Telepocalypse

OPINION://1-800-REINTERMEDIATE

Skype’s stuck in a strategic dead-end at the moment. Their short-term revenue targets under the new management will no doubt be driven by SkypeIn and SkypeOut. This is the self-defeating PSTN disintermediation business. The brand licensing side of the business won’t grow fast enough to justify the acquisition cost. Andy points to a research note that highlights the need for Skype to break out of the PC ghetto. PCs make lousy phones compared to, um, phones.

So, here’s the Telepocalypse-approved patent-not-pending public-prior-art way of doing it. You don’t get payback off a $4bn deal by thinking small. The job of Skype is to make eBay’s transaction businesses pump more volume and value. What I’d want to do is insert eBay into any kind of contact between the public and merchants. Plus, it has to work with the legacy telephony infrastructure.

Let’s instead re-invent the “800 number” (freephone) business and make eBay the next Visa or Mastercard.

The first part is how the public contacts merchants. You’re out and about and you see a poster ad with a normal 800 number to call. If you want, you can call it as you do today. But SkypeBay will give you an alternative. The poster might follow the 800 number with the logo “eBay Outside™”. And this is where things get very, very different.

eBay also gives every user a personal 800 number. You can use this number to place calls, and will have it as a speed-dial on your mobile and home phone. You call eBay first, and then dial the merchant number. You’ve pre-registered the caller ID of devices you personally use, so eBay already have you identified (not authenticated).

Why would you bother? Because eBay is going to give you a better experience, and protect your privacy. When it comes to the “checkout” process with the merchant, their call centre agent transfers you back to eBay. You hear some appropriate message like “To authorise a payment of $193.20 to Foo Inc, and release your name and delivery address, please enter your PIN. To decline, press star. For more options, press hash.” Ta-da! The merchant gets your details without any transcription mistakes. You don’t have to reveal your payment info to yet another merchant. The UPS delivery is scheduled into “My eBay” or whatever, no hassles. The merchant up-front may even get language preference data, so no more of that “par espanol” stuff for us monoglot Anglos.

Naturally, you don’t have to use the 800 breakout number. You can just use your multimodal Skype client and have a great experience that way. Skype is the upwards migration path.

This is “real” IP communications. The link between eBay and the merchant is passing all kinds of information that SS7 telephony signals can never convey. The simplest case is that the merchant gets the message “Ship order X to this address — and here’s the non-repudiable payment receipt from us.” We’re just using ye olde telephony as a two-way audio link into the new world.

You win, with a better user experience. The merchant wins, with lower data capture costs and call centre costs, less fraud, higher customer satisfaction. And eBay wins, because they get rich.

Think of it as an identitiy and reputation network that overlays the traditional payment network. It also out-paces Google, with their ad network. If everyone uses their eBay reputation and credentials, a raw “click to call” model doesn’t help so much. Google get to build their network around the wrong node of the value chain, too far from the real customers: the public.

Now, at Telepocalypse HQ there’s the company motto above the door. It says “Do as much evil as you can get away with.” So here’s a wicked twist. You can give your 800 number out to merchants, should they wish to contact you. But when they call, it won’t be from one of your registered numbers. They’ll have to have a relationship with eBay before they get through (via the eBay/Skype find-me/follow-me service). And believe me, this won’t be a freephone service from their end. Plus, if they telemarket to you or spam you in any way, you get the chance to send them some negative karma.

One interesting aspect of this is that telcos themselves probably can’t cannibalise their 800 number business even if they wanted to. They don’t have an existing hub like the eBay auction business around which to crystallize the required changes in user and merchant behavior. No one telco has enough heft to effect any unilateral change. The only strategic question they need answer here is: how can we still take some small slice of these emerging business models?

I’m hoping this all sounds utterly crazed. Because it is. Just like ten years ago, it would have been nuts to think I could locate someone with an obscure cheap laptop expansion base the other side of the world, get it shipped to my hotel in California for me to collect as I pass by, and still have change from $40.