The Hindu Business Line : Lagey raho customer bhai!

L agey Raho Munnabhai was one of the few Hindi films I liked. Now that sounds quite dramatic and profound, but I do know that I am not alone in admiring that film, even allowing for the fact that I spent the early part of my life in Tamil Nadu which was chanting evocative and powerful slogans like “Hindi Down Down!” during those formative and impressionable years. But less of my childhood and more of the movie and what we can learn from it.

There is one particular scene in the movie where the protagonist enlists the help of Bapu to answer queries by senior citizens on the Mahatma and his life to impress and get closer to the girl he loves, who takes care of these senior citizens. One of the senior citizens is anguished that a little boy has thrown a stone at the statue of the Mahatma and damaged it and wants to know what should be done about it to which the Mahatma gives a strange answer which the confused hero repeats. He says: “Remove my statues from everywhere, remove my pictures from everywhere, remove my picture from currency notes”, and when there is shocked silence he says, “but just keep me in your hearts” and the audience and the senior citizens are delighted. If only we kept the right things in our hearts and homes! Back to my childhood and the Mahatma whose picture I used to see in the Khadi Bhandar where we used to buy stuff and where one got to see this inspiring philosophy

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work - he is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to serve him.” Mahatma Gandhi.

I am not sure if anyone in those premises ever read that inspiring slogan or even remotely considers following it. Indifference to the consumer is also true of modern, successful and otherwise professional organisations. Here are some experiences that I as a consumer have gone through and sadly enough, am still going through. These are just a smattering of the myriad experiences that I have gone through, constrained as I am by space and your own patience, dear reader.

Barriers are created when people sell

I could be described as a heavy mobile user if there ever was one. I have been a customer of Airtel ever since I started using a mobile in the mid-Nineties; in fact, I had started with JTM which it took over subsequently. I like Airtel and its advertising, even if it has no relation with the reality. I always view most service commercials as exercises in execution for mythical services as I do not seem to enjoy the same level of service that the commercial flaunts. They have wonderful commercials which talk about the network and coverage. Sadly this network never seems to work on the Koramangala ring road where I seem to be spending a lot of my time. I daresay it works better at Kandahar and other distant places they show in their commercials though I have no way of knowing as I have never been there.

But seriously, Airtel cares for its customers and has a process in place to register and respond to customer complaints which lots of other companies can learn from. Having said that, I continue to have disastrous experiences with the ‘Do not call’ service which I registered for. Despite this being in existence for several months now, I get calls everyday around 4.30 in the evening {which must be some auspicious time} from every conceivable company.

Airtel registers my complaint, says it will take it up with the company and probably does but everyday a new marketer demonstrates his enthusiasm by calling me. Why am I being singled out for preferential treatment? Is this a reward for my loyalty of staying with the same service provider come hell or high water? Is this Airtel’s problem or TRAI’s problem? It certainly seems to be Ramanujam Sridhar’s problem. Maybe I am expecting too much from Airtel which, clearly, is unable to cope with this. Is my expectation unreasonable? I wonder.

Ramanujam or Raitanujam? Who cares?

I know I have written about this before and spoken about it, but I cannot resist the temptation to talk about it again as it is too close to my heart. I have been the first citizen of a prominent retail chain for as long as I can remember and they have a great CRM programme in place. They keep reminding me about my birthday, my anniversary, my wife’s birthday and send requests to me to come to the store for Diwali and Valentine’s Day. Wonderful, you say. Yes, but I wish that each and every one of their letters were not addressed to ‘Raitanujam’. I am only happy that my father Mr S. K. Ramanujam does not get to see these!

Though I must say it does make a few of my friends happy — they say the retail chain is just recognising the South Indian love for curd that I have (out of which raita is made). I wish I could share the same enthusiasm! It is simple - customer service is in the details, not in lofty statements about engaging the customer and delighting her. And the solution is training, in every aspect that impacts the customer. Boring stuff, stuff that you have to do day in and day out, but stuff that matters to the consumer.

I remember asking the head of a large pizza chain how the retail industry was and he looked at me as though I was an alien. I get this reaction sometimes when I think that I am asking very intelligent questions. Sadly, the person to whom the question is being posed does not seem to have the same enthusiasm. “We are in the business of training people. I spend most of my time on training,” he said, “training our people on how to answer the phone, how to take directions, how to greet customers … the pizza is incidental.”

Yes, it is the experience and that is a lot easier to talk about than to deliver. So here is a quick question to all you service providers. How well are your people trained to deliver? And your suppliers who are helping you serve, are they part of this whole process?

Mr ya Mrs?

Another large builder who stands for quality but does not know what the term customer service means is headquartered out of Bangalore. The company has someone heading its CRM, which sounds pretty impressive. He sends New Year cards to my wife which are addressed to “Mr Saroj Sridhar” and protests go unheeded.

I know that some of you are finding this funny and are probably saying that maybe she calls the shots in the house… but I am not even getting there, nor are we getting anywhere with this builder. It is like hitting your head against a stone wall. When will builders realise that the boom is over and things that have seemed unnecessary to this community so far like responding to queries and caring for the customer will be their real differentiator in future?

A sucker is born everyday

I know that these are not isolated instances and every one has their own horror stories from credit card companies, mobile service providers and banks … Cheques are returned, wrong statements are sent, charges levied unfairly, telecheck-ins goofed up … The list goes on. Yet, what do we do about this? Precious little. We joke about it. We crib to our spouses and forget about it till the next flagrant disregard of our rights by unconcerned service providers who keep releasing lyrical ads about the wonderful service they are providing.

I think the onus lies with us as consumers to stand up for our rights. For far too long we have put up with absolute bilge and demonstrated what the principle “grin and bear it” means. Today the product quality that we get in India thankfully is a far cry from the pre-liberalisation shoddiness that we were used to. But despite our being a services economy, our service levels leave a lot to be desired.

There was an adage that seven out of 10 dissatisfied customers used to drift away without complaining in the past. Things have changed as today’s consumer has a voice and reach. Today we have the Net, the mobile phone and a wide database of friends, acquaintances and colleagues. We send a lot of useless forwards that no one reads and that get recycled a few months later, demonstrating the level of our underemployment. But issues that affect you and me as consumers can and will impact others in the near future.

We need to tell the world about our difficulties as consumers through mails, blogs, messages, columns, speeches … whatever means of communication work for us and the recipient. I am sure the Mahatma who told us to show the other cheek would realise that today’s world needs the consumer to be more than aware. Caveat Emptor has to be refined for today. Today she needs to create awareness about things that are not working and that are affecting our lives. Today’s customer has to be more active, even an activist for the collective rights of society and the guiding slogan might well be Lagey raho customer bhai.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds.)

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