What is your consumer rating? Ps – Mine is 4.7!

What is YOUR consumer rating?

A few years ago, I was upgraded to Business Class in a Jet Airways plane bound to Delhi. Next to me was a man who wore sunglasses all through the flight, had shiny clothes and sported an obnoxious perfume. If I had a choice, I would have rather sat in the toilet than next to him.

Inside the flight, there was a strange phenomenon at play. Whenever the airline staff would pass this man, they would smile at him. I don’t think he smiled back ever. His sunglasses concealed his expressions completely.

Just after take off, this man became a hooligan.

He screamed at the air hostess for not bringing him hot black tea; he had issues with the tea bags and even the cutlery. All along, the poor quivering air hostess kept doing her best to please this as******.

A few minutes later, I lost it and told the air hostess to just ignore this stupid man and just do her thing. She was very embarrassed by my comment and kept trying to make Mr. Obnoxious happy.

Mr. O looked at me and said, “Don’t you know who I am?”
I said, “Yes – An As*****”
He said, “How dare you! I am the best known face in Bollywood”
I said, “What’s that?”
He said, “Where do you live? Don’t you know Bollywood?”
I said, “Mumbai all my life and I’m happy I’ve never heard of you or your horrible industry.”

The rest of the flight was a pain but in the end the plane did land and I forgot about this idiot. A senior Stewart whom I met later told me that this guy was amongst the top B’wood actors and earned crores of rupees per film.

Grrrrr…. good for him.

How I wish I had a tool or method that day to ‘downgrade’ this passenger and give him a negative 100 marks on 100 to just warn others what a painful consumer he was. None such feedback system existed.

Circa November 2015, when I read, “I’d like to know my rating” on the Uber App, my heart leapt with joy!

I was NERVOUS while requesting my rating (knowing that I can be an as****** myself at times) but I was equally excited about the innovation of reverse ratings. This was a very welcome idea.

After a few days, my ratings arrived ☺
Yeah, I passed!

Uber’s consumer ratings program makes me propose the following questions

1. Why aren’t so many more apps and online services doing the same?

It bothers me that I’m not a perfect 5 and I’m sure lots of us would also like to be the ‘perfect’ customer? What did I do or say in some Uber trip that DID not get me a perfect 5?

Benefit: Let consumers know how they score. If India is to thrive as a ‘consumer’ economy, then consumers need to be educated to get better!

2. How can ‘offline’ brands rate consumers and make them realise how they are perceived?

Consider that Jet Airways passenger for example. He would have really scored a negative rating from me.

Can co-passengers rate each other and also people who serve consumers? If you would shout at the service level staff be it inside a plane or at a hotel reception, don’t they have the right (discreet or public) to rate and rank you?

Benefit: In the long term, if consumers are terribly rated, I am sure some service providers would not like to do business with them. I am told of a very senior bank executive who robbed the CURTAINS of his 5 star room (yup – curtains) and had to be politely detained at the lobby. Why should the hotel do business with him again and why shouldn’t he be made to realise the same? Without sharing his name, if the ‘reason consumers get bad ratings’ is made available, I am sure a lot of conscientious folks would do their best to improve themselves!

3. How can consumer ratings be shared across businesses?

In Noida, there are consumers who order televisions from e-Com stores “just for fun”. When confronted they say, “We wanted to check if the service was working”. Hahahaha!

Who DOESN’T want to know who these guys are so that none of us send them stuff at all?! I am sure Dominos has a Blacklist of folks for order and never take delivery – why can’t that list be shared with us?

I am sure a Universal database of Indian Consumers can be made with a Unique identifier (mobile number and facebook id combination) and then brands just populate that id with all their ratings? If we harmonize the ratings (1 – Terrible – 10 –Awesome) then it becomes a nice simple and equal dashboard?

Benefit: The best consumers are doled out deals and offers and the worst not served at all? Very quickly, this ‘gamification’ of consumer ratings will make the good become better and the worst beg for another chance!

Just like children are taught how to eat and behave, so also, consumers need to be educated in ‘etiquette of buying and consuming’.

Check these screens shots of Uber telling its consumers HOW TO RIDE!

Isn’t it high time we all started implementing easy to deploy tools to help consumers become better which in turn can only better our business?

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