Tag: trulymadly

App-in-app?

I recently got an email from my airline app that I could book my car ride within the same app. It was a way of providing end-to-end services. Much like the home pickup and drop service provided for business class customers by the Emirates. What are the implications of these for the customer, the airline, and the cab-hailing firm? Let’s explore.

It is an app-redirect

First, read the terms of how it works in the case of Jet Airways and Uber here. The substantive part of the T&C is hidden in the paragraphs quoted below:

“PLEASE NOTE, YOU ARE MAKING THE PAYMENT TO UBER DIRECTLY. JET AIRWAYS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE / INVOLVED IN THIS FULFILMENT PROCESS. JET AIRWAYS WILL NOT BE LIABLE AND/OR RESPONSIBLE FOR REFUNDS, DELAYS, REJECTIONS, PAYMENT AND FULFILLMENT OR OTHERWISE OF THE SERVICES OR IN RESPECT OF ANY DISPUTES IN RELATION THERETO, IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER.” (emphasis original)

Then, what is the value of this app-in-app integration?

Customer perspective

For the customer, it has the potential to work as a seamless end-to-end service. I imagine a future, where you would find a partner using Tinder or TrulyMadly, plan your evening to a game/ movie using BookMyShow, find a restaurant & book your table using Zomato, and take Uber whenever you are ready to move on, or better still, have an Ola Rentals car waiting for you through the evening. All in one app. Wouldn’t you love it, if all of it were integrated in one App? Just imagine the convenience if your restaurant-finder knew that you are in a particular concert at a specific place and you are likely to head out for dinner at a particular time. This specific knowledge could immensely help your restaurant-finder app to customize the experience for you – for instance, it could not only provide you those restaurant options that are open late in the evening after the concert was over, in a location that is close to the venue; it could possibly alert the restaurant that you were arriving in 15 minutes, based on your Uber location. And through the evening, post your pictures on Instagram and SnapChat, check-in to all those locations in Facebook, and Tweet the experience live.

Yes, you would leave a perfect trail for the entire evening in a single place, and if you were to be involved in an investigation, it would be so easy for the officer to trace you! No need for Sherlock Holmes and Watson here – the integrator app would take care of all the snooping for you!

Convenience or scary? What are the safeguards related to such data sharing across different entities? How will the data be regulated?

The Integrator perspective

Why would a Jet Airways provide an Uber link inside its App? Surely cab-hailing and air travel are complementary services. Plus, Jet Airways believes that its customers would find it convenient to book an Uber ride from within the Jet Airways app, as they trust the app to provide Uber with all the relevant details – like the estimated landing/ boarding time of the flight, drop/ pickup addresses, etc. Jet Airways also needs to believe that its customers would rather choose an Uber cab, rather than its competitor OLA Cabs, or any other airport taxi service. The brands should have compatible positioning. Given that Jet Airways is a full service carrier, and differentiates based on its service quality, Uber might be a good fit. But the same might not hold good for a low-cost/ regional carrier like TruJet connecting cities like Tirupati, where Uber does not operate.

Does integrating complementary services affect customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, customer switching costs, and/or multi-homing costs? In contexts where these services and brands are compatible, and there is a convenience involved in sharing of data between these services, there is likely to be some value added. Like airlines and hotels (hotels would like to know your travel schedule); currency exchanges and international travel (the currency exchange would love to know which countries you are visiting); or international mobile services. If there was no data to be shared between the complementary services, the user would rather have them unbundled. Think travel and stock brokerage.

That said, platforms find innovative complementarities. For instance, airlines (primarily the full-service carriers) have launched co-branded credit cards. In a recent visit to Chennai, there were more American Express staff at the Jet Airways lounge than the airline or lounge staff! And they were obviously signing up customers. What are the complementarities between credit cards and air travel, apart from paying from that card? A lot of business travellers have their business travel desks do the payments; consultants have their clients booking the tickets; and even for individuals and entrepreneurs, the credit card market is so fragmented that everyone holds multiple cards. And the payment gateways accept all possible payment options, including “paying cash at the airport counter”. They why co-brand credit cards – sharing of reward points/ airline miles. Either customers do not earn sufficient airline miles and using these co-branded credit cards help them earn more miles and retain/ upgrade their airline status (remember the 2009 movie, Up in the Air?); or they do not earn enough reward points in using their credit cards that they can redeem their airline miles as credit card reward points. Either ways, each one is covering up for the other.

In this covering up, or more diplomatically consolidation of rewards, the partners increase customer switching and multi-homing costs. Surely, redeemable airline miles might be more valuable to a frequent traveller than credit card reward points that have limited redemption/ cash back opportunities. But for loyalty to increase, it is imperative that both brands stand on their own – providing compatible services.

Mother of all apps

All this looks futuristic to you? A lot of you have been using an ubiquitous desktop app known as the browser for a long time, which has been doing exactly this! In a subtle form, though. However, there are firms that own multiple such apps, and they use a single sign-on – like all of Google services. Plus, even third-party sites like Quora allow for using your Google credentials to sign-in. The trade-offs are not always explicitly specified – it is always the case of caveat emptor – consumer beware.

Quora homepage

So, the next time you experience some cross-marketing across platforms/ apps, think what data might be shared across both the apps; and if you would really value the integration.

Cheers!

(c) 2017. R Srinivasan

 

How to build a platform business?

In his recent convocation address at our institute (Indian Institute of Management Bangalore), Mr. Nandan Nilekani stressed on how platform firms have come to dominate the Indian (and global) markets, and the need for our graduating students to understand them well (see http://www.iimb.ernet.in/convocation-2016). In this post, I would focus on categorizing different types of platforms, and some key issues in building a platform business.

Platforms are firms that operate in multi-sided markets. Unlike firms where products and services flow in one direction (remember, Porter’s value chain?) in a pipeline fashion, and money flows in the opposite direction, platform business models connect multiple sets of users. In the traditional sense of the word, a railway platform helps passengers find their trains and vice versa. The train station manager sets the rules, provides the infrastructure, and enables a smooth discovery and transaction between the different sides (trains and passengers). Imagine trying to find and board trains like you would board a taxi in the streets of Mumbai or New York! Generalizing this, the firm that provides the infrastructure is the “platform provider” and the one that sets the rules and norms is called the “platform sponsor”. In some cases, the platform provider and sponsor could be the same firm (like in the case of a railway platform); and in some other contexts, the platform provider could be different than the sponsor (like in the case of Uber or OYO rooms, where the cabs/ rooms are owned by independent entrepreneurs and the rules of the exchange/ transaction is set by the aggregator).

Platforms match different sides of users. In their role as matchmakers, they provide different value propositions – discovery, quality assessment, norms for interaction, setting expectations, and provide feedback – for each of the sides. Let me discuss how to build each of these value propositions (when you are setting up a platform business model) in detail, with examples from established platforms.

Discovery

This is in fact the first thing to focus on when you set up the platform. Setting up the infrastructure to facilitate interactions is the easiest thing to do. The most difficult part of process is the populating the sides with users. Here is where new platforms encounter the classic “penguin” problem, where users on one side postpone adoption till such time there are enough users on the other side. How would you like to be the “first” person to be listed on a dating site, seeking to find a date? You would affiliate with a dating site only when you are sure that there are already enough members on the other side. Platforms need to overcome this inertia by incentivizing one side to affiliate, in anticipation of affiliation by a large number of right kind of members on the other side. Various platforms have solved the penguin problem differently. For instance, Facebook solved the penguin problem by starting small and being focused on Harvard University students and alumni. Practo  solved it by building and selling their practice management software (Practo Ray) to clinics before opening the patient interaction platform.

Having solved the penguin problem, i.e., having built enough members on both sides, platforms have to ensure that the discovery engine is powered to ensure quality, current, and relevant results. For an interesting take on how Indian ecommerce firms stack up on search results, see this post by Aditya Malik.

Quality

In a platform where products/ services/ information are provided by independent parties on one side, it is imperative that the platform ensures quality. It would require verifying the genuineness of the information provider as well as the veracity of the information. For instance, Quickr.com (an Indian C2C marketplace for used goods) positively discriminates posts with pictures of the items being offered for sale than those posts without pictures while sorting the search results. IndiaMART (the B2B marketplace for industrial goods) certifies the sellers with a TrustSEAL, by verifying the antecedents of the seller’s businesses, including their legal compliance, manufacturing facilities, and product range. Verification of quality comes with a cost, and provides the platform with high credibility and enables loyalty of users.

Some platforms use user-ratings and reviews as indicators of quality (like zomato.com, the restaurant discovery platform). Crowd-sourcing of ratings and reviews might provide higher credibility to the platform, but has to be used cautiously. These could be gamed by users. More on this later.

Norms and rules

As a platform sponsor, it is important to set the norms for communication and interaction among users across the different sides. These norms should set the boundary conditions for interactions, like the terms of sale (delivery charges, delivery times, returns policy) in ecommerce marketplaces.

In pure discovery platforms like JustDIal.com (an online yellow pages) or Quickr.com (marketplace for used goods), indiscrimately providing mobile numbers could be abused. Quickr.com has in the past few months introduced a secure chat service whereby sellers and buyers could chat with each other within the platform without having to provide each other’s mobile number. Even when the agreement is reached and the transaction has to be completed, Quickr allows for an anonymous delivery service (Quickr doorstep), where the users need not know each others’ personal contact details.

BharatMatrimony (the online matrimony match maker) allows only paid members to initiate communication with others. What this does is to ensure that brides and grooms who are actively seeking matrimony to become paid members, as the other side is unlikely to respect someone who is “not even willing” to pay for discovering his potential partner!

Setting expectations

The platform should allow for users on both sides to clearly set expectations apriori, to ensure that there are no surprises during the transaction. More the information sought and shared during the discovery phase ensures smooth transition to the transaction and fulfilment phases in the platform. Here is where the platform should ensure that there is a mimimum amount of high quality information available about the entity/ prodcut/ service being matched. Imagine trying to book a hotel room on a travel website without information on the hotel location, types of rooms available on that particular night(s), and the rates! It is therefore an important consideration that platform designers need to keep in mind when designing the infrastructure and rules. For instance, dating sites like trulymadly.com ensure that users provide their facebook pages during the registration process. While actual verification of each users claims on the dating sites might be difficult, linking their facebook account to the trulymadly account ensures that they do not lie (too much!) with respect to critical information about themselves (like marital status). Now you know why the job search portal you just signed in wanted you fill in pages of information, and links to your LinkedIN profile.

Providing feedback

Even after ensuring quality, defining the norms, and setting expectations, there could be some errors. The platform architecture should therefore provide for immediate feedback on all four parameters – quality of the entity/ product/ service/ information; relevance/ adequacy of information; currency of information; and the quality of the discovery, transaction, and fulfilment processes. Cab aggregators like OLACabs request for feedback on the quality of the cab and driver as soon as the ride is completed. However, there is no provision (not that I could find) to provide feedback on all the discovery stage of the platform – the time it took for the app to find me a cab/ auto, or the accuracy of the location services within the app.

 

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