Not Being Sarkari

We customer service guys are a spirited breed and I am proud to be part of this ever expanding breed.

  

This is so easy and sooo coooolll.  

Just saying...

It is a Pizza joint in which, Pizza's are made by hand, ingredients are checked personally by owners, ingredients are bought from local farmers and it is opened only for 4 days.

Customers are loving their pizzas so much that they stand and wait in long queues, as seating capacity in the eatery is very small. Owners of this place do not give much importance to customer experience and do not beleive in getting customer feedback. They know what they are doing, why they are doing and intend to be excellent in making hand made Pizza. Rest everything is secondary for them. Owners work for themselves and continue to focus on things they are excellent at. 

A lot of consultants are offering their advice on how to manage customer flow, how to increase customer experience, and stuff like that. And as expected, owners have said 'no' to all their suggestions because of their approach towards excellence on one thing and let other things revolve around that 'hinge of excellence'.

Well, ubiquity has its own advantages and in case you want to own the whole world, ubiquity should work for you. In case you want to change one corner of the world, focusing on doing one thing with excellence should help more.

Just saying...

You can check out story behind Aloo Kachalu here. More Aloo Kachalu are here.

Zoobie posted a feedback regarding a restaurant on Facebook. 
Customers set up a website to protest against faulty Time Machine Capsule. I blogged, tweeted, reviewed,facebooked regarding my poor service experience rendered by IFB. Dell hell blog post rocked Dell customer service in 2005. A prolific blogger wrote few posts over 20 days before Dell look into his problem. But that sounds too 2005-ish. These days Real Time Reviews (RTR) are in. Real Time Reviews of products, services, by users and customers will be one of the trends to look out for in 2010. Real Time Reviews are already a rage. Tools like Twitter, Blogs and Facebook are fuelling this trend.  These real time reviews spread like a forest fire. Tweets get re-tweeted. Facebook status get comments. Blogs unite customers with same issues.  But bigger problem is most of the customer service departments in India are not ready for this RTR onslaught. They still believe in surveys which are meticulosly designed and carried. They still believe in good olds ways of structured feedback wherein feedback forms are given, feedback comes to customer service department, then it goes to respective departments, who act on it and reverts to customer service department who then get backs to customers. Phew! Too many layers to encounter.  I really wish customer had patience to go through so many layers. Trendwatching has come out with top 10 trends for 2010.

 Usually, operating lockers in banks involves processes which banks dread to skip. They ask you a couple of question regarding the locker, make you sign few registers and then escort you to locker room. The process is neither long nor painful. It is just a number of steps followed in a particular sequence which bores me a lot.  But this time it was different. Bank had just opened. I was first (or maybe second) customer in the bank. I did not remember my locker number. The lady could not locate the details register, and asked me if I knew the location of my locker. Yes, was my reply. The lady took me to the vault. I located my locker, put in my key and lady put her key and opened the locker. 'Sir, please operate and we will do formalities afterward' said the lady and went out. I am mighty impressed by lady. Processes can wait and customers should not. This attitude is so cooooool. I wish, while doing my transactions, I encounter more such cool places.

As an owner of a business, if I listen to this sales representative, I will be forced to commit suicide. It is not because it has something to do with lady. It is because I will realize that my hard-earned money is going down the drain. I will be convinced that such sales rep will never be able to close any sales for me. I will be convinced that if I chuck these sales rep, business will not deteriorate. They should be called as sales preventive and not sales representative.

Why it is not very often that business owners do a dipstick on service provided at customer contact points? Why cannot business owners go through what their customers go through regularly?

Found a list of ten things that business owners should do to gauge the customer frustration at various customer contact points.

Change this before customers change you.

My friend experienced a bad service from one of the leading telecom players in India. He had an internet connection which he wanted to disconnect. He paid bills and cleared all his dues. But the company forgot to disconnect his services.

They kept sending him bills. He responded them by writing mails to customer service to clarify issues. But he continued to receive bills. Then he started receiving threatening calls from their collection agencies. He clarified again to everyone and showed them necessary documents.

Nothing happened. Threats continued followed by a legal notice. Frustrated by all this treatment, he decided to bypass the whole system. He already knows that employees are against customers. He observed that departments inside the company are working in silos and do not communicate with each other. To resolve his issue, he wrote a complaint to the company CEO (yours truly's advise).

Thankfully after three days,  he received a call from the CEO's office. The guy apologized and closed the issue. My friend heaved a big sigh of relief.

Moral of the story - Do not believe in company's customer service. Do not believe that company's processes are designed to help customer's cause. Do not believe in assurances given by employees. Hit at the top. Nobody bothers more than the boss.

I experience it lot. I, being in customer service department for the last three years, have observed that complaints coming from our Chairman's office receive highest attention. We forget everything else and go all out to please that complaining customer.

Letter from the top just helps us to shrug off our chalta hai attitude and remind us that customer is still the king. I know this is wrong on our parts but unfortunately that's how the whole thing works.

Usually, hit at the top works.

Hit at the top = complaint resolution.
Hit at the top = employee attention.
Hit at the top = peace of mind.

Next time when you receive poor customer service, you know what to do.

I have registered Aloo Kachalu under Creative Commons License.

Means? In case you want to use Aloo Kachalu on your blog, feel free to do so. Please give credits by linking back. Do not alter image. Okay, you can re-size it according to your needs.

Feel free to pass it on to your friends. Let us see, if it inspires anyone to do good for customers. Or bring a smile on someone's face. Or someone uses it in entirely creative way. Like framing it and putting up on desk, putting it on a computer desktop. Just thinking aloud...

Let me know...

 Today I attended a pasta cooking session. I love cooking and keep on trying new dishes regularly. So, this pasta session was a logical thing for me to attend. More than pasta, I was amazed the way chef conducted the session. Whole cooking session was made lively by the chef, who was not afraid of licking his fingers in front of the crowd. He was cool, informal, enthusiastic and knew his stuff thoroughly. Chef regularly involved in conversations while preparation was underway. There were hardly moments of awkward silence during the cooking session. He used his time effectively to build relationships with audience. Though, chef was representing a pasta company, he hardly spoke about his pasta. He concentrated only on the cooking techniques of pasta. Educating customers and building relationship was his priority. His spotlight was on audience and not on himself or his product. In a nutshell, he ensured that people enjoy the journey before reaching the destination. He made sure that people thoroughly enjoyed this journey. I guess this an important principle in customer service. Most of the time, we customer service professionals concentrate on resolutions. We hardly pay attention on making that journey smooth for the customer. We are so engrossed in our processes that we usually forget about the person standing in front of us, who actually pays our paycheck. I guess if we can spend sometime on making that journey smooth, customer might decide to stay back and do business with us after his problem is resolved. We usually put more stakes on reaching the destination than enjoying the journey. It is human nature.