Hi RHers,
I am new to the community but have followed many posts by the community and love the zeal which all of you bring. As we are building a new product, we would like to get thoughts and ideas around how we can better serve users through Maple.
Background
Shopping online is becoming difficult with the many options available across various online and offline channels. We do not find enough time to search through the hay stack to get the right option we are in need of. Our aim is to help people like you and me find the product we are looking for through chat.
Let’s say Alok is looking for a cool sporty bag for travel. Today, he would have to go to a bunch of online stores and click through to the right set of choices to pick one. We would like to help Alok save this effort and let our experts provide a set of options based on his requirement. This will help in creating a beautiful experience like you were shopping at a physical store with the advantage of the entire online range.
How does it work
Maple will be a chat based interface which works like you are talking to your friend for help. The responses will be provided with a magical touch of humans which is enabled on the backend with technology!
- When you are shopping for something, you leave us a text
- Give us the requirement, say “I’m looking for a gift for my wife, something with class”
- We’ll be at hand to help you find the right products
- Our experts with the assistance of technology will give a curated set to choose from. You will be given a set of options, not too many to tire you, but as many to get you what you want !
- You can then just ask us to order as well
You can also explore what our experts keep curating and personalizing to your taste in the Explore section. We will order the product and get it delivered as well !
Here are the categories we are looking at building:
- #gifts
- #electronics
- #Home&décor
- #accessories
- #travel
- #clothes
- #baby_products
Another use case
You have a plan to take a vacation to Manali but simply need to friend to help you with the stay and the booking. We will help you find the best options based on your requirement “scenic” or “outside the town”.
Please take a look at our FB page and would love to hear more about what you think as a user. It’s an app, we have a sign-up page for the invite @ www.getmaple.co
twitter handle: @getmaple
Cheers,
Vikram
asha chaudhry
hi vikram,
maple’s an app, right?
so where’s the download link for everyone to check out? pls add it!
when you say this, “Our experts with the assistance of technology will give a curated set to choose from”
does that mean that you have live chat officers? or are the responses automated?
it sounds like a neat idea – but i reckon, since we as humans are used to choices, maybe the best 3 options should be given to the customer to choose from. that way, psychologically he/she feels he/she made the decision and not some bot 🙂 it’s a perception thing. of being the decision maker vs letting someone else decide.
so don’t get me wrong. i love the idea of curated options (coz too many options is confusing, time consuming and irritating. but instead of one, three would be nice.
do add your twitter handle at the end. i’ll mention it while promoting.
Vikram
Thanks a lot for taking a deep look into what we are doing and giving your insights.
Yes, its an app, we have a sign-up page for the invite @ http://www.getmaple.co
The responses will be provided with a magical touch of humans which is enabled on the backend with technology! And completely agree about your point about not giving just one choice which is exactly what we will strive to do. So do keep your questions coming.
Regards,
Vikram
asha chaudhry
hey vikram pls add these details on your post itself. they’ll get missed in the comments. you can edit the post.
Vikram
Thanks Asha, I have
Sridhar Rajendran
It sounds like a good idea to get away from the information overload on shopping sites with curated suggestions. Looking forward to use the actual app to get a feel of it.
Vikram
Thanks a lot Sridhar. Would love to have you as one of our first set of customers. Also I must mention I had read your post about “10 things to learn from the Chillr app promotion” earlier and thought it was a very nice post, but wasn’t a member at the time and had not sent you a reply 🙂
Please do share your thoughts on the areas we are trying to help folks and what you think is very useful to you: #gifts #electronics #Home&décor #accessories #travel #clothes #baby_products
http://www.getmaple.co http://www.facebook.com/getmaple
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Awesome!
Can you help me with a single seater for my room?
Budget upto 50k
It has to be AWESOME. Leather / Luxurious / Preferably that maroon tan color that we see in the movies?
Vikram
Alok thanks a lot for the reply. Would love to connect with you sometime to get more insights from you.
To help you with your awesome luxurious reel like experience, take a look at this sofa @ 19,999. You could try the 2 seater @ 39,999 !
Rishi
Interesting. With so many personal assistant apps now in the market, I almost feel like I need a personal assistant to recommend one from these 😉 What would your pitch be to someone like me who is still not sure which one to try?
Vikram
Interesting you ask that. Our pitch is to help with only Shopping and right away 😉
Rishi
haha! because you mentioned rightaway…we were never a personal assistant app, we were trying to connect people directly with the businesses via messaging. having spent 21 months (4 iterations) and some good amount of $$ on rightaway, we realized while messaging sounds like a very attractive value prop. it had lot of challenges scaling on both consumer and business sides. p.s we are now working on something else 🙂
personal assistant apps seemed like an attractive option to pivot to for us too, but I (as a user) couldn’t see myself using it unless there was something very compelling in addition to convenience. so for me as user, I need a stronger reason such as (in case of shopping) 1. largest collection of items in a category 2. exclusive stuff/info. that I cant find anywhere else 3. cheapest 4. you handle the entire workflow for me before an after purchase etc.
with all assistant apps there in the market, there is still someone else (with lesser knowhow about both me and the product/service) in between me and the person who actually sells/provides services. for someone building the platform, eventually they have four options to achieve true scale: 1. AI and ML (technical challenge, but a huge advantage for someone who can pull it off) 2. connect to sellers directly (a bit of challenge from my experience) 3. crowdsource requests (works fine for some categories, but has quality and consistency issues) 4. combination of above
not trying to discourage, but sharing my experiences/perspectives. best wishes! 🙂
Vikram
Hi Rishi, thank you for the help with the detailed set of inputs (notwithstanding my jest). Was hoping to get constructive comments like your reply and really appreciate it. Would be great to connect with you and chat with you about your experience when you could spare some time. Sent you a friend request. Please share your contact and when we could connect with a DM.
Thanks again,
Vikram
Gourav Das
I was always fascinated by personal assistants (after watching 90s movies). I am even training by daughter to be my personal assistant for one specific task (get me water bottle please)
Coming back to the topic, I am personally not convinced about using Personal assistance at the beginning of the purchase flow. As Asha mentioned, we phsycologically are programmed to choose. In this case, I have to trust the app that it is giving me the best option. I will have the FOMO (fear of missing out). Specially in Ecommerce segments like phone, apparels etc where we are paying a lot.
But where I believe this can make a great business, is areas where people actually want things quickly and don’t have to look for cheaper or wider options. The first thing that comes to mind is Medicines or groceries, vegetables.
May be you start a parallel “On-Demand Medicines”