Not Being Sarkari

 With plunging footfalls and receding sales, retailers are re-thinking about their loyalty programs. Some retailers are promoting their loyalty cards aggressively. In West, many retailers are re-launching their loyalty cards with improved benefits (read - more points per transaction). While others are debating whether investment on loyalty cards in worth it or not. Discounters are promoting their heavy discounts unabashdely.  These discounters do not believe in investing in loyalty cards as customers do not find much value in it and results do not justify investments. Economic Times carried an interesting article on this trend.

 GAP has just implemented work from home culture in its organization. Yes, employees can work anywhere, anytime as long they doing there work. This is quite common in IT companies in India but rest of the sectors are alien to this concept.  We all have observed for decades that how sarkari babus used to run out of office (in case they are in office) as soon as clock struck 5:00 pm. Government teachers come out of their schools faster than kids. Running out of office, is not a characterstic of Government employees only. One can spot numerous (young and old alike) employees coming out of their offices like herd of cattle which is freed after hours of tying up. When I see such acts of hurry, few questions that come to my mind - Is presence everything? Is presence a direct measure of productivity? Is work-life balance in employee's life is important for an employer? GAP is doing this because they want to fare better on employee enagagement. GAP is doing this because they want proper work-life balance to be maintained in employees' life. GAP is doing this because they believe that productivity has nothing to do with presence. All that matters is 'getting the work done'.  A lot of Indian companies fail to fix measureable goals for their employees. Without goals, measuring performance is difficult, if not impossible. In order to score good in appraisal, presence of employees in office campuses becomes critical for an employee as attendance is at times the only goal which an oraganization can measure for that employee. Picture this. I visited an organization where some training was scheduled for ceratin departments. Close to 30 employees were supposed to attend the meeting. Training time was 1:00 pm which is clashing almost with lunch time. Few employees were raising concerns in low voice on delayed lunch but they also knew that it is useless to raise this concern as it would be seen as a trivial reason. As soon the training got over at 3:00 pm, all employees ran to grab a bite.  I know it is not possible to implement such 'work from anywhere' in all organisation or across departments in a organizations but it can definitely be tried in certain departments to see what kind of effects it has on morale, motivation, productivity. In case you are still intersted in employees who ran for lunch after training, over lunch they only one question to ask each other - did you get the training module? Answers were - somewhat, nope, trainer failed to explain many parts etc.  I guess, the only measure of success of this training was presence of employees.

Recently, I visited a restaurant and ordered stuffed kulcha. It was accompanied by gravy and raita. When my food arrived, I found main product i.e. stuffed kulcha quite average whereas the accessories (in my case gravy and raita) were tasty. In fact good accessories did make up for an average product. But I was not satisfied. Reason was, I paid for product which turned out to be an average and I felt I have paid more than it deserved and hence my dissatisfaction.

 

So many times we have seen that companies try lot of gigs to move their average products. They come out with accessories to move their product which is unable entice consumers on its own. But so many times these gigs fail to lift average or poor product.

 

Microsoft's Windows Vista is one such example. Microsoft tried every trick in the book to push lousy, extremely complex and useless OS of theirs. But users continue to prefer Windows XP. They stopped support for XP so that users could shift to Vista. They bundled Vista with all new laptops/PC and laptop manufacturers started selling new ones only with Vista.  But they could not achieve success in making this poor product a successful one. Users prefer to continue with XP as it is difficult and painful for users to shift to Vista.

 

On the other hand we have iPod. An extremely good product which delivers both functional and emotional benefits to its users. It took music on-the-go to new level. With this successful product, huge economy of accessories is attached. Accessories of iPod (from docks to cases to chargers to some fancy fads) sells like a hot cake. In July 2008, market for iPod accessories was worth $1.8 billion.

 

In nutshell, accessories can take good product to new level of success. I doubt that vice-versa is true.

     After all, halting is not an option for anyone.  

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Customer generally goes through four stages of emotional atyachar whenever a brand does not live to its promise and he has to lodge a complaint, so that it starts delivering again.

Stage one is denial. Customer could not believe that the brand he has chosen can falter. He is unable to come to terms that the choice he made was wrong as he has put in a lot of resources (like time, money etc) in it. He continues to deny that the brand he chose did not live upto his expectation.

Stage two is anger. Once he is out of denial mode, customer usually approaches customer service department with his complaint, riding on a wave of a high temper. He shouts, he threatens and he abuses. But in return he gets nothing more than apologizes, assurances and better treatment in future.

 

Stage three is sadness. Customer is miffed. He knows that customer service department is hiding behind strong organization policies. He is not interested in any apologies or assurances. All he wants is a solution which is beneficial more to him than company.

 

Stage four is acceptance. Customer knows that he cannot do much about it. He is exhausted. He is ready to accept solution provided to him as per company’s policy and prefers to move on.

 

I think it is important to understand here that these four stages are painful for customer but it can be more painful for organization in future. Sometimes, what seems to be success in short term is actually a loss in long term.

 

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I recently visited a Canon outlet to check out a new range of digital
camera. On entering, I saw a camera submerged in water. I was little
surprised to see that and was curious to know about it.

 It came out to be a camera which Canon launched as a waterproof camera
in the beginning of 2009. To induce curiosity, create experience
around this product, show case true strength of their product and
create buzz, Canon has decided to showcase USP of their camera in a
style.

 Canon has put their foot where the mouth is. I found their approach
quite novel. For years many watch manufacturers have been selling
watches which are water resistant. Customers ask couple of times about
manufacturer's guarantee on water resistance. But none of these
guarantees gave peace of mind to customers which Canon's small gig has
given. This cannot be achieved by any amount of advertisement. This
cannot be achieved even if some celebrity endorses the product.

 As they say, seeing is believing, as perception builds once you see
the whole process.

 By the way, I also liked the passion with which their salesmen explain
their products. I have no doubt that my next digicam will be of Canon.

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