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A friend of mine had booked hotel rooms for her boss on one of the top 3 travel booking portals in India. Let’s call it xyztrip.com
3 hours before her boss was due to check in at the hotel in Malaysia, he realised that the reservations were in my friend’s name instead of his name (since my friend had paid by credit card she had mistakenly entered her name as the guest name)
My friend got worried since Rs 22k was on line for forfeiture – She called up xyztrip.com’s customer service department and very politely asked the Customer Service Agent if he could change the guest’s name on the reservation and inform the hotel in Malaysia so that her boss could check in.
“No Ma’am, it’s not possible. As per the policy no details on the reservation can be changed”
My friend and I had just come out of a meeting at 3 pm and had ordered lunch when she got on the phone. Lunch was getting cold and I was getting more and more irritated overhearing this conversation.
My friend is a very polite person and even though she was miserable, she was still being very polite to the customer service agent.
Finally after half an hour of ping-pong, I thought, let’s try it the ‘Indian way’ – I tried screaming at the agent and asked to speak to the supervisor hoping that a senior agent might have some more sense.
We were promised to be transferred to the supervisor and put on hold for another 15 minutes.
As a last resort, I pulled out my phone and sent a very polite email to the CEO of xyztrip.com (I know him as a vague acquaintance ) and went back to eating our lunch, not really expecting much.
We got a call back from the ‘Customer Delight Officer’ of the company within 15 mins and she just asked one question, “What should be the name of the guest on the reservation be modified to ?”
Boom -And just like that, her problem was solved.
While I was pleasantly surprised, it got me thinking –
How many people know the email id of a CEO of a large multi million dollar company ?
Or Why should one have to write to the CEO to get a simple issue resolved ?
Or Why didn’t the Customer Service Agent not take initiative in the first place ?
I guess he is too lowly paid / demotivated and probably just thinks of ‘Customer Service’ as a temporary role before he moves on to bigger things.
Why is customer service such a low priority in companies, especially when they form a large part of the customer interaction ?
Why is it thought of as a cost center when one should be thinking of it as a profit center ?
Thoughts ?
asha chaudhry
i love this post abhik!
by and large, customer service in india sucks across most industries. i think it’s lack of training + incentives. i don’t think employees realise the impact of good customer service vs bad customer experience.
also in this day where “customer acquisition” seems to be such a huge priority – retaining customers via good customer service seems to be ignored.
ps: be sure to email the ceo of xyztrip.com :)))) am sure he’ll appreciate it!
keep sharing stuff like this abhik….
Abhik Prasad
Thanks Asha 🙂
Yep, I already emailed him yesterday.
Melbin Thomas Jose
This is a real pain point for any consumer in India and customer service of all companies are pathetic.
Just got off the phone with my mobile phone customer service who couldn’t even understand my problem
Me and my team working toward a solution. Will post updates soon
Amit Arora
Good one Abhik !! Agreed that companies should always think of Support as a Profit Center instead of Cost Center.
Nitin Binhani
Not really surprised with this, far too many companies operate with inside-out operations, meant to satisfy internal policies rather than being customer-centric. Little wonder that companies with average or poor customer experience lose half their customers within 5 years.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Abhilk, I wrote this 3 years back:
A few weeks back I invested a princely sum of money to buy my Airmax 2010 Nike shoes from the flagship store in San Francisco. Last week, just before traveling again, I washed my shoes and was aghast to see a big hole on the inside lining of my brand new shoes. I photographed it and sent the complaint to the marketing folks at Nike India – got ‘Shunya’ (zero) response. This made me madder. Armed with the receipt and with war in mind, I stormed into the New York store determined to make a fuss and noise. This was the ‘Indian’ consumer psyche kicking in – ready to fight and draw blood to set right what should not have gone wrong!
The ‘returns’ counter had a very pleasant girl who greeted me and asked me my problem. When I snarlingly showed her the hole, she shrugged, said ‘oops’, and asked if I wanted my money back? Her reaction took less than 7 seconds. I melted. Yet the Indian consumer was still kicking. “Yeah – gimme my money back”, I grumbled. She did and then pulled out her trump card – she gave me a 20% discount on any purchase bought within the hour in that store. Well, you guessed it – I bought the same pair of shoes (new color), pocketed enough dollars for a great dinner, walked out feeling like a prince and started doing social marketing for Nike!
Can you ever imagine this happening in India?
Just another day in paradise…
Why does Retail Service in all the stores we visit in India – be a boutique or a super mall suck so much?
I believe:
– The staff at the retail counters doesn’t use the goods they sell and have no information about the product.
The folks in Nike USA are athletes. They know everything about running or the sport that interests you. The guys at the Nike store in Mumbai have fat paunches. They wear Nike shoes but I’m sure only as ‘store wear’. The Nike guy in SFO asked me what kind of running stride I had. I had never heard of this before. The guys in Mumbai did not understand the difference between running and jogging.
The brand owners have to make these sales folks use the product and ‘get into’ the brand they sell.
– The Brand owner hasn’t educated the sales folks about the philosophy of what their service standards globally are.
The Tommy Hilfiger stores in India are pathetic! The store sales folks never smile – they look like they are recovering from an epidemic or something – neither offer fashion advise nor bother checking if your size is available beyond what’s upfront. When I walk into a Tommy store in the USA – the experience is absolutely the opposite. The problem is that I expect the same experience irrespective of which Tommy store I visit!
Big brand owners must learn from the original software exporters of India who sent young engineers abroad on assignments and then ‘contracted’ them legally to work with the firm when they came back. The big retail brands should send a few key Sales and Service folks to their International flagship stores or even as just consumers walking the high streets of New York or LA. The investment will be well worth it.
– The orientation should be ‘service’ and not ‘sales’ because sales precede great service automatically sooner or later.
The Apple store in San Francisco gives you free lessons on how to use and juice Twitter or begin blogging. It’s an open classroom – just come, sit, learn and go. Nowhere do you get the feeling that someone is going to sell you something. In India, within a few minutes of walking into any store, someone will ask you what you want. When I answer – ‘nothing’, I get glared at! Why the hell did you ask me in the first place?
The Oberoi and Taj groups in India and my favourite – Jet Airways have done a spectacular job in selling service to the India consumer not the product. Stay put in an Oberoi or Taj lobby for hours and no one will disturb you. Put the key brands sales teams thru a hotel or airline experience and then put them in front of consumers.
– Don’t focus on looking smart yourself – make the consumer smart instead!
I still remember walking into the Levis counter at Vama (Mumbai) a couple of years back (Vama incidentally wins my prize for the absolutely worst store…in terms of service in the world). The girls at the Levis counter were slim and pretty, chewing gum, strutting around and constantly chatting among themselves without a bother in the world that they had a job to do. I saw a few customers (girls and their moms) standing on the side absolutely intimidated and shadowed by these ‘modern’ girls! I asked one of these wannabe models what was the difference between all those red, blue and black ‘tabs’ of Levis – she looked snidely at her partner and asked if she knew… in a tone that made me feel like a moron. (hmmm… shouldn’t she have known in the first place)?
The customers in the corner had vanished and so also had vanished valuable sales for Levis.
Tell Sales people to either become models or Sales people and thus choose between one profession. Don’t mix them up.
International brands can open as many stores in India as they want and stuff them up till the walls burst, but it’s the sales folks who will make the cash register ring. Set that right first.
Send me your retail experience in India or anyplace else as a comment and contribute to this piece.
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My gut says that the operators talking on the phones in the call centers have NEVER TRAVELLED on a foreign holiday before – they cant RELATE to the stress and hence they cant solve it.
Jitendra Gursingh
Whattay post and whattay a comment! Brilliant reads..