Interactive stupidity - an easy way to lose money

I was at iconic eatery in Bangalore. The eatery serves South India fare and with its first outlet close to one of famed gardens of Bangalore is a tourist spot in Bangalore in its own right. Although, I was at a different spot.

I ordered idly and vada. This is basically staple South Indian breakfast fare. Now the one thing you expect in this kind of a joint is that food be served piping hot. That is the base customer expectation. The customers dont say it out explicitly. The eatery doesnt advertise it. But as I said, this is the expectation.

However, the moment the vada came in, it I saw that it was as cold as the Bangalore weather (which is actually mild; but I thought I'll give it some dramatic effect). I realized it after taking a bite.

You expect people to own up and replace the stuff - I have had this done and seen this being done multiple times. In the South of India, where people take their idlis, dosas, vadas and coffee more seriously than they take most things in life, you dont eat any of the above, cold. Period.
The blatant refusal to take back [because I had taken a bite], or even apologize was something that left me fairly angry. This was gross violation of one of the cardinal principles of customer experience in my opinion - you mess up >> you own up >> you clean up >> you make up.

Now let me compare this with another eatery in HSR Layout, Bangalore ("Madhuram"). It is more of a local joint - with a very similar style. You order-you eat-you pay-you leave. You can clearly see that this place is suffering a lot from not being known and hence low footfalls. But one place you dont see that impacting, is the way they treat their customers. Once, I had a few things not in order. The head waiter approached our table on being informed this, profusely apologized, replaced the stuff, apologized again. He came back again to inquire if the food was in order, and apologized once again. He in fact trailed us on our way out and told me that this incident will not be repeated.

Now let me get to some additional facts - restaurant #1 is popular. It gets more footfalls. It might even be making better food. However, all this is happening because of their years of legacy and brand. [which needs to be protected because they have more to lose]. They have a high revenue, high cost structure [more so, because they are located in the Central Business District.]

Restaurant no. 2 has a small but a loyal customer base. They have not fixed their front end around promotion and marketing and almost seem happy to earn the meager business they do.

Difficult to say who will do better in the long run - but I would place my bet on the latter. Or rather, that their business will not be shut down because a customer who walks decides not to walk in again.

The importance of engaging your customer positively- a laundry list of benefits

I thought I'd make a quick 101 list of the benefits of engaging well with your customer.

Let me provide a clarification first. When I say "engage", I mean it in the most comprehensive and inclusive way possible - before, through and happily ever after the buying cycle - the total experience delivered to the customer.

Coming to the list:

1. Repeat purchases by customer
2. Increases purchase quantum during the repeat purchase
3. Reduces probability of buying elsewhere
4. The customer buys more number of extensions of your brand
5. Reduces customer churn
6. Reduces the chances of buying from competition
7. Advocates your brand and product to everyone - creates a domino effect
8. Reduces the cost of acquiring a new customer - you need to tom-tom less on advertising
9. Your residual advertising gets sharper :-)
10. Reduces your servicing cost - lesser complaints to begin with
11. Reduces your servicing cost - lesser need to clarify / provide information after the sale is done
12. The customer is willing to pay more
13. Your employees stay engaged, and feel good (I'll surely come to this in one of my future posts)
14. You fulfill a key moral imperative of being in business
15. Your obsess over understanding the customer better through all pieces of touchpoints and information that you can lay your hands on - you design your overall experience much better than competes.
16. You have got too many things going right over a period of time, for your current and future competitor to replicate
17. You have set in motion a passionate organization that is hard stressed to always improve on their customer experience delivery - you catch on technological disruptions better and outlive competition

If you notice, the earlier bullets are shorter sentences, and the length of the sentences is almost increasing in a linear fashion. There is a very clear reason for this. There are some very strong no-brainers on being customer-focussed - which are very easy to explain. However, there are also fundamental but long-drawn out advantages, which needs to be mined better
 

A blog that focuses on everything customer

Customer Satisfaction...
Customer Experience...
Customer Centricity...
Customer Effort...

The buzzwords will come and go. But the core idea shall remain. The customer is a reasonably important aspect of business, especially for business that want to continue to be in business!

This blog will focus on most things customer in nature. My day job is to focus on helping companies improve the quality of the relationships they have with more and more customers by finding out and delivering what the customers say they want, and, more importantly, what they'll never say they want, but will get terribly happy if they are provided.

But this blog is pretty much going to be my own personal views, opinions built through my years of working as a management consultant, as well as being at the forefront of many (personal) purchasing decisions.

Yes, you heard me right. I have a job and I buy stuff - that gives me the power and credibility to inform, and influence what you do!

I'd also want to share my take on why this blog is named as such. I'm a movie buff (more Bollywood, and other regional Indian movies than Hollywood). But the name is inspired by "The Pursuit of Happyness". Like the central premise of that term, as defined in the United States Declaration that Happiness cannot be achieved, but only be pursued, it is fairly established that the Customer cannot ever be owned, chased or tricked...only wooed permanently.

Let me share a quote that is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi (though there are doubts whether it really was his quote):

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 on work.
He is the purpose of it.
He is not an outsider to our business.
He is part of it.
We are not doing him a favor by serving him…
He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do it.

I'd agree with every part of the above, except for the cardinal assumption being made here that the customer is a "He".