Story Spine - Gifting Experience

Once upon a time, there lived a guy named Rahul who always struggled to buy gifts for his loved ones.

Every time an occasion came, when he needed to buy a gift for his Mom, sister, or wife, he would search for all the gifts which he wanted to give. He would end up in analysis paralysis. Instead of gifting something different, he would end up gifting safe options like a watch, phone, etc.

But one day, he came across an Instagram post from CaratLane, which was liked by one of his close friends. The post stood out from the other posts which he usually came across on Instagram. He was intrigued by the storytelling and the visuals used in the post.

Because of that, he downloaded CaratLane App and started browsing. His wife, Shalini’s birthday was coming up next month, so he thought he would check it out. He came across lots of unique designs which he had never seen before.

Because of that, he decided to call the toll-free no, he found on the App to get more information on the designs and policy. CaratLane’s Sales consultant, Suganya guided him in choosing the right design based on his wife’s preferences and his budget. She allayed his anxiousness by explaining the free return and exchange policy offered by CaratLane.

Because of the excellent designs and customer service, Rahul decided to surprise his wife and bought a beautiful Butterfly Earrings. He was a little worried whether the delivery will be made on time as promised, as he had a bad experience in the past when he bought clothes from a brand for the first time and they delayed their delivery. But, to his pleasant surprise, it was delivered 1 day before the promised date. His wife loved it and was pleasantly surprised that her husband made such a beautiful choice.

Because of this wonderful experience, Rahul started to browse the CaratLane app regularly. He loved all the product recommendations customized based on his previous browsing history. Initially, he was worried that he will be bombarded with email/SMS/push irrelevant to him. But he was stoked to receive personalized recommendation curated by CaratLane and sent to him once a week by CaratLane’s marketing team and always looked forward to that every Saturday.

Until finally, Rahul decided to buy jewellery for his Mom and sister also from CaratLane and started recommending CaratLane to his friends and office colleagues. Everyone who tried CaratLane loved the experience and complimented Rahul for the recommendation.

Ever since then, CaratLane became the one-stop destination for all his gifting needs.

The moral of the story is that every touchpoint in a user journey, starting from Brand storytelling( Insta Post) to product discovery ( website) to customer service (helping customers to finalize a design) to Supply chain (On-time delivery) need to work in a cohesive way to provide an 11-star experience.

Social Proof - Informational Social Influence

What is Social Proof & why it’s an important psychological phenomenon?

Social Proof is a social and psychological phenomenon, where individuals copy other people’s behavior.

The effect occurs when a person is unsure of the correct way to behave. In this situation, they will often look to others for clues about the correct behavior. The same principle applies when someone is unsure whether to trust something or believe someone. Social Proof can even shape our preferences and the choices we make.

In the book, “Influence,” Robert Cialdini describes social proof as “the tendency to see an action as more appropriate when others are doing it.” Cialdini claims social proof is more powerful when we’re uncertain what to do.

Wisdom of the crowds

We can relate this to lots of things we do in our life. For example, you come across a book in Crosswords book shop and the book’s title is interesting but you never heard about this book or the author before. Now, what would you do? You go to Amazon or Goodreads to check the reviews for that book. If it's good, you will decide to buy it. If the ratings are poor, you will chuck it and start browsing other books. Why do we do that? We don’t know anyone personally who wrote those reviews. But still, we are deciding whether to buy a book or not based on their reviews. Because, our reasoning is if so many people are giving 4 or 5-star reviews for this book, it must be good. That’s why social proofing is very powerful and that’s the reason why every business tries to get as many reviews as possible for the products listed on their site.

Wisdom of your friends

If the wisdom of the crowds is so powerful, imagine how powerful if the recommendation comes from your friends.  Let's say, one of your friends bought a perfume from a brand you never heard of, and if she couldn’t stop talking about how good the perfume is, you develop a very strong positive emotion towards that brand. Next time when you are planning to buy perfume, that brand will automatically come in your consideration set. That’s why Word of Mouth or Viral marketing is so powerful as customers become brand ambassadors and start promoting that brand to their friends and family. That’s the reason, why lots of online businesses run the Referral program as it creates Viral Marketing.

When social proof misfires

Sometimes, social proofing will mislead you to make wrong decisions. One classic example is Share markets. In the current pandemic situation, most of the business is forecasting negative growth not for just Q1’20, but for the entire financial year. Layoffs, salary cut, businesses shutting down has become a norm rather than an outlier. But still, there is an upswing in share market which might be influenced by intraday trading, Futures & Options markets, positive sentiment due to increase in FPI limit in Corporate bonds, etc But some of the retail investors, who doesn’t understand the fundamentals, macroeconomic situations and invest purely based on friend’s recommendation & by reading few articles in websites such as money control, economic times, etc, end up investing in stocks with poor fundamentals. The reason people give themselves is, its better to buy when there is a dip and share market is moving up, so there must be some reason why everyone is buying so let me also buy. This is social proofing negatively influencing our decision and make us follow a herd mentality. In the end, it's our hard-earned money we will end up losing.

So, next time when you are planning to buy from a brand which you never bought before or when you look at Zomato to figure out which restaurant to go for dinner, consciously think how social proofing is influencing your decision

Focus

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem” – Zig Ziglar

I always wanted to do so many things in my life. Books to read, movies to watch, Netflix to binge, restaurants to eat, cities/countries to visit, courses to enroll, skills to develop, and the list never ends. I always had a big wish list and tried to do everything at the same time. This ended up causing unnecessary stress as I always had FOMO at the back of my mind and I was not making any progress on the skills I want to learn/improve.

Usually, I read a lot of articles, blogs related to investments, personal finance, etc. When I was reading a blog about discipline in personal life and finance, I came across a story about Warren Buffet. It goes like this.

Mike Flint Story

Mike Flint was Buffett's personal airplane pilot for 10 years. According to Flint, he was talking about his career priorities with Buffett when his boss asked the pilot to go through a 3-step exercise.
Here's how it works…

1. Buffett started by asking Flint to write down his top 25 career goals.
2. Then, Buffett asked Flint to review his list and circle his top 5 goals.
3. At this point, Flint had two lists. The 5 items he had circled were List A and the 20 items he had not circled were List B.

Flint confirmed that he would start working on his top 5 goals right away. And that's when Buffett asked him about the second list, “And what about the ones you didn't circle?”

Flint replied, “Well, the top 5 are my primary focus, but the other 20 come in a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit. They are not as urgent, but I still plan to give them a dedicated effort.”

To which Buffett replied, “No. You’ve got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”

It’s a profound story about essentialism and eliminating the excess. You can improve your life not only by keep on adding but also by eliminating certain habits.

How focus helped me to improve

After reading this story, I wanted to apply this principle to my personal life. I decided to stop doing everything and made a list of goals I want to achieve in the short term (month’s time) and long term (year’s time).

Thank God, I didn't have a list of 25 career goals like Mike. However, still, my list had around 10 goals which I needed to trim down. I eliminated goals like Learning about Blockchain/Bitcoin, Binge-watching every new hit series in Netflix, Learning Web design, Practicing for Half Marathon, Learn swimming, etc and came with the below list.

My short term list

• Write a blog
• Start learning Graphic Design
• Start learning to Copywrite
• Do yoga and exercise daily

My long term list

• Write at least 20 blogs in a year's time
• Design UI/UX for a website/app
• Write microcopy for a website/app
• Be fit and healthy

Once I had this list, it gave me a lot of clarity on which areas I should focus on and I was able to track my progress against each goal. Also, my anxiety level reduced as I no longer worry about things that I am not doing.

So, whenever you feel overwhelmed with your life, list down the goals you want to achieve in your life and ruthlessly eliminate everything else and see the results for yourself.

Gift Vs Choice

22-Mar-2020.

Unprecedented times. The entire country is shut down. Almost every country is fighting against an invisible enemy. My heart sinks whenever I read about the death count across the world. Stopped seeing twitter, it's too depressing. If you had asked anyone, no one would have predicted such a scenario a few months back. Since the only thing to do is to self-quarantine and help control the spread, I was just sitting at my home, eating the delicious Pongal my cook prepared for breakfast and wondering how it's all going to end; What implications it will have on the economy, my organization, my professional and personal life and so on. I was talking to my friends and some of them are already losing their minds (we have been working from home for the last 4 days now). I hear words like “I can't take it anymore”. 

Then suddenly I was reminded of a famous stoic saying. It goes like this:

“Focus on What You Control: This is the most prominent principle in Stoicism. The Stoics realized that there are things we control, and things we don't control. To get to the good life, we should focus on the things we control, and accept the rest as it happens”

Then I realized, it's always the choice we make at such times, which makes all the difference. We have no control over how the pandemic is going to end, but we can self-quarantine and use all our free time effectively.

If you are healthy now it’s a gift. You can waste that gift by continuing to wonder what’s going to happen, binge-watch Netflix or choose to use that gift by figuring out how you are going to use this productively. So when everything comes to normalcy, you would be a better version of yourself.

The book which you always wanted to read, but never got time to read - now is the time to read it.  

You wanted to learn yoga, but never got time to join a class. Now is the time to learn it online.

You wanted to learn cooking but never got the time or had the patience to learn. Now is the time to pick up those culinary skills

How are we using our Gifts? Are we using them to improve our life or destroy it? Are we taking pride in our gifts or pride in our choices?

Will inertia be your guide, or will you follow your passions?

When it’s tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?

Be bold and courageous in your choices and choose well. Because when you look back at your life, you will regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.

P.S - I have decided to use my time productively and created my first blog post. :)