Open Letter to ‪#‎ICICIBank‬ for their Unethical And Malpractice

I have already written this to the customer care, I am posting it here to make everyone aware, I am sure many others have also suffered through this

To Whosoever it may concern

I hold 3 accounts with your bank, 2 savings and one reimbursement. Along with this i took a home loan from your bank (LBMUM00001933892). The rate type was floating interest rate. With the pre-payment amount that stated on 30/09/2012, my actual EMI started on 10/11/2012.
At the time I started paying my EMI, Rs.30540/- the rate of interest was 10.50%.
Later in the first year itself starting 10/09/2013 the rate of interest was increased to 10.75%.
Without intimating or asking, my EMI amount was kept the same and my tenure increased!
On 1/10/2014 when i visited your Kamla Mills branch I was told that the rate of interest was now 10.15% but it has had no effect on my loan. That is, the interest that i was paying was still the same 10.75%. When i asked the reason of not revising my interest rate I was told to visit Mahalakshmi branch and sort it out with the respective team.
I scheduled a visit to your Mahalakshmi branch on 4/10/2014. Here is where a big shock was awaiting.
i was told by the executives there that if i wanted to change my interest rate to 10.15% from 10.75% i has to pay a penalty of 0.5% on the balance amount.
is this not a malpractice followed by your bank?
if my rate type is floating, when the rate went up without initimation that had an effect on my loan, when the rates were down why do I have to pay extra moneys
By paying less interest rate, money earned by you through me will be less. You asking me to pay a penalty are you not being an opportunist?
If you want me to pay here is what i need from you:
You need to tell me when did the market rate shift from 10.75% to 10.15%. From that date till now, please refund me that difference
Couple of hours after I visited your branch on 4/10/2014, I got a call and an SMS from the branch manger that they have taken a permission to charge me 0.25% of penalty. But my friends this is not the case, the question here is a broken promise. What then according to your is floating rate?
Today, my loan tenure could have reduced from 188 months to 174 months. It is my hard earned money that I had trusted you people with. If i had the money I had no need to take take a loan from anyone!
I demand an immediate action on this

Case Study 3/3: Gamification (Collaborative Consumption)

 I had take an online course on Gamification offered through


  &  Coursera

 Conducted by Prof Kevin Werbach
Duration: 10th Jan 2014 - 14th April 2014

During the period all students were given 3 written assignments. Will be publishing all 3 cases and my solution along with peer comments in 3 blogs. This is the 3rd blog on the same:

Case III:

Project Part III: Design Document
Now that you know the essential concepts about gamification and game design, it's time to use them. For this final task, we ask you to bring together creativity, technical feasibility, and business realities.
You are approached by Rashmi Horenstein, the CEO of ShareAll, a prominent company in the hot collaborative consumption space. (If you aren’t familiar with the concept, some good resources are CollaborativeConsumption.com and the March 9, 2013 cover story in the Economist.) She knows you are one of the top experts on gamification, which she has heard can revolutionize business.  She asks you to present a proposal for a gamified system to take her business to the next level.
ShareAll’s mission is to make shared use of products and services as common as individual purchases.  It follows the path of companies such as AirBnB, Buzzcar, and Uber, which allow sharing of particular products (cars, housing, etc).  ShareAll’s patented technology makes it easy for consumers and business to share any product or service.  ShareAll has also developed a global virtual currency, called Shares, which can be used to purchase access to any asset in the system. Shares can be exchanged for real money, and users can generate more Shares by sharing items or volunteering their time to complete tasks for others.
ShareAll charges a small transaction fee whenever Shares are generated, traded, or spent. Therefore, the more activity, the more money ShareAll makes. Horenstein tells you that she cares about the social benefits of sustainability.  However, ShareAll is a for-profit company, with investments and partnerships from some of the world’s largest corporations, so profits matter. Horenstein believes gamification could significantly help ShareAll’s business. She is eager to read your ideas.

My Solution:

1.       Define Business Objective:
ShareAll is into the business of collaborative consumption. They aid users to rent and share all kinds of products and services to individuals and business’. A dipstick into ShareAll’s business:
·         Mission: make shared use of products and services as common as individual purchases
·         Their technology enables customers to easily share with good user experience
·         Shares are common mode of transaction
o   Revenue is earned through transaction of shares
ShareAll want to look to gamify the system in order to:
·         Acquire more customers,
·         Engage Users,
·         Induce repeated purchase
·         Retain them and generate more business

2.       Delineate target behaviors:
There will be two kinds of users on the system:
·         Trader: one who has items up for renting
·         Borrower: one who borrows items from the trader
Both of these are non-exclusive. That means, a person can be both a trader as well as a borrower
Objective of the gamified system is to encourage Customer/players to do more and more transactions of shares. Following will be expected behavior of the players which will in turn encourage more transactions of shares:

·         Building reputation and network
o   Profile Building: import profiles from as many social sites as possible. This helps to build reputation which is important when someone is looking to share something with others
o   Invite your friends: Players can import their contacts from their social profile pages. With these network of friends they can build their community

·         Make use of the service
o   Items Sharing: Users are encouraged to put up as many items as possible for renting/sharing
o   Taking up items on rent frequently
o   Daily Visits: This will help building behavior (Reference: lecture 5.2 & 5.3)

·         Be Interactive
o   Participate: daily trade quest, contest etc
o   Leave comments/feedback on players/traders profile whose items you have shared or rented
o   Create their wishlist: can be used to set goals to achieve number of shares so that users can borrow the item required
o   Report in-genuine  traders
o   ShareAll has apps Android, iOS, Windows phone, Windows 8 platform. Apart from this they will be present through connected TV & present on box like Roku, Playstation, Xbox etc. Users will be encouraged to download the app on all their devices and link their profile

This Gamification will have following matrix of measurement to deduce success of the implementation:
·         Average daily users/average monthly users: this will determine users involvement
·         Total number of shares present with each users: This will help to determines top users from others and also measures can be taken in order to balance the game (reference: Lecture12.2)

3.       Describe your players:
Our TG/players will be existing users of AirBnB, BuzzCar, Uber etc. this is because they are already into the space and have experienced/consumed such a service so they are more likely to take up/use ShareAll. Also to widen the net our general description of a target group is:
Gender: Male/Female and corporate clients
Age: we will divide our target audience into three categories
·         12-20 (Reason the range is so wide is at the age of 12 or so kids who are active into video games would wish to swap CDs and DVDs with others)
·         21-55
·         Corporate clients
Income group: would not want to define and restrict as the site targets a wide range of age group and will have multiple products from as cheap as a CD/DVD or as expensive as a designer chandelier or renting holiday home.
Psychographics: A person who needs a constant change around him and in his life. He cannot go and buy everything new at all times but sees renting as an optimal option to aid his quick changing taste and lifestyle.

4.       Activity loop:
We will define the player’s journey here from onboarding, scaffolding and pathway to mastery. It will show us how the users move on in this game
For Onboarding process:
·         Just like Monopoly game where players are given initial amount to start the game, even on shareAll initial few shares are allotted to on sign-up. On the homepage we will also have an introductory video explaining step by step how players can keep getting more shares for various activities that they perform

For Scaffolding process:
·         Players are guided to Import their social profiles from sites like facebook, twitter, Tumblr etc which ShareAll gives reputation points on nature of the profile. some share allotted for this
1.       This is done as reputation is more important on platforms that encourage collaborative consumption. Currently the only problem with collaborative consumption is how can you trust a trader or a borrower you do not know? One maintains multiple profiles on multiple social sites but there is no way to carry your reputation from one portal to another, you always start a fresh so having all your information at one place will help your reputation and people can trust you as a trader or a borrower

·         Virtual tour guide will be placed here that will also show users how they can rent any product, upload their items to become a trader, how to buy shares etc

·         Players are introduced through other various activities like
1.       import you friend list/send request to all of them
2.       Daily quests
3.       Fill up your wish list
4.       Download ShareAll app and link your profile
5.       Frequent visits on the app or web portal
A guide video will also be placed on the homepage.

Pathway to Mastery:
·         Once the users have completed their basic level of activities, they are on the escalator, now higher level of actives are exposed to them. Just like game Plants Vs Zombies different types of plans and zombies are introduced and higher levels. Other activities would be
1.       Generate Shares by sharing items or volunteering their time to complete tasks for others like leaving feedback and giving someone reputation points
2.       Reports in-genuine traders
Though the various activities mention above within the player journey, players up their own levels going through the various activity loops and getting on the progression loop.

5.       Don’t forget the fun: 
·         Reputation is most important element in everyone’s life. By introducing ‘Reputation meter’ on the profile page of every user, he will be intrinsically be motivated to always maintain it between good to best levels to make themselves feel awesome. This will do two things:
1.       He will always be genuine as a trader
2.       As a player he will never try to misuse or manipulate the game (reference: Lecture: 11.3, gaming the game)

·         Surprise element for daily visitors, they are gratified with some shares, discounts, etc since the prizes will vary it is likely to induce a Dopamine effect on the user and avoid the dangers of being on the Hedonic Treadmill (reference lecture 6.2)

·         Users are motivated to become traders and traders are motivated to share more items regularly that they have not yet put up on their storefront. This is done by suggesting potential rental price if they have the product placed. Users are encouraged as they see potential to earn more bucks. Activating their extrinsic motivation

·         Users can create a wish list and they can be encouraged to participate in the contest that can make them win more shares so that they get closer to renting the product and notified when the products are on further discount

·         Relatedness and civic virtue: Special prizes and mentions for users who report errors in the system and in-genuine traders. This has a maco-effect on the business as more number of in-genuine traders can spoil the experience for larger user base.

·         Player Levels: Player gains higher level on basis of number of transactions i.e. how many items has he rented, number of items he has as a trader, what is his reputation and his frequency of usage of ShareAll portal/app.
o   Players at higher levels get discounts on transaction fees etc. Highest level player as a trader will also get free courier pick up service of his items that borrower has asked on rent

6.       Deploy the appropriate tools
For the activities and fun elements mentioned above following tools will be deployed:
·         Reputation Meter on player’s home page:
o   Assumption: ShareAll has a software API which scans through profiles (information, their comments, what they share, average comments received etc) and calculates their reputation and puts it up on a meter

·         Progression bar: this depends upon following:
o   Profile page completion
o   Importing profiles from other social sites
o   Adding items on rent and becoming a trader

·         Badges:  for various activities:
o   Super badge: for every level up
o   Frequency of visit
o   Getting the item that is a part of his wish list
o   Reporting errors and in-genuine traders
o   Increase in number of articles on traders’ storefront

·         Friend circle:
o   Bubble whenever some player’s friend signs up the bubble keeps increasing


Peer Review:

What I liked was...

 

peer 1 → Excellent work! The lay out you used made it easy to read.

peer 2 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

peer 3 → Very thorough work. I particularly enjoyed the segmentation of the players.

peer 4 → Very good describtion of all possible elements, that can be used and good link to the video lectures

peer 5 → well explained system

 

What could have made this submission better was...

 

peer 1 → Nothing.

peer 2 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

peer 3 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

peer 4 → more on how to get people engaged in the community of ShareAll - what is needed to build the community and which problems are to be overcome

peer 5 → better formarting

Hope you All enjoyed it

Case Studies 2/3 - Gamification

 I had take an online course on Gamification offered through


  &  Coursera

 Conducted by Prof Kevin Werbach
Duration: 10th Jan 2014 - 14th April 2014

During the period all students were given 3 written assignments. Will be publishing all 3 cases and my solution along with peer comments in 3 blogs. This is the 2nd blog on the same:

Project Part II: Motivation

You are approached by Ryan Morrison, the mayor of a medium-sized city in the Midwest of the United States.  He has heard that you know a lot about gamification and believes that gamification techniques can transform city government. 

He would like to start with the health of city employees.  The city has 50,000 employees and they happen to have exactly the same rates of obesity as the U.S. average: 34.4% overweight (but not obese) and 33.9% of them are obese.  53.1% of the city’s employees do not meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity and 76% of them fail to meet the Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity.  The city pays for health benefits for its employees and this cost is a huge part of the city budget.  Economists in Mayor Morrison’s office have estimated that a 3% improvement in the average physical fitness of city employees would amount to a US$94 million reduction in annual city health costs; a 5% improvement would save US$188 million. 

Describe in general terms a gamified system that could effectively motivate behavior change to address the challenge presented above. Specifically, explain how the system would effectively incorporate intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or both. Your answer should address the fact that this is an internal gamification project, targeted at the institutional goals of the city government.  The system can use any technology (or no technology!), so long as the resources required seem justified by the scope of the opportunity.  

Solution:

• Objective: Keep city employees healthy, fit and they meet the U.S. Physical and muscle-strengthening activity guidelines.
  • If the employees are fit, city would not incur huge costs on health plans

• Target Behavior: Get city employees to exercise and eat healthy food
  • Success Matrix:
    • 80% employees who are overweight & obese to have controlled weight (as the average USA citizen)
    • 90% employees to meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity
    • 70% employees to meet Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity

• Who are the players: City employees who:
  • Are Overweight, obese and do not meet U.S. Physical and muscle-strengthening activity guidelines

• Activity loop:

Assumption:
·         All employees eat at the office canteen/cafeteria
·         Government will tie-up with entity like ‘Reebok Crossfit’ http://reebokcrossfitone.com/

Approach to introduce gamification

Step 1: build a portal over the intranet. Just like facebook every player will have a profile page. Since government has details about all its players, the profile page will be prefilled with basic information like name, age, blood group etc. Some of the info players can choose to hide like weight. There will be options to fill up
·         status updates,
·         their exercise regime details,
·         wish list: where an employee and mention what he want to achieve like loose 40lbs in 3 months etc
Apart from the above there will be a point counter on every profile page & a relative (shows other players with 20% higher & 20% lower points) leader board.

Portal will have tab: ‘My Regime’
Reebok will send a customized workout plan for the week. Player can choose to share completed task. Reebok will publish weekly results to every player’s page. The results will carry points and badges for completion.

Step 2: Introduce salads at the office cafeteria. There will be variety of salads some most healthy and some not very healthy (but far better than junk food). Every salad will have points eg:
·         Ceasar salad: 200 points
·         Pesto chicken Salad; 150 points etc
Every purchase the player has to give his id number (empid) at payment counter. The system will be connected to the portal
Step 3: Employees following the regime at ‘Reebok Crossfit’ will be exempt from completing 40 hrs/week. Twice a week they can choose to leave one hour before the official leaving time.
Step 4: A giant weight machine (attractive as a slot machine) will be placed at the entrance of the office. Employees can again enter their empid and weigh. They get a fancy ticket and their recorded weight is transferred to the portal.
Gratification to players with highest points;
·         5 monthly winner gets a 3 months movie cinema pass
·         After 6 months, 1 player gets free Europe trip with family
 Gamification will introduce a fun element among players (employees). Health is a concern to most of the individuals. Firstly, by this process players will be intrinsically motivated and will be hooked on to this game like structure. Secondly, through PBL and gratification they will be extrinsically motivated to meet the guidelines

Peer Evaluation:

What I liked was...

peer 1 → the fact that Reebok will send a customized workout plan for the week and publish weekly results to every player’s page.

peer 2 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

peer 3 → You explained one gamification system very structured, easy to understand and related with the context of the project.

peer 4 → Addressing diet as a key factor besides exercise. The link of the weight machine to the portal to track progress is unique.

peer 5 → the structure of your response! Well organized and presented information.

What could have made this submission better was...

peer 1 → You have choose as target players only city employees who are overweight, obese and do not meet U.S. Physical and muscle-strengthening activity guidelines. If I was one of them I would react negatively to the fact that because of my aspect I have to take part to this process: it would be discriminating! The giant weight machine (attractive as a slot machine) placed at the entrance of the officewould be a nightmare for the major part of women!

peer 2 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

peer 3 → Maybe I would related the information learned in the course with the gamification system, explaining how the gamification system will motivated employees.

peer 4 → Maybe more team oriented 'quests' and cooperation so it doesn't feel so individual and people are supported. Strong solution to the problem overall.

peer 5 → more choice of quests for players - instead of just being sent a workout from reebok every week. That they would have more control over choosing what exercises they wished to complete to achieve their points

Case III on Gamification will be in the following blog 

Case Studies 1/3 - Gamification

I had take an online course on Gamification offered through
& Conducted by Prof Kevin Werbach
Duration: 10th Jan 2014 - 14th April 2014

During the period all students were given 3 written assignments. Will be publishing all 3 cases and my solution along with peer comments in 3 blogs:

Assignment 1:


Project Part I:

You are an employee of Cereals Incorporated, a large manufacturer of breakfast food products.  Your supervisor, Madison County, approaches you because she knows you recently took a course on gamification, which she has heard will revolutionize marketing.

She tells you that Cereals Inc. is about to release a new line of ready-to-eat breakfast pastries, and she wants to know whether to use gamification as part of the marketing strategy.  The breakfast pastries will be aimed at the 18-35 age bracket. Surveys show members of this demographic often skip breakfast because they don’t want to eat the typical cereals of their youth, and they are too active to cook their own breakfasts.  Market research indicates that the pastries are likely to appeal more to women than men by a 65%-35% ratio. Cereals Inc. has a 35% share of the overall breakfast food market, but only a 10% share of the fragmented ready-to-eat segment. 

Provide as many reasons as you can why gamification could be a useful technique to apply to the situation your manager has presented to you.  Explain why these reasons address the specific scenario provided.  At this stage, focus on the problem rather than the solution.  In other words, describe the goals of the project, not the particular game elements or other techniques you plan to use.  We strongly encourage you to watch this week's lecture segments before attempting this assignment.

Solution:

Lets first look at the objective:

• Launch Breakfast pastries & increase the market share which currently is only 10% (for ready to eat)

how would one do it?

• Make it appealing to the target audience
• Engagement being on of them

Why will gamification be a useful technique? Reasons given below:

• Gamification is a great engagement tool, as through participation, player gets motivated as she is exposed to challenges, progression, rewards etc, however the game may be designed. (From Mechanics, from element pyramid, lecture 4.2)
• Since gamification uses techniques from various streams like psychology, strategy etc (from Lecture 1.5). it should be helpful to steer brand recall
• Games have pull effect. they draw the players into participating thus increasing involvement (from Lecture 1.5)
• Gamification can prove to be viral (more through the introduction of social elements) drawing more users/participants (voluntarism) who in-turn could be you consumers. And truing current participants into advocates of your brand
• Gamification designed on a specific manner can increase sampling of the product
• It can help in habit formation (usage of the product) (from lecture 3.1, Foursquare model)

Peer Comments:

What I liked was...

peer 1 → A detailed presentation of information

peer 2 → Good use of citations!

peer 3 → This response contained several good reasons for gamifying this breakfast foods market.

peer 4 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

 

What could have made this submission better was...

peer 1 → Deeper study aspects of marketing

peer 2 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

peer 3 → The reasons were had the quality of not quite being complete; they weren't tightly written enough to be compelling. Each idea needed a bit more 'follow through' to be compelling and complete.

peer 4 → [This area was left blank by the evaluator.]

Case II on Gamification will be in the following blog