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I had posted a blog couple of days back in which I proved to you that we do not believe in the concept of “Customer is King.” Why don’t we believe? Very simple. There was no proof (till I developed customer mathematics) that customer satisfaction is profitable. I will now share with you the mathematical proof that I have developed to convince you that customer satisfaction and retention is not only the most profitable strategy but that it is the primary business strategy and all others are secondary. So if you want to learn customer mathematics, just keep yourself tuned in here.

This is a very interesting question for all of us who are customers and who isn’t? Everyday businesses ill-treat their customers. Everyone of us has horror stories to tell. Inspite of being a business and hotel management student, I ill-treated a customer in 1997. Since then, I have thought about this question. Now I know the answer and would like to share it with you.

I had read quite sometime back that service providers should regularly inform their customers about the level of service they are getting. I believe the reason behind this is that customers take the level of service that they are getting for granted and they sometimes do not appreciate the efforts of the service provider. Also, the effort you have made to serve the customer is also sometimes not visible to the customer. I think this is true of my experience also.

On Diwali, we bought a dining table from LifeStyle Furnishers, Kirti Nagar, New Delhi. The name of the salesperson was Diwaker Sharma. Before delivering the dining table, he called me and fixed a time for delivery. The dining table arrived bur need a little bit of touching. So I called him and he promised to send his people after couple days as he said they were busy with the Diwali rush. He told me that he will call me. I thought to myself, haven,t I heard that before. When have sales people called after making a sale. Well, I was surprised. Two days later he called me to set up an appointment so that his men could come and do the required touching up. It was a pleasant surprise that his people came on the appointed time and everything worked out smoothly.

Yesterday, I received a call from a freind and client who has read my book titled “Customer Math.” His company is building a new automobile showroom in Delhi and he was having trouble getting the vendor from whom he is purchasing the lift to respond to him. He finally got tired of calling him and adopted the method that I had adopted with a newspapers some years back, that is, write him a letter “Gandhigiri” style. I am reproducing parts of the letter with the theme “I apologize” below which I wrote to the newspaper:

I have always maintained that companies do not treat their customer as “king.” They keep saying it but they do not walk their talk. I had problems with HP Laptop and it took quite an effort for me to get justice. I have talked about this in brief in the “Tips” section of my website www.customermath.com or for complete details you can read my book “Customer Icebergs.” I had used an innovative ploy, that is, I had made a request to HP (Hewlett Packard) that I would like to return the laptop to the HP CEO along with my family and that we will not say a word. We will just leave the “lemon” laptop with him so that he can realize what kind of product he was selling. Ultimately, my problem was resolved but they tried every trick in the trade to avoid settling my problem. But I am a persistent guy.

I had earlier posted a blog about the way Singapore Airlines had treated my mother-in-law. I had mentioned in the blog the effort we had to make to find a wheel chair for my not-too-well Mother-in-law who was travelling to Australia. I had also mentioned how she was left alone by SA employee in a wheel chair at the Melbourne airport while my brother-in-law went to get the car.

Yesterday, I went to leave my mother-in-law at the airport as she was going to visit her son in Australia. My mother-in-law is 72 and has not been keeping well. As such, we decided that she should travel by business class on Singapore Airlines (even though appox 25% more expensive) than Thai because we were told that they are the best in the business as far as service is concerned.

I recently read an article in ET in which its CEO & Joint MD Manoj Kohli was profiled. It seems that Manoj Kohli’s dream is to make Bharti Airtel the Toyota of the telecom industry.

I thought that maybe it was Airtel alone which bills its customers without their orders but Vodafone does it too. This is evident from the email that I received from a harassed customer, Jigar Goks. The contents of the email given below are self explanatory.

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