Customer Service

   A customer is considered as a god for any business for reasons known and customer service is taken very seriously these days even in a very small business. Losing one good customer can make a huge impact especially if the business is in its early stages. During team meetings, owners/managers who run the day to day operations stress the importance of customer service and even run loyalty programmes to retain customers and constantly strive to get feedback from customers just to make sure service level is satisfactory. Customer service in India has grown leaps and bounds and nice to see professional attitude from Businesses. These days I see staff in Hotels/Hospitals with uniform dress for customers to identify the staff, Toll free number/feedback form to register feedbacks, automated call to register complaints, Courteous staff who had undergone some Training on how to handle Customers from all walks of life, Training on communication skills for staff who are customer facing etc., Tier 1 city differs from Tier 2 and based on the city we may see service level varying and I would like to bring one example on how customer service works in Tier 2 or 3 level cities.

     Let us take a Family restaurant in a place like Tanjore – assume a big group consisting of 20 people who have decided to have dinner together. Group consists of babies, toddlers, teenagers, aunts, uncles and Grandparents – server who is going to take care of the group realizes this is a great opportunity to show his hospitality skills. His calculation runs like if the group stays for 1-2 hours then the bill may come close to 10,000 INR and seeing how affluent people are they may tip me 500 so he is all excited and pumped up. To start with group starts ordering Soups and starters – baby is cranky and parents realize they need server’s help at times to make funny faces, kids wanted tomato sauce to the extent we don’t know whether ketchup is a main dish or a condiment. Server realizing this brought the entire bottle to the table and next set of dishes include Naan, Ceylon parotta, romali roti, chapathi etc., along with side dishes are ordered and served. Uncle while reaching out to one of the dishes spills Navaratna kurma by mistake and server remembers owner’s golden words “Go out of the box to help your customer” and immediately offers to replace the dish at no extra cost which makes Uncle blush like a new bridegroom. Granny while having malai kofta realizes it is too spicy and wants something to be done else she may not end up having her favorite koftas – Server recollects another set of golden words “Be friendly with our customers” and immediately offers granny that malai kofta will be reworked to make it less spicy. Aunty is in her diet hence feels butter naan is too buttery (Note the point my Honor – Aunty expected BUTTER naan to be without Butter) and once again server realizes customer service is the key and replaced the dish much to the delight of aunty who seems to glow much better than Kohinoor diamond. Server did an outstanding job and one ritual which every server should learn these days is to take a family picture which he did and Uncle paid him 500 as tip which the server accepted happily.

     Now all this is good but there is other side to it – customers who visit the shop on frequent basis were not treated the same way since as per Server he knows whatever service he does to the regular visitors all he is going to be paid is only 20 as tip; Also some of the inventory like Ketchup may run out of stock and server has to say no to some customers; They may have extra ketchup bottles in store room but that maybe locked since stocks are taken out only on need basis. Also lots of redo work makes the cook busier which increases waiting time for other customers. So long story short customer service is in abundance for some customers at the cost of few customers; The 20 members group may not come again since it was a family get together that may happen rarely but the frequent visitors who has the habit of coming regularly may stop coming due to the poor service. For an owner this is a blow and something which he cannot spot unless he is on top of this; Owner’s words on Customer service is cleverly misused by his employees and that is why some owners are afraid to give free hand to their staff as far as customer service since they are aware of the fact staff may play it to their advantage. Just apply my blog on any given business in a Tier 2 city and you will be able to relate to what I am saying and once again not everyone does this but because of selected few whole group comes under the radar.