The Hindu Business Line : Brands are expected to behave properly, always

THAT garbage trucks spew a lot of smoke, or that water lorries waste the precious liquid all over the road, is not new. Nor too that auto rickshaws ferrying kids to and fro schools let the bags and lunch kits hang precariously outside the vehicles, or that buses that ply with engineering college students blare out deafening music.

Drivers are all the same, it appears, because the menace of rash driving is too evident in corporate transport too. It used to be said that tourist coaches with foreign visitors drive carefully and smoothly so that wrong impressions are not carried back from the country. But it would be wrong to stretch that wishful thinking to company buses that one may find increasingly on roads, with units coming up at the fringes of the city.

Already there is the distance of about 20-40 kilometres to cover between the city and the far-flung works, and there is the urgency both ways - to reach the staff in time, and also get the employees back home fast. So, when a senior citizen stops to note down the number of a blue-chip's bus that almost pushed him off the road, I know it is only a sign of age. Or, is it a sign of the current age, that people expect a brand to behave properly wherever it is?

Thus, on 9-11 when a Starbucks branch near WTC charged its usual $130 for three cases of water, and ambulance workers treating victims for shock after the twin towers collapsed scrambled in their pockets for money to pay, the backlash hit the brand, and not so much the shop attendant. This is something that big companies may need to remember.

When as a consumer, you complain about some service, a common knee-jerk reaction is to view the company staff who interacted with the consumer as the main culprit. Immediately, orders are made to sack the scapegoat and to present his head on a platter to the consumer in atonement. Consumers who bring aberrations in service or product delivery are not looking for such ghastly payoff as the dismissing of a salesman or clerk.

Years back, when after a long drive to Coimbatore, I reached a hotel, a big name in restaurants, and ordered idlis that the hotel is famous for, what came up on the table was a cold, dry stuff, with ridges that reminded one of crisp Ooty rusk. I took the piece to the office and asked whom I should contact to complain.

An elderly gentleman wanted to know what the problem was and I put the sample before him. Without a word, he got up, walked up to the kitchen, slapped the bearer, and promised to waive my bill. I was disgusted with the management's approach to consumer complaint.

In comparison, one would expect that corporates that spend crores on employee development, quality control and such exalted themes would have approached a similar situation differently. Again, sadly, the answer is no.

Pursuing my recent complaint about service at an outlet, the oil major in question had its officer insist on very harsh remedial measures - such as having a boy drawing Rs 800 or so a month to be sacked, and threatening to stop supplies to the bunk.

So, one fine morning, I find before me the outlet's staff seated before me, pleading for a letter saying god-knows-what so that their problems would be solved.

Perhaps the officer wished that those miserable sinners present themselves before me as reformed citizens and if only I acknowledged that fact the noose would be untied. But such thinking would only take us several centuries backward.

E&OE@thehindu.co.in

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