Zoho CRM User Experience & Interaction Design Blog

Kebab Court - This one is located on top of Kalinga Dy-”nasty” restaurant, in the 100 ft road velachery.

A while back our team paid a visit to Kalinga and it proved to be a mediocre experience. The taste was just okay and the quantity is below average. This led to zero-satisfaction.

Yesterday I visited Kebab Court hoping that I can get some good authentic kebab experience. To my surprise I found Chinese food items in the menu. I thought KC specializes only in kebab. But this one is a MC restaurant.

The menu is exotically written, I mean the quality of writing is good. Every menu item has a short description along with a price tag that will make your heart to miss a beat. And remember, the price EXCLUDES 4% vat and 10% service charges.

The interiors are mostly contemporary with some designs that resemble a rural atmosphere. The uncomfortable 4 person tables along the glass windows are must-avoided. Occupy a table with normal chairs.

Hospitality is good and clearing for plates/cups are very prompt.

I ordered a Chicken Lollipop to check the chinese cuisine and Chicken Biryani and Chicken Shorba from the Indian cuisine. I must admit that my stars are on the downside. The one piece of Lollipop was improperly fried, the biryani is bland (must be a readymix preparation) and Shorba is not all that good.

I just wondered whether should I have opted for specialty lucknowi dishes instead of the usual ones. Anyway, the food is not good. Below average.

As I didn’t try many dishes in Kebab Court, I am unable to conclude anything on the quality and taste of the food. May be some time later, If I ever get another chance, I will post a detailed review. Summing up Kebab Court and Kalinga proved to be a costly experience offering mediocre food. Expensive dis-satisfaction.

Rating 2 / 5

Sometimes blind-shooted emails from marketing companies are useful. Two days back I received such an email to my personal ID. It was sent by a multi-brand laptop dealer in chennai. I was about to trash it, but just wanted to see the price list of the models. One of the model (a HP laptop) was tagged with Rs.27 K price tag. Since I was planning to buy a laptop for my wife, I decided to dig more. A quick search in HP’s website revealed that the laptop was priced around Rs.41 K. So I replied the dealer asking for the correct price.

Then later that evening, I received a reply saying the correct price is Rs.37K. There was no mentioning, whether if the price includes tax or not . So I asked them to send the complete laptop specification and a formal price quote. Today morning I received only the laptop speicification,sans the price quote. Boy! that was “awesome”. I wish I had not replied to that mail two days back. I lost interest in the HP laptop and this dealer. My next choice would be Fujitsu or Dell.

A good pre-sales experience ensures a guaranteed sale. If you do not execute that part well, you are sure to lose a customer, eventually lose your business too. Today, time is money. If you delay or take long time to respond, assume that your sales opportunity is slipping away.To turn a lead into sale, make sure you attend them properly. Find out what they want, offer your options that would suit their requirement, and be QUICK!!.  Throw some offers if possible,  to ensure the lead to turn into a sale. HP lost a sale because of their dealer’s in-adequate response.

Remember, good pre-sales  experience is one important factor that increases the chances of turning a lead into a sale. And a good after-sales experience is another factor to maintain a loyalty-base and return customers. Both are important for a product/brand to survive. If you screw one, you are lost.

- Dharma

PS Balaji of Zoho Sales, is an ardent fan of Smartphones. Everytime when a new smartphone is launched, he buys one. Except iPhone all his smartphones are running on Windows Mobile, right from the age old iMate, till the new HTC.

My experience with all the windows powered smartphones are not always happy. The first and foremost thing that annoys me is the performance. All the OMAP processors run extremely slow creating an impression that the mobile phone was hanged during operation. Then opening an application is another PITA. It behaves typically like a desktop and I wonder if anyone on the move can wait for that long? And another design flaw is using the Stylus. Without a stylus I am unable to touch the corners of the touch-screen. Again it is a PITA to point your nail and press the extreme corner of the touch-screen. It is a design flaw on both sides - Microsoft and Mobile Phone manufacturers. Why don’t they provide a Masking area? so that the UI doesnot flexes out to the corners-to-corners. Windows for Mobile is pathetic when comes to performance because of it’s hardware dependency. Unless intel or AMD creates a mobile phone processor that has some good power to run Windows efficiently, Windows Mobile will not catch up the heat.

- Rajesh Sundaram

The recent re-design of cnet.com is a pleasant surprise to me. cnet.com has switched to a new all-dark theme similar to IGN and many other hardware sites. For some strange reasons i feel the design is inspired by iphone’s look. May not be true.. but there is a chance that there is some iphone look infuence. Earlier I used to see a lot of contents per-page. But now, the contents has been reduced and the overall site looks chic! I don’t have much experience with the new site. But as far it goes.. I’d say the cnet.com is chic, clean and good.

And yes, there are some noticeable issues too. One prominent issue I faced is, the download  does not start automatically. Nor there is a direct link to download. I am sitting behind a firewall and this could be the reason, but why not give a direct link. Their help documentation says, scrolling past the sponsored ads will reveal the software developer’s site or download link. But the new design doesnt show any thing. If they could provide a direct download link, it would be very useful for people like me, who are sitting behind a corporate firewall. 

- Rajesh Sundaram

This week, it is a theme update. The Nature color theme in Zoho CRM gets some face-lift similar to what the contemporary theme received. The gradients. Here is a preview attached.

Everyone knows TrueSpace 3 is free. Recently after acquired by Microsoft, Caligari announced their TrueSpace 7.6 is completely free for every one. That’s a good news for many aspiring 3D artists and modelers.

I am using TrueSpace 3 at work. Recently I was in need of an icon for a time piece. Searching the stock photo sites didn’t bring up any satisfactory  results. Then, suddenly I got the idea and tried to design a time piece in TrueSpace 3. Within 20 minutes, I got the perspective and angle and the object was ready. Wow that was cool, and the icon will be featured in Zoho CRM soon.

Here is the sample..

- Rajesh Sundaram

One of the interesting subjects to discuss would be “Color Themes”. Take any software application (web or desktop or mobile), and you can find there is room for cosmetics. Most of the software could be made “theme”-able irrespective of whether it adds value or not. For certain genre, themes are a must and for others, it is not that important. But if given, it would add some value. CRM is one such product domain which requires theme-able interface. Coz more than half of immobile CRM users spend most of their time interacting with the product. But for sales people who are on the move, it may not be necessary because they concentrate more on the information and UI response rather than the cosmetics.

Users who spend a lot of time require some eye pleasing color themes so that they don’t feel bored at the end of the hour (who prefers looking at a dull gray or senseless drab colors for the whole day?).  And for theme designers, it is one of the mandatory job to come up with a crowd-pleasing color theme.Creating a theme that is liked by most (not everyone) users is a little tough job. It requires iterations to arrive at a proper color. Some themes which is praised by many, gets bombed by some. Why does those “some” dont like the theme? There could be many reasons. But one of the reasons I guess is .. color deficiency. Because for users having color deficiency,the theme may not look good. They might perceive the real color  as a dull color leading to dis-liking of the theme. I don’t have solid data to backup this idea, but going through the feedback mails we receive, I guess color deficiency could be one factor which determines the success of a color theme.  Of course, color deficiency is not the only factor which determines the success, other factors like people’s own taste for colors & taste for designs play important roles too. Personal preference is very subjective.

Taking  all these factors into consideration, coming up with a successful color theme requires good number of iterations and patience.  If a user doesn’t like your color theme, find out why. Pick up some safe and sensible colors and build your theme.

- Rajesh Sundaram

Ever tasted Mutton Chukka so soft and tasty that makes you drool and order the same dish once again? Ever tasted a Egg-Dosai which is really good and yummy without the half-boiled smell of egg? And most importantly, the crown of Dindigul - the Dinidigul Biriyani. It packs a punch and treats ur taste buds royally. And many more to add to the list .

Venu Biriyani Restaurant in Dindigul is one such awesome restaurant that caters a complete range of authentic south indian non-veg food for everyone.  Right from morning delicacies like idli, paya, chatni, sambar, chicken kulambu, mutton kulambu, dosai, kal dosai,egg dosai.. and the highlight Chicken Biriyani in the noons followed by the mix of everything in the evenings, Venu Biriyani is a complete one-stop for non-veg fans.

Definitely a great and tasty experience.

- Rajesh Sundaram

The Elegant theme has got another update internally and here is an exclusive preview of the theme. The left side boxes gets a glassy-shade along with some leaves in the top-left corner in the background. Also the tabs have been changed to square edged tabs. This theme will be integrated into Zoho CRM service shortly.

- Rajesh Sundaram

Following the Icons and Header facelift last week, one of Zoho CRM’s color theme - “Contemporary” gets a visual update this week. Within a few weeks, we will update all color themes. Here is a screen shot of the new color theme.

- Rajesh Sundaram