Not Being Sarkari

Recently, I had a chance to fly Air India. Experiences about my journey with India's flagship airline.

On entering the aircraft, I was expecting to see some old and fat air hostesses who had not smiled for a while. I was partially wrong. Air hostesses were not old and not fat. They were, in fact, very young and pleasant looking. But, they definitely did not know how to smile. 

Another observation. All airlines give a bottle of water once you are on board. Even low cost airlines offer water. But not Air India. 

In food, they provided sandwiches. A customer complained about sandwich being stale. But air hostesses did not care much. And I did not care much about the food.

I know, Air India is on a cost cutting spree these days, as it is running into deep losses, and is continuously asking Government of India to put it back on track. Well, cost cutting is good if it is helping you to cut your losses without hurting customer experience. If cost cutting is hurting your customers then it will do no good to the business.

I am not sure all this is because of cost cutting. This could be a part of their DNA. If it is in their DNA then no matter how much money someone gives them, they will not be able to recover. 

I am hoping for the best. The best for customers.

Last few weeks, I spent studying my competition. How they are better? What good we are doing good? Etc.

Nobody is perfect but everyone is trying hard. Especially when it comes to wooing customers and retaining customers. Tactics may differ for all but goal remains the same.

Time spent in competition also suggested that we are not only clueless on certain things related to customers. Competition is also trying hard to figure it out. People who are in our business for decades are also struggling to keep customers satisfied.

Customer satisfaction is a lofty goal to achieve but it is worth trying.  

Who needs Customer Service demons from some 'outer world' when you have enough inside?

 

There are scarier demons inside customer service departments in the name of 'processes'. There are even more scarier demons inside untrained customer service professionals.

 

The bigger problem is whenever we try to see this demon, we do not kill it. We let it get bigger and scarier. We join hands with these demons and let them run the whole show.

 

In the end, demon does his job efficiently. And we fail to deliver for what we are hired for.   

Poor service by organizations is what I often talk on this blog. But what happens when we encounter some bad customers. Bad in the sense, a customers who just try to be bossy and can go to any length to prove that they are right.

I was standing in queue in McDonalds and waiting for my turn at billing station. A lady came and asked for manager. Manager came and lady started like this. " I bought x item from your guys few minutes ago but it fell down from the tray. Please exchange it with a new one." "Not possible, Madam", replied Manager. "But I am asking you to exchange it or else I will complain against you", said the lady. "Madam, I cannot do much about it and I am helpless", the Manager replied. Then the lady came after sometime and told the Manager that he will get a notice soon as he has not entertained her wish. Then came the lady's husband and gave his card who apparently was an advocate and told him once again about legal notice.

As a bystander, I was kind of pissed off by this customer's actions, though I was not involved directly. And I was feeling bad for the Manager. Why ruin his day for a process which is laid down by his company, and when it was by the customer's own mistake that the food item had fallen down, after she had taken it from the counter. And I am sure the company is also auditing its processes strictly.

When I was witnessing the first conversation, I thought the Manager has just missed an opportunity to delight a customer. If this is handled better then McDonalds have earned a customer for life. He listened to the customer with respect but failed to empathize with the customer. Had he empathized with the customer, he would have given a little more thought on resolving the problem. He might have come up something which was beneficial to the customer. Maybe he would have spoken to some senior for one time concession. Even if his senior had given him same response, then the customer would have understood that it is not the Manager's problem. Problem lies somewhere else i.e. in processes.

But after witnessing the second part of conversation, I guess I was wrong. This customer would be tough to please and even if the Manager had gone out of the way, the customer would have felt that she earned which was her right. The customer may not be wrong in thinking this was her right which she was being denied, but then there are better ways to approach. Showing your power and intimidating the one who is doing his job, is not correct.

When you see such situations, you sometimes feel that the customer can also be wrong. Not wrong in demanding for an exchange but wrong in showing his power to an employee.

 

 

Yesterday, I visited one of my favorite magazine and CD shop. It is not any established chain which draws my attention and earns my business because of some heavy discounts or some amazing assortment. In fact, it is a small shop which has most of the popular magazines on their racks, and some of the most popular movies titles are in their inventory.

Good thing about them is that they remember which magazine I read often and know the genre of movies I watch.

Yesterday, as soon as I entered the place, owner was prompt enough to remind that my favorite travel magazine's new edition had come. I was awed by the fact that he remembered my choice. I am sure that I am not one of his high spending customers, whom he should target specifically. For him, I can just be another customer and he can treat me like a cog which can be replaced easily with another one.

I observe that a lot of small and neighborhood businesses are proactive. They are proactive in remembering my choices. They are also proactive in recommending products based on my previous choices. If a product I am asking for is not is stock, this small shop proactively notes down my requirement. Proactively they give me the time-line by when they can arrange the product for me. When the product has arrived, these guys call me to inform that the product is available with them and I can pick up. I love them for their pro-activeness.


And I will continue to be your customer because you make me feel special. And because I am earning this 'feeling-special-kind-of-thing', you continue to earn my business.

 

 

These days whenever I receive an SMS, I have fair bit of idea who is the sender. It is either some real estate developer or real estate agent who is making a desperate attempt to sell some dream project at astonoshingly low prices. No, I am not getting into art of predicting future. There are far more capable people in that field. Its just the frequency with which all these builders are trying to woo me. Nearly 80% of SMSes I receive are from someone who has some stake in real estate industry.

I am not sure how and why these developers have a feeling that I am a prospective customer of theirs. I have not received any increment in distant past and my salary is still at pre-recession level. None of my uncles is rich enough who can sponsor me any of their dream project. And also my father is not planning to give me any kind of fortune, so that I can own one these one-of-its-kind property.

I am sure all these developers and builders have some kind of business sense and they must have some kind of mechanism in place to track ROI on their SMS efforts. If their motive is to make me buy something, then they are failing miserably. Either they should look to tap me (in case they are hell bent on me as their customer) by tweaking their efforts or they should stop wasting their efforts on me (best thing to do!!). 

In case, their motive is to frustrate me and drive me crazy so much so that I decide to draw an Aloo Kachalu and write a blog post on them, then they are bang on in their efforts.

 

 

 

Yesterday, I was reading an interview of co-founder of Kayak. This is what fascinated me most.

Tackling the hassles around system and process issues is something which is so often voiced everywhere included on this blog. Being sucked into the whirlwind of processes and systems is the reason behind most dissatisfied customers.

Asking the one who are building processes, systems to attend customer calls, is nothing short of some-kind-of-wonder. In case problem is recurring, they will sit down and nail the problem so that they do not need to answer same problem over and over again. This is so non-sarkari thing to do. Anybody will love to see more such attitude from organizations.

My presentation skills are not very good. And I work hard to improve them. I read a lot about them, try to deliver as many presentations as possible. In my search of excellence in giving keynotes or presentations, I have become a student of this subject. I also try to disect, review, critique the presentations which I get to hear occasionally.

Till now only a couple of times I have come across a presentation, which was jaw-dropping. Some of the others were decent. Some presentations were a passe. Most of them were pathetic.

I try to gauge presentations on the kind of slides the presenter is using, engagement levels (with audience) of the presenter, and communication skills.

Yesterday, I was in a CRM workshop and most of the presenters were bad. Slides were full of bullet points. Presenters were reading from slides and ignoring audience. Eye contact, engagement with audience was missing. In a nutshell, presentations were horrible and it was apparent that presenters had spent time only on putting text on slides and not on how to deliver that text.

As I was killed by boredom during the presentation, I started surfing internet. While surfing, I came across this article. Apparently presenters in front of me were not ill prepared to deliver presentation, organizations like Google also falter when it comes to presentation.

I absolutely agree with the article that the product presentations by Steve Jobs are amazing, entertaining and you will be awed by his showmanship.

Read an interesting article about a small business.

• providing on-time delivery,
• committing what you can deliver and deliver what you have promised
• always-on-service for clients
• making relationships and not sales

I went to my bank yesterday to operate my locker.

Here goes my five goof ups which if used can definitely result into customer defection.

Do Not Take Care of Your Language - Do not use language which brings out courteous personality of yours. Use lot of words like 'obvious' which shows your are arrogant, unfriendly and rude.

Do not call back your customers - Do not want to take customer's call. No problem. Just tell him 'I will call you back' and keep the phone down. Do this time and again and customer will stop calling you forever. 'I will call you back' is most over-used goli given to customers. You should also try sometime, it will surely work as it is tried and tested.

Make the customer follow up - Do not want to help a customer? Ask him to follow the 'follow-up loop'. Ask him to visit again and again and again and again. He will surely loose his patience someday and that would be the last time he will bother you.

Advertise sales without details - Tell the whole world with a full page advertisement that you are coming out with a huge sale. Just keep your terms and conditions so small that it can be read only by microscopes. Let customer come to you running, fill his shopping trolley and spend 40 minutes in billing. Then hit him with a hammer called terms and conditions. He will dump his shopping trolley on billing station and will never comeback (till he sees next sales advertisement of yours).   

Keep yourself busy on phone - Posted at front-end of some business and do not want to attend any customers. Get busy on phone. Its simple. Pretend it is the most important call of your life and customer will understand and go away. You know customer is an understanding species.

Try these above mentioned steps and I assure that you will an have endless list of customers who are fed up with you. Probably, yours will be the last place that they would like to visit