The Hindu Business Line : Customers come last

No one will dispute that at the heart of any successful business model is the customer; the business opportunity this model is built around starts from a clearly definable customer need. Yet, it is astonishing how rapidly the customer is evacuated from the scene of action. He or she is either subsumed into a number, a market share, a block of seamless colour on a graph or tolerated as a necessary evil, a mere fall-out of doing business. Customer service is abysmal and few of us can report any sense of satisfaction in many of our transactions with companies, from our banks to our car service agencies.

Whether created by top management attitude or an organisational culture that thrives by default in price-sensitive markets, this way of doing business has become endemic in our corporate and business life. A survey conducted by the SDM Institute of Management (SDM-IMD), Mysore, and ‘Custommerce’ of senior executives from a diverse group of industries, as well as presentations at a Customer Centricity Conclave conducted at SDM-IMD revealed no surprises. There was a consensus that the quality of customer service in the country, across sectors, was poor to average.

Pradeep A. Rau of Infosys highlighted the need to move beyond traditional market segmentation to addressing individual customers’ needs — a move from “transaction-based marketing to relationship marketing.” As he said at the conclave, this would entail a shift in focus from customer attraction to customer retention, from mere pre-sale activity to extensive post-sale activity, from measuring sales and profits to customer satisfaction, from offering not price but value. Marketing communications would, thus, have to be not just mass media-based, but carefully tailored to individual customer needs.

Abhishake Mathur of ICICI Direct gave the example of how any bank might evaluate branch performance. For top managers, the measures of a successful branch would focus on the size of the total liability, the CASA (current accounts: savings account) ratio, customer sat scores and the like. But from a truly customer-oriented point of view, the key measures would be very different indeed. What do any of us who walk into our local bank branch look for and almost never get? Minimal waiting time at the teller’s counter, a friendly attitude from staff members and ample parking space. How come these never get measured?

And where does this finally put the customer? In ‘zones of indifference or defection,’ never in the ‘zone of delight’ that would be critical for a company serious about long-term customer retention and return on investment.

Would a different regulatory environment help? It certainly would, though customer delight cannot be mandated. Regulatory regimes can make compliance an end in itself, making it just another factor to be ticked off on a pre-sale checklist rather than engender a genuine commitment to customer satisfaction. On the other hand, customer protection is perhaps an under-regulated area in India and a stronger regime would help raise the benchmarks for providing quality products and post-sale support and service.

The conclave coincided with the launch of ShoppingTrip 360 by Infosys. Accordng to reports the product “leverages a network of wireless sensor-based applications within the store that allows people (shoppers), places (retailers) and products to collaborate in real-time by creating an information ecosystem. This permission-based seamless exchange of information delivers value to shoppers, retailers and consumer packaged goods companies.”

(The writer is Professor of Communications at SDM Institute for Management Development, Mysore. This article is based on a Customer Centricity Conclave organised by the institute and Custommerce.)

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