The Unservicing

By definition customer service is defined as the process which starts before purchase and becomes critical post purchase when the customer has a problem.

Anil Garg posted on FB, poor service by bigbasket.com (the online grocery in which SRK says ‘I am a big basketeer, are you?’); this was followed up by the bigbasket delivery chap attempting to steal Rs. 200 by sleight of hand. He was of course caught and fessed up saying ‘mistake zhala’. Many days post the event, the company has not come online, called, or done anything reasonable to keep this customer. And thereby hangs a tale.

It is true, that new companies, especially in e-retail have innovated in pricing, distribution and technology. The Economist has written their praise. They are strong on acquisition process, fast distribution, money/cash collection and very sales focused.

On the other hand, they lack respect or care for their customers. In fact customer service/care is limited to mentions in their websites and company PR handouts.  All FMCG companies have a phone number printed in the smallest possible typeface on the packaging. In most cases, this telephone number is manned by informal call centers with equally informal telephone call receivers who haven’t the foggiest about customers or care.

CEOs have long forgotten what a customer looks like. The distance between their office and the customer is about a light year. When they do ‘market visits’, it is reported in the press, especially the ET. This should change. That a CEO should go incognito to understand customers’ problems is a historical concept, which has receded into history.

The next rung of people around the CEO are involved in elbowing their cohort to be as near to the imperial ear as possible. The next rung apes the one on top and so on. The only people left holding the customer service bag are on the lowest rung or at outsourced call centers.

Apart from the above, six contributory factors are at work:

1.     ‘Shortage’ in our DNA

2.     Non-service orientation.

3.     Self-righteousness.

4.     Suspicion.

5.     Lack of training/awareness creation.

6.     Lack of empowerment at customer interaction points.

Prior to the 1990s, we were in a perpetual shortage economy. Rationing, queues, long wait times and shoddy goods were part of life. Acceptance was the norm. This situation is far behind us; but it seems to have left a footprint in our DNA – be glad for what is given.

We somehow equate ‘service’ with ‘servitude’. We dislike being asked to serve. Having gone to college somehow ingrains in us a sense of haq/divine right that listening to and resolving a customer’s problem is below one’s dignity. Maybe we should become waiters for a week? (Refer to Author’s advice in my review Lata’s Book)

We are deeply suspicious of motives of and untrusting of others. Supermarkets across India routinely have uniformed guards roaming aisles, manning entries and exits – especially exits where they demand the bill, to ensure you carry out what you have paid for. This is mostly in plain eye-shot of the transaction having taken place. Management’s explain this as protection against shop lifting. They should know better than that; their own employees contribute more to ‘unexplained contraction of stock’ than do shoppers. In my experience, only Marks & Spencer does not ask that bags be kept outside and check bags on departure.

If customers have a problem, they must be wrong. How can ‘our’ product or ‘our’ service be flawed or faulted? Arguments ensue; ending with the customer losing out. There is a campaign titled ‘jaago grahak jaago’, which is all good but its implementation is so stretched that it becomes an almost useless exercise.

The way forward is to create Service orientation through focused training, conferences and incentives on par with sales conferences, dealer conferences and celebratory conferences for meeting or fixing targets.

If the customer’s complaint then falls on receptive ears and there is nothing they can do – it’s because they are simply not empowered to act. They have to refer upstairs through a bureaucratic process which gets lost in the labyrinth.

The solution lies in Management shedding their command/control outlook to one of trust. At a minimum this empowerment of the front line will create a sense of purpose for the employee help in employee retention and create an espirit d’corps which a minimum increase in wages can’t. It will also mean an increase in customer loyalty which no loyalty card can achieve.

Peter Drucker observed that the whole purpose of a business is to create and recreate customers. It’s the latter part which matters. To be purposeful in business, we should rediscover the definition we started off with, especially the emphasis:

By definition customer service is defined as the process which starts before purchase and becomes critical post purchase when the customer has a problem.

Rajesh Pant, 

Pune, 

20 April 2016

Lata’s Book

There’s a management lesson from Rabindranath Tagore which goes “Jodi tor đak shune keu na ashe tôbe êkla chôlo re”. The enlightened reader certainly does not require a translation. That as a starting point, Lata Subramanian has written, edited and self-published her maiden work (A Dance with the Corporate Ton) on Kindle. If publishers missed the point, her courage didn’t.

Cyberspace and technology provide enough facilities for expression, provided there is something to say, have the expressive power to say it, uncaring of opinion and are willing to go it alone. There is a joy in writing sure; if profits follow it’s a bonus. If bouquets follow great, if brickbats follow, wonderful – someone’s reading. Sure we want everyone to love us; but that’s impractical and we have to accept it. No school of Management teaches this fundamental truth.

While this book is a personal journey; she has woven into it managerial lessons which will stand (especially) management students and young managers in good stead. That working life begins somewhere and it ends somewhere. Not necessarily at the bottom or the top. Not necessarily with too much ease or too much pain. And it does not necessarily start with a bang or end with a whisper. Sometimes the other way round. That mistakes will be made and successes will come. What is important is the journey and the lessons learned. As she puts it “life is a fairy tale, which it is not”

Dealing with biases are an important life lesson. One of her themes relates to the harsher realities of pigmentocracy and impact of skin colour, appearance and dress in careers. Bosses and HR people will shrink with horror when confronted with the fact that these biases exist. God Forbid! They chant. The truth is unkind. As Daniel Kahneman, in his great work Thinking Fast and Slow, explains “Systematic errors are known as biases and they recur predictably in particular circumstances. When the handsome and confident speaker bounds onto the stage, you can anticipate that the audience will judge his comments more favourably than he deserves. The availability of a diagnostic label for this bias – the halo effect – makes it easier to anticipate, recognize and understand.

In the introduction of his wonderful book Being Mortal, Atul Gawande writes “I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality was not one of them”. In Management School a lot is taught; management of disappointment, failure, boredom and especially boredom is missing.

In her journey through Oberoi Hotels, Lintas, Trikaya/Grey up to Sterling there is a recurring theme of boredom. It takes courage to admit that it happens so often in a career. What are the outcomes? What happens in a job change? Management of incidents in the organization when personal life is going around the bend out there.  It is only in stories like these that facts emerge.  They are facts. They are neither ‘right’ nor ‘wrong’. That is what Students of Management need to comprehend.

Thought she quotes George R.R. Martin “Nobody is a villain in their own story. We are all heroes” she writes honestly on many dimensions, especially on figuring her self.  “It also didn’t help that I was very opinionated and vociferous with my judgements on how the agency should be managed”. And “I had failed to learn the art and benefit of emotional impassivity from the Corporation”. At another stage she figures “You highlight the positives and dramatize a story that can be sold, even from your personal life. It’s how you position yourself and build a personal brand. It’s an age old art, which is now known as personal branding”. From one extreme experience she writes “I also think those three months of waitressing made me a better person and manager overall.”

Honest self-assessment is an art and a science. It has to be learnt, only from experience or from the experience of others.

Her tough advice to her reader “I still hold by that belief. Employees are better off if they learn to safeguard their own future by reading the trends in the environment and gearing up for the future.” True but tough. Tough, because it’s tough to do.

Schools of Management should make her book available to students on laptops, I Pads, Kindles or whatever e-medium young people interface with. They will get a practical workbook on life on the grind. As Ms. Subramanian says “It depends on which side of the tunnel you approach the question from – the short view or the long view”.

Do note she doesn’t talk about light at the end of the tunnel. That is for the enlightened reader to understand, that there’s always light there.

Rajesh Pant

Pune

April 2016