| In the last few weeks, I have encountered diverse experiences (and have met some who have shared their experiences), which have led me to start believing that many consumer product and services businesses are now doing so well that they now think of their customers as "unwanted, unwelcome" intrusions into their comfort zones! |
| My litany of grouses begins each morning as I drive into my relatively new office in Gurgaon. Our office building is one of the newest ones in an otherwise swanky office complex being developed by one of the leading developers based in North India. Every morning, there is a major traffic jam as I approach the complex, and every evening, it takes me (sometimes) more than 30 minutes just to get the car out of the complex on to the main service road. In their greed and utter lack of concern for the needs of their customers (dozens of tenants that comprise some of the best national and international businesses), the developer has left hardly any provision for parking either for the employees of their customers (tenants) or their customers' hapless visitors, who have to spend sometimes nearly 45 minutes trying to find a parking spot when practically none has been provided for. I wish customer satisfaction ratings were one of the mandatory disclosures from developers going for IPOs! |
| Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit a newly opened mega shopping mall in Noida. Much was touted about this one as being representative of a new generation of shopping malls in India. However, it seems that almost every mall developer only carries the worst practices of the previous malls (whether their own or of others) to their newer projects. As always, abysmally designed alighting points for customers to "helpful-signage-free" underground parking (and charging a parking fee of Rs 30 without assisting any visitor to find a vacant parking space), confusing overall layout, and generally rude and ignorant mall security staff (one could not even point me correctly to the stairs/emergency exit, which I wished to use since all the elevators were not functional) were the highlights of this shopping plaza, touted as "great" by its builders! |
| Within the mall, two of its anchors""both belonging to two of the largest and most experienced retail businesses in India""continued with their "best practice" belief that all customers are potential thieves and hence they have to deposit all shopping and personal bags with an intimidating security guard at the entrance before entering their hallowed portals. One of them also made a wonderful extrapolation of this designed-to-upset-most-customers philosophy by mandating that customers, once they have entered this very large store, and if they have made any purchases, have to exit only through the cash tills. If they wish to stay on in the store with their newly acquired shopping bag or exit from any other entrance, they cannot do so! |
| I heard horror stories from a colleague, who made the mistake of travelling KLM recently. The airline, obviously highly suspicious of Asians and probably all non-Caucasian Europeans, had the audacity to threaten her with an off-loading threat for the temerity to protest against frequent technical snags that forced her aircraft to return to Schipol twice after taking off for India and in the process, delay her return by more than 24 hours while the callous ground staff and on-board crew kept her shunting from one seat to another. Three other associates suffered misery on a recent outbound British Airways flight from Delhi when they had to deplane after the pilot and other crew decided that they were too sleepy to fly (ostensibly on account of a sleepless night due to noise in their hotel or more likely, an evening of revelry in the hotel bar). |
| Anyone who now has a reason to travel within India and look for a decent hotel room will testify that despite paying up to Rs 25,000 per night for an ordinary room in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, the attitude of the staff at the front desk is that they have done a favour to the poor sod by even giving him a room! Try getting banqueting facilities in major so-designated five-star hotels these days in major cities. If one is lucky to get one, at every step thereafter, blatant gouging is being resorted to by almost all the hotels and without even a "thank you" note from the hotels' marketing or general management staff to customers like my company, which shell out more than a couple of crores each year to a few of them just on account of our various annual conferences. |
| All these instances are even more ironic, considering that the CEOs of these businesses routinely travel all over the world and experience such facilities and services by other service providers in those countries. Many routinely pick up national and international awards as visionaries, and some have already made it to the Forbes list of 36 Indian billionaires. |
| Alas, how much more comfortable life would be for these luminaries if only there were no customers to worry about! |
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
