The Flipkart.com folks sent across a survey form to be filled up. The one pattern I noticed was that the questions asked for comparative analysis ie. "best amongst", "easiest amongst" and so forth. This has an amusing downside - if an user hasn't actually ended up using competitor sites they may be tempted to give it a shot. And, additionally, it somewhat dilutes the brand/unique-ness of Flipkart as a business site.

A random selection from the survey questions are as follows:

• At Flipkart.com it is the easiest to search for products, compared to other online shopping sites
• Flipkart.com offers the widest range of payment options, when compared to other online shopping sites.
• Flipkart.com provides the best delivery AND after sales customer service, among all online shopping sites

with the options for responses ranging from "Disagree Strongly" to "Strongly Agree".

The same survey could perhaps be re-designed to ask the users the following questions with a numerical rating (1 to 5) or, even the existing rating

• You find it easy to use the search engine on the site to receive accurate and relevant product results
• You find it easy to Order and Checkout using the options provided for payment
• You will recommend the site to others based on delivery and after sales customer service performance

Was my hack the most optimal ? Surely not. But it does avoid the comparative behavior while trying to self promote.

I thought over this a bit. I think that the only thing I'd like to see in the Cricket World Cup 2011 finals (or, make that two things) is Virendar Sehwag going after the bowling in a way that only he can define,refine and execute (I believe that they call him the Nawab and sometimes the Butcher of Najafgarh) and Sachin Tendulkar piling on the runs with grace at the other end. I think it will remind me of that innings Sachin and Sourav shared on the way to what was (or, is it still ?) the highest run partnership at that batting position.

Will it happen ? I don't know. I sure wish it does.

Am I being selfish in distilling a game of 22+ players into a spectacle for two ? I guess not. Cricket has assumed the grandiose nature of a battle of gladiators. These two are the best in the game.

Sometimes I wonder if the companies and brands really understand what it means when they don't seem to listen and just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. A recent example could be my interaction with these folks. Someone is surely not reading the content and just responding for politeness's sake.

An even recent example would be the conversation with the Airtel Digital TV folks I had yesterday. All I needed was to check up why it was taking more than 4 days to add a channel to my package inspite of using approved text messages and, while I was at it, I needed to add two more channels. It took me a sum total of 25 minutes with 15 of them "on hold" listening to either "your call is very important to us" or, the funky hold music. The problem that I see is that if you are telling for 10 minutes that "your call is very important to us" and yet not putting a human on the other end, then you have an issue with how important the call is. And, repeating that mantra time and time again without actually demonstrating to the customer (remember this is a phone - the customer has no way of knowing whether you've just put him/her on hold and decided to trim your moustache/file your nails) that there are events happening is a bad way of handling calls.

Providing the customer with an option to disconnect the call with an option for a charged call back might actually be something that is preferable than being on hold watching paint dry.

Just a note to say that the app does seem to work. Both for scanning ISBNs and creating a ToRead as well as adding books to the Read shelf on Goodreads.com