The story of the Valet – a true story

Ms. Kalpana is a busy Senior Manager in a large Bangalore based company.  One Saturday evening,  she drove her Swift car along with her mother, to a store in Jayanagar , Bangalore to buy some jewellery for herself . She gave the car to the Valet for parking and went up to do her shopping.  After a few hours of jewellery shopping, ( who ever finishes jewellery shopping in a few minutes ?) she came back to collect the car at about 8.40 Pm in the night ! only to find that her car had a punctured tyre ! She was at her wits end, as to what to do ?  At this time, all puncture shops would be closed and she will have to take a taxi back home and come back the next day to get it fixed ! It was then, she was surprised to hear...

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White Classroom Boards are now in showrooms !

A College Class Room! For many of us, the last time we saw a black board was probably in our highschool or college !  Maths was probably one of the most difficult subjects and we often tried to learn maths by reading and hoping to remember how to solve problems ? Do you remember ? Now, let us discuss how targets, incentives, schemes are being explained to us by our store managers, company managers ! We all seem to listen to them, think we understand, but when we are asked to explain what we have understood, we find it very difficult. Why is it so ? Then, at the end of the month, we dont understand why the incentives were not as per our own calculations ! Then we feel upset ! Hearing about maths and seeing and doing it are...

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Can you get Great Customer Service even at Rs. 7 ?

Just yesterday, I and a couple of entrepreneurs  from (http://www.startupleadershipprogram.com) wanted to have Coffee. The nearest one was a “Road side Chai Shop”, that typically sells Coffee and Chai from a Thermos Flask. We ordered two Teas and a Coffee . When the coffee was poured into a plastic cup, I saw some black “floating objects” and said, what is this ? The shop keeper  immediately took it back and poured another one and then told me it is undissolved instant coffee powder. I was quite impressed with his attitude to exchange what was after all coffee . His  Customer Centricity did not end there and when we asked how much, he said 7 each , but I took out...

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A Street side Hawker's innovation

Streets in India, we get see and hear, hawkers, with all kinds of things for sale. They typically, keep “shouting “ about their wares and before long, some home maker or another will come out and buy one of those things, typically vegetables, fruits etc. Most of the hawkers even have a regular route and so are their customers as well. A bit of bargaining goes on, and every one is game for it. Some hawkers dont go out into the streets, but stay in a "market place" like a mandi ! But, recently, I was out on the streets on my morning jog,  when I was  surprised to hear  a hawker’s voice louder and clearer than what I normally hear and turned around to see where was it coming from?   There was only one hawker way...

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The most important visitor on our store premises is....

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 in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in 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 an opportunity to do so.” ― Mahatma Gandhi These days, a customer can walkin to a large departmental store and be stopped only at the security gate  and there after go in and browse through the entire store for hours on end and no one else will even ask you how they can possibly help you ! The designation of the staff is typically " CCA" Customer Care Associate, but they hardly seem to care for the Customer ! It is not...

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Why are National Brands lagging in the online world ?

Positive. .... The customers are changing, and many customers do a lot of "window shopping, web browsing" even for going out for a casual dinner in their T shirts and half pants  and chappals ! They read reviews, visit websites, get feedback from their friends both online and off line. Positive.. At the other end, are Brands  working to meet the customer in the physical world with newer and bigger stores in new markets, new towns and in new malls! But that has not been enough. They are investing more and more in inventory, bigger and bigger marketing budgets and staff who hardly understand this new age educated customer... Negative..... Just check how many brands have their own "websites, mobile websites, official twitter and...

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Mobile Apps for Training

If any business is not building a mobile application, they are not doing the right thing. People are addicted to their mobile phones. Mobile apps are going to  be a big thing and no company can ignore that.  Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google, recently in India Companies, big and small are forever promoting their business through newspapers, TV ads and everything else in between. With competition doing more or less the same, the companies are adding more money to their marketing budgets, more money to their inventories . Yet, Let us come straight to the point. Customer Service is uniformly a big challenge to deliver across the country, whether it is a big hotel or a small Coffee Shop. Like a Optical Store owner told me today, the...

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