The Hindu Business Line : Raising the bar

So, customers haven't complained about your organisation's poor service quality? They may not. However, they have a better way of setting things right: shifting to another service provider.

AROUND 10 years ago, I made a misguided attempt at opening a bank account in Delhi. I was warned it would be an arduous process, but having banked in Bombay and Madras (as they were known then), and having been exposed to a far more civilised banking system, I was blithe in my ignorance.

Opening the account was the first big hurdle. My first visit to Union Bank, the closest branch, was not very propitious. Why do you want two forms, I was asked by a suspicious clerk. One for me and one for my husband, I remarked, a bit surprised. No need for two accounts, I was told, sternly; one is enough. My indignant protest to the manager met with a helpless sigh. The staff simply did not want to open more accounts, he said, so much paperwork, you see.

I marched off to Canara Bank, where the courteous and efficient service was more like what I had been used to. Yet, there was an unforeseen hitch. We are being computerised, the manager said proudly, and the system cannot take too many accounts. We can open only current accounts, not savings accounts. SOS, SOS, it yells, he said. If I hadn't been so angry, I might have found this comic.

What was interesting, though, was that my indignation was quite incomprehensible to the rest of the Dilli-wallas. This was what they were used to. I tried describing the warm and friendly service I had in Madras, or the brisk, efficient systems in Bombay. But I may have been describing a foreign country, for all that it helped. Obviously, I was benchmarking my expectations based on what I had got used to, while for the rest of Delhi, this was pretty much par for the course.

The whole episode flashed in front of my eyes when, on a recent trip to Delhi, I wandered into a bank with a relative. Delhi has really improved, she told me, the banks are so much better.

I wasn't sure. I stood outside the Standard Chartered bank in Greater Kailash, surrounded by a bunch of increasingly tetchy women. They had all landed up at 9:30 to do their banking, only to find the bank doors locked and a notice informing them that the banking hours were now 10-7 on weekdays. After some squawking protests, one customer rationalised that the changed timings would be useful to working women, who could come after office hours. I remarked that in Chennai, we had got used to 24-hour banking hours. There was a shocked silence. Once they had assimilated that Delhi could actually be backward in something, I could see a distinct shift in their service expectations. No longer would they be satisfied with incremental improvements. The knowledge that there were banks willing to provide 24-hour services had altered their expectations completely.

This, then, is what all service providers have to watch out for. Service quality offers a very potent form of differentiation, but to get it right, you need a unique combination of flawless efficiency and warm relationship management. Competition brings in its wake not just a better choice of brands and price options, it offers myriad permutations of service improvements, which combine to raise the bar on service expectations, both within sectors and across different sectors.

Take the much-acclaimed Jet Airways experience. The classy and courteous service standards set by Jet impacted not only Indian Airlines, but the expectations of all travellers from all front-office service personnel. Finally, there was a benchmark against which all hospitality and service staff could be compared to. The next realisation that is still to dawn in the minds of service providers, is that eye-candy is not enough. Having smartly turned out and soft-spoken service personnel is not enough. At the end of the day, the job has to get done.

Which is what did not happen that day. The employees at Standard Chartered were unfailingly courteous, but rather inept. The young fellow helping us out was obviously a trainee and didn't have his facts clear. He kept running off for a huddle with his boss, after which he would emerge with an air of enlightenment. Then, they had run out of application forms, so our work did not get done.

Next, we visited ICICI Bank, where the plethora of forms and the procedural requirements were so daunting, we postponed our work to another day. Finally at HDFC Bank we hit the gold mine. A friendly young thing took charge of my ageing relative, helped her negotiate the small print and the procedural maze, and ensured that the complex transaction was carried out without a hitch. No wonder my pleased relative plans to shift all her accounts to HDFC next.

What this experience brought home to me was that unlike a decade ago, consumers in Delhi were no longer willing to accept what was given to them as a yoke that had to be borne. A savvy, questioning consumer has been born, who is aware of her options, is willing to shop for them, and gets tetchy when her expectations are not met. Every time she encounters superb service, it raises the bar of expectations, generating a swell of discontent with experiences that fall short.

What should worry service providers is that this discontent is not always voiced in the form of complaints, so they don't have any specific grouse to tackle. To assume that your customers are all happy, merely because they haven't cribbed to you, is to live in a fool's paradise. Customers gravitate silently to the better service provider, and by the time you find out, it can be too late: new loyalties have been built and retrieving lapsed consumers is very difficult. The bigger the gap in service quality, the more potent this magnetic attraction. Usually, as in the case of my relative in Delhi, customers simply vote with their feet, silently taking their business with them.

(The writer is a Chennai-based management expert. Karate-gy is a proprietary term for strategic exercises conducted by Paradigm Management Knowhow.)

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