Shame on us!!

I recently had quite an appalling experience at the ordering counter of a popular pizza joint in my neighborhood. While I was waiting in queue to place my order on a not so busy day, two other gents walked in, first a man in his 50s and second a young lad in his 20s. First, the older guy cut the queue by sticking out a hundred rupee note and rattling off his order ahead of everyone else in the queue. No sooner than this happened, the younger guy started placing his order, also breaking the queue. This time I lost it, I put my foot down and demanded that the lady at the counter take the orders as per the queue and also gave her a bit of my mind. Of late I have been observing that the civic sense in our city has taken a sharp nosedive. There seems to be a clear deterioration in the way we conduct ourselves in public and also the way in which we treat each other; there is an apparent sense of disrespect and utter disregard for fellow human beings. It comes as no surprise that Mumbai has been rated as the worst city on a survey conducted by Reader’s Digest on the world’s rudest cities.

Few of my pet peeves are:

1. Shabby road conduct: People showing utter disregard for other vehicles at toll gates and trying to cut right into the queue especially during busy hours. This is such a disgusting and dangerous act as it not only spites other vehicle owners but also seriously compromises their safety. Not to mention other frequent violations like unnecessary speeding, dangerous lane cutting and weaving through traffic, incessant honking and not yielding to pedestrians.

2. Poor conduct in public places: At shopping malls, cinema halls, airports, fast-food joints, virtually everywhere, we get to see chaos and total breakdown of orderliness. It seems like people don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘Queue’. Most painful of them all is the ruckus that people create while clearing customs at Mumbai airport. The twenty five queues converging into one is quite a sight to see! Imagine the kind of first impression of ourselves that we are creating in the minds of tourists visiting our country.

3. Littering at will: There seems to be a complete disregard for the need to keep public places clean and tidy. On a recent visit to a multiplex, I noticed in the restroom that people throw used tissues everywhere else except in the garbage bin. I also noticed this behavior in the mall near my apartment; there is a famous ice cream joint which draws huge crowds almost every day of the week. At the end of the day you would invariably see huge debris of ice cream cups littered all over the place, a truly appalling sight.

4. Poor Elevator Etiquettes: Another annoying behavior is people waiting for an elevator at crowded places showing utter disregard for those in front of them and making the dash for it by breaking the queue acting like thorough numb-nuts!

How we conduct ourselves in public places reflects how we are as a nation. We seem to have completely forgotten that we share our space with many others and that we must adhere to certain basic etiquettes while in public places. We demonstrate complete disregard to (whatever little) efforts the government is taking to improve the infrastructure in our city. With the metro rail system coming up in Mumbai, I can’t bear to think about its fate a couple of years after its launch. We don’t seem to understand the importance of conserving such valuable assets and handing them down to future generations.

While our lack of civic sense has always been my pet peeve, my feeling of irritation and anger has peaked after my recent experiences in the States. I have seen in the US that people do not break traffic lights even at 2 in the morning, but I have seen my countrymen break signals at will even in broad daylight. Why is this disparity? I would not only castigate our people for such flouts but also the lack of effective deterrents. The inefficiency of our law enforcement system in curbing such violations is a major contributor. While in the US, people live in constant fear of getting on the wrong side of the law due to severe fines, penalties and lawsuits, our blokes can get away with virtually any civil disobedience for a minor rap on the knuckles or a pittance of a bribe.

While the nouveau-riche Indian middle class seems to be taken with the glitz and glamour of urbanization driven by our free market economy, the responsibilities associated with these trappings seem to be woefully missing. We have been so hard wired in our live-and-let-die mentality that it is going to take a Herculean effort to change our attitude, thinking and behavior. Ignorance and lack of training at a proper age is the root cause of this problem. The current day youth and middle age population has never been sensitized to the virtues of good civic sense and seems to lack the slightest inkling of what being a Good Samaritan really means.

As India is at the inflection point of global leadership, we need to make a conscious attempt to change our thinking and behavior. We must ingrain these virtues into our next generation right from a very young impressionable age. Schools should include civic sense as a mandatory subject part of their syllabus and inculcate the importance of virtues such as not littering, being nice to strangers, holding doors for others, and respecting those ahead of us in the queue and not forgetting to thank someone for rendering a service. Though these are simple qualities but they will take us a long way in our quest for development.

There must also be consequences for violations. Civic bodies must take it upon themselves to discipline people by imposing fines for littering and dirtying public places. There must be a dedicated cell run by the traffic police to bring violators to books. This can be done through simple mechanism such as a toll free number where one can call and register a complaint by identifying the violator by their license plate number.

If India must become a super power and lead the way for other nations to follow, then it is time for us to take these seemingly ephemeral virtues to heart, make them part of our culture and hand them down to our children as an heirloom. Though I am bullish about India and betting on the Indian growth story, I am painfully aware of the writing on the wall: India will never be truly great if we don’t cure these fundamental ailments. If we Indians don’t get our act together and stop behaving like juveniles, India’s growth would remain all but stunted. This would serve as a painful reminder of what a great nation we could have been if only we had got our act together in time, the very thought of which makes me shudder!

How thick skinned can we get?

Being a Lean Six Sigma consultant for almost my entire working life, I have always been hyper sensitive towards shoddy customer service. It could partially be blamed on my insatiable thirst for authentic real world anecdotes to drive my ideas home during my consulting escapades! I recently faced two such experiences that have prodded me to write about this topic and its impact on customer and the business.

I had opened an account with Chase Bank shortly after moving to the US. Chase was a natural choice given that they were conveniently located at a stone throw distance from my school and they had an ATM inside the school campus. My tryst with Chase began on a not so unusual note with a fairly simple account opening procedure. The banker who helped me open the account was a pleasant mannered South American, who was friendly and eager to please. The process seemed simple enough despite the fact that I was an expat without a Social Security Number. My nightmare began a couple of months later. It started with my debit card being abruptly blocked without my knowledge. When I called up to demand an explanation, I was told that it was due to a document that I had failed to submit. On probing further I realized that I had indeed submitted the document but they had misplaced it. The issue was not resolved right there; instead, they cancelled my debit cards and reissued them, thus leaving me in the lurch without access to my money for well over a week. Close on the heels came another untoward incident. One day when I was out running some errands, my debit card again refused to work. This time I was told that there was a much more serious issue. They wanted me to submit an additional proof of residence due to changes in bank policies. I hurriedly submitted a letter to that effect attested by my school authorities. They got back to me in a couple of days stating that the content of the letter was inadequate and that I should redraft the same. Despite submitting a new letter in the requested format, my account was shut down without my knowledge or consent. They chose to mail me the check instead of handing me the money at the branch. When I demanded that the check be handed to me at the branch, they cancelled the original check and promised to reissue the new one at the branch in a couple of days. I was never told that there was a mandatory waiting period before they could reissue a check and that it would take more than 2 weeks for me to get the new check issued. So I was left with no money again. This saga has been going on for almost a month now and the last time I checked, they had misplaced my check and were carrying out an “investigation” to find out it whereabouts!! Their callous attitude has thoroughly disgusted me!!

The second episode occurred with Continental Airlines. Since I am exceptionally tall, I have to beg borrow or steal for an emergency row seat every time I fly (for the sake of the precious few extra inches of leg room). I had booked myself on a single layover journey from Phoenix to Mumbai and there was no way I was going settle for a non-emergency row seat. First of all I was disgusted by the fact that the airline tried to profit by selling emergency row seats; I had to cough up well over $200 just for the “special” seats. Immediately after paying up, I received an e-mail message stating that I was allotted a non-reclining seat on my Phoenix – Newark leg of the journey. This was never indicated to me at the time of purchasing the seat! When I hurriedly tried to rectify this situation by going back to the website, I could no longer reach the link that would allow me to alter my selection. Worse still, when I called up the airline, I was put on hold for over 15 minutes and after being bounced around like a ping-pong ball, I was told by a rude voice that I had called up the wrong department and that I should call the web support team instead. The persistent sod that I am, I called up the web support team only to hear a recorded voice that told me that all the agents were busy and that I should call them up sometime later! By this point my patience ran out and I finally gave up with the hope that I should be able to make amendments at the airport, which was never meant to be. I didn’t find much respite at the airport either and ended up flying on the non-reclining seat. This seat had such an awkward contour that not only did it not allow me to sit comfortably but also completely prevented me from catching a wink of sleep during the entire 5 hours flight! This was indeed a welcome beginning to a well deserved vacation!!

These experiences have set my six sigma mind in overdrive once again. Several questions pounded my mind. So why did these organizations screw up? Was it so difficult to fulfill my needs? Were my needs so completely out of the ordinary? Were these people never made to realize the importance of good customer service? Is it so difficult to be sensitive to customer needs? Why do these people act like the customer is the greatest enemy to the organization and a serious impediment to their work?

While we all agree that superior customer service is the holy grail of modern day management, then why do we see so many companies missing this point completely? I have come to believe that customer focus is not just about a one-off heroic act of service but is a consistent behavior engendered by a message of customer devotion reverberated at all levels. It is a habit that needs to be interwoven into the cultural fabric of the organization. Furthermore, it has nothing to do with the country or region the organization operates in. One would be tempted to think that being in a country like USA where laissez faire is at its best is reason enough for an organization to be highly flexible and customer friendly. But that is not the case always. It is but driven by several other vital factors such as entrepreneurship and leadership at all levels, top management’s demonstrated commitment, reward & recognition systems, and most important of all, honesty & transparency with the customer.

Any organization which has over the years grown to be thick skinned and insensitive towards the customer needs has to engage in some serious soul searching. It needs to ask itself a few vital questions in order to find it’s bearing once again: How connected is the organization with the customer? Are the processes tuned purely for internal efficiency at the cost of customer service? Has the person serving the customer been sensitized to the pain the customer has to endure? Does she ever put herself in the customer’s shoe and ask the question: “Is that the way I would like to be treated when I am at the receiving end of the service?”

Training the employees goes a long way in engendering such a thinking, attitude and behavior. Like the old adage goes, thoughts become actions and actions become habits, it is very essential for the leadership team to nurture such habits among employees by recognizing and rewarding them. There also need to be clearly communicated consequences for bad customer service. The first step for which is have an efficient and transparent two way communication mechanism with the customer. I am reminded of one such attempt by an organization, a local Apple dealer/service provider in India who had proudly brandished a signboard stating that the MD was eager to hear the customer’s feedback and had his e-mail address printed on the signboard. But when I did write to him about a service failure that I had experienced I never heard back!! Such attempts only indicate a lip service, what is really needed in a clearly demonstrated customer oriented behavior, and a walk-the-talk attitude which has to start at the top and percolate at all levels of the organization.

So is there really a panacea for bad customer service? Maybe not, but then it isn’t rocket science either! By sticking to some of these fundamentals, any organization can be a customer centric organization, and earn the love, respect and loyalty of its customers.

1. Be accessible
2. Listen to the customer
3. Put yourself in the customer’s shoe
4. Be honest
5. Be responsive & transparent
6. Measure performance
7. Give real-time feedback to employees
8. Reward favorable behavior
9. Reprimand unfavorable behavior
10. Set the right expectations
11. Be consistent
12. Become process focused
13. Strike the balance between customization and standardization
14. Make customer service everybody’s KRA, starting from the CEO
15. Link performance bonuses with customer satisfaction