Today is World Toilet Day. I have always believed that toilets plays an important part in customer service.
Poor toilets gives an impression about the way one runs his whole business. If someone can ignore such an important service entity, he can ignore other important aspects of service as well. Or if someone can show casual attitude towards poor service in one area, he can spill this casualness to other important service areas as well. Poor ingreidents, poor staff mannerisms etc. You guys know well.
However, toilet in India is a forgotten entity. Businesses running with stinking toilets, shabby toilets, toilets with broken seats can be found in abundance.
Zoobie and me travel a lot. And road is our preferred mode of travel. While on road, we look out for eating joints which have decent toilets. At times, we succeed. On other instances, we continue to travel endless till we find a decent one. In case, our full bladders fail to stop the outflow, there are always green fields looking for irrigation.
Most frequently travelled road is National Highway 1 which connects Delhi - Ambala. On this road we know couple of dhabas (or diners) which serve traditional and delicious food (paranthas, pakoras, dal-roti etc) but have pathetic toilets. Then, there are certain joints which house foreign brands (Dominos, Costa Coffee, McDonalds etc) and have clean toilets. But I do not enjoy this food much. There usually is a dilemma, where to stop.
To overcome this dilemma, we decided to stop twice. One is our pet-puja stop wherein we eat food which we really like and another is pee stop where we prefer to take a bio-break. Our travelling time increases by 15 minutes with this arrangement but this works well for us.
Is anyone tracking, how many customers are only stopping for pee-break? Just thinking...Anyway, Happy World Toilet Day. Hopefully, we will have a lot more cleaner toilets in future.
by Ramesh , on November 21, 2009 6:21 PM
A very practical post. Poor toilets are a feature of life in India (and China too). As you say, its something that's part of the whole service offering.
by le embrouille blogueur , on November 21, 2009 8:25 PM
"I have always believed that toilets plays an important part in customer service."....me toooooooooooooooooooooo..and that is one thing I greatly appreciate about the States ... (most of them) have decent arrangements along the highways ...and restaurants are well equipped too !!
by preposterous girl , on November 23, 2009 1:55 PM
Happy belated Toilet day!1 ;-)
Yes u r bang on in pointing out the pathetic state of toilets in India..
by Adesh Sidhu , on November 23, 2009 10:50 PM
Hey PG, after a long time. Good to see you back on blogging world.
@ LEB - This is one good thing about most of developed countries.