they will make it a point that it reaches the company, and the company then responds to your grievances. Here I will give them full marks because, I had put my grievances on Nazara.com and Nazara.com did come back to me but you know Nazara.com Sucks big time so they couldn’t solve my problem. Nazara has got a B Manjri, who handles the customer service, who first of all doesn’t know the “C” of customer service. But at least PC tried to make my voice reach Nazara.com.
Conclusion
It’s really sad to see some good amount of money going waste because of bad management. After all these episodes of the fall of dotcoms there is only one conclusion to it, good ideas and money don’t make a successful company.
If you want to start your own dotcoms, fill your pockets and close the shop, this is the ideal recipe.
First you need to be a IIT or Some Foreign UNIV PG
Have some nice revenue and business model
Catch hold of some Dumb Venture Capitalist
Do a mega launch
Do heavy spending on the advertisement (Fill your pockets too)
Start behaving arrogant with your customers. (In the whole process still go on filling your pockets)
Sell the website to some big portals
And look out for some other ideas…(because by this time you are famous and lot of VC’s will fund you on anything and everything)
Believe me this is a Sarcastical Joke on all the Dumb VCs. I hope these VCs get smart and do some proper investment.