Customer is a King...Conditions Applied
Is Customer Really a King? - A Few Anecdotes
A) Background: “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 of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.” The quote is attributed to Gandhiji. Though, the fact is, there is no concrete evidence to prove that he had quoted this quote. (Source: http://customersthatstick.com/blog/what-is/what-is-a-customer/)
But, regardless of the genuineness of the quote, the fact is, that most of the Marketing and Management textbooks have this kind of description (i.e. the customer is the king)
Here, I would like to quote a few anecdotes, which, will essentially, not be in sync with the above notion.
B) A few Anecodes:
B.1) Show me the money! - A very senior of one of the leading nationalized banks (of India) once told me that he (or for that say, any banker), would not be generally interested in helping customers in opening a PPF / Sukanya Account etc., as this will not bring much business to the bank (in simple words, it will not help him get promotion in future). Rather, he would focus on selling Credit Cards / Various Loans etc. (which will bring business to bank (and promotion to him)).
The private banks, of course, are no better. One of the leading private banks required me to resubmit KYC documents as per RBI directive. As I walked into the branch, the employee, on knowing that I had come for this Re-KYC, just gave me a form and said "please come after filling up the whole form, with proper documents". The same employee would have been delighted to offer me to fill up my whole form, if I was there to apply for some credit card or loan or a policy.
In fact, a lot of bankers keep telling me that it is impossible to satisfy the customers!
B.2) Post - Paid to Pre - Paid: Well, I had this costly post paid connection of one of the leading cellular service providers. When I analyzed the bills, I could makeout that I was urtilizing only 25% of what I was paying and it would be better to convert to prepaid from postpaid. So, as soon as the local franchise employees learnt about what I was there for, their first reaction was to push me switch me to some alternate plan. When I refused, they did accept the form, but it took company some 72 hours to convert from prepaid to postpaid. It generally takes 24 hours to do the same in the same company. More than that, a year back or so, when I had gone to convert my prepaid to post paid, the overall reaction of the employees (of this company's franchise) were much more welcoming!
B.3) Zero Balance De-Mat (No Frills Demat): Forget it!: Then, there is one more leading private bank of India (not the one mentioned in B.1 above). I wanted to open one No Frills De-Mat Account, in which, there would zero brokerage if the volume of trading is upto 50,000 per year. The salesman of the bank, on my demand of such an account, simply denied that such a product existed!!!! Once I had shown him this product on his bank's website, he was kind of aghast!! Of course, he never called me back to offer any service!
B.4) That Discount in Carrrr: While buying car, the salesman didnot tell me that there is 3000 rupees discount for teachers. But, once I learnt it, he simply told me to submit a copy of i-card and offered me the same discount!
B.5) No Demo of RO: A leading RO company claims that their local showroom people would come to your home and offer RO demonstration. But, when I approached a local store, they said "company people keep telling such stupid things; if you want to see the product, you must come to our showroom!"
B.6) That Term Insurance: I am yet to meet a leading nationlised life insurance company's agent, who is ready to offer a term insurance rather than an endownment plan!
Well, if a reasonably educated person like me has had these many bad experiences, what about crores of people out there? Well, customers are kings! You know!
