Since then, it has adorned the wall in my kitchen, used by visiting friends and occasionally by the maid who refuses to let me drink from the tap as long as she’s in the house. So I was caught off-guard when a guy called me to say that my Aquaguard was 6 months old and it was time to get it serviced. Could he come now? Within 15 minutes a uniformed service guy was in my kitchen cleaning the water purifier and replacing parts. I was a little wary of what this would cost me. But it was a free service.

Wow!
The company not only provides a free round of servicing and filter replacement, they actually keep a track of when my service is due, remind me about it and all I have to do is open the door! This for a machine that costs less than Rs.6,000. What a contrast to owning a bike that costs 15 times or a car that costs a 100 times that. Forget about being reminided, you actually have to run behind the service center guy, wait your turn, drop your vehicle at the service center and pick it up the next day. And my guess is that there are more Aquaguards installed in the country than cars sold of any brand.

There is nothing really exceptional about what Aquaguard does. It is made exceptional by the lack of such service levels across most other industries. And the processes and infrastructure to provide such service is neither complex nor costly. It is within every company’s reach to do this.

While I write this, there is a huge red-blue truck in the quiet street below my balcony with three men shouting at the top of their voice “Gas, Gas…”. They are checking if anyone needs a Cooking Gas Cylinder.

*Although I admire their service, I do not endorse the product. I’m unconvinced about the benefits of Aquaguard and their claim of “Absolutely Safe Drinking Water”

Today, it is almost a cliche that brands want to “listen to customers”. They have Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and myriad social media initiatives to supposedly ‘listen’ to customers and make the brand open and communicative. Unfotunately, this is mostly limited and as soon as a customer has a real complaint that needs a real solution, the company suddenly doesn’t feel so communicative any more.

AT&T has launched a nifty iPhone app that could a be model for companies that actually want to listen to their customers and use the complaints and feedback to improve the service. AT&T’s “Mark the Spot” application lets a mobile subscriber complain about dropped calls, low network coverage and bad voice quality. This is a location based app that uses aggregated data from many complaints to find and show areas in the AT&T network where subscribers experience the most problems.

This is a good way to let the customer vent their anger about a dropped signal, feel that AT&T is going to do something about it and at the same time provide AT&T useful information about problems in its network. The information is a collected in a way that is instantly usable rather than generic ‘feedback’ that usually finds it way to ‘nowhere’. This is also removes irritating IVRS systems and call centers from atleast a small part of the customer care function.

The only problem with this approach is that a customer could easily end up feeling that he’s sending complaints into a black hole (which is usually true even while talking to customer care), in the absence of a response or any updates on what happened to his complaint. This is standard psychology, you want a ’sense of progress’, a sense that someone heard you and they’re doing something about your problem. This is what responsiveness means (not just sending a auto-reply email acknowledgement). AT&T should take this forward and when the network problem in a particular area is fixed, it should send a short update to everyone who complained about the particular location.

I like this app particularly because it acknowledges the fact that most customers are not going to report dropped calls and network problems (from location) if it means opening up an email client and writing an email to a generic email address (complaints@att.com). Consumers have become too cynical to expect anything to come out of such an email. It is smart to acknowledge this and make it easier for customers to complain in a way that gives them a sense of ’specificity’ (as against the ‘generality’ inherent in writing to a generic email address or filling a web form).

I was considering buying a laptop and called the Dell helpline to ask a few questions. I was put through to a “Sales Account Manager”. He answered all my questions well and was quite helpful, but insisted that I place an order on that very call. I said I wanted to consider other options and would get back to him. So he requested me not to call the helpline again, but to call him directly so that the sale would be through him. He sent me his mobile number on SMS. The next day he called me to check if I had decided. The day after that I had five missed calls from him. I called him and told him not to call me. I’d call him and place the order when I made up my mind. Which I did last thursday. The payment, order and address confirmation went smoothly and I was quite pleased with the simplicity of the whole process. I was promised that I would get the notebook in courier by Tuesday, February 23rd, or latest by February 24th.

My current notebook is not brink of dying with only half the screen working, the other half blank. I was quite anxious to get the new one. I was provided a Blue Dart tracking number to check on the status of my shipment. On Tuesday (the due date) I checked online and was shocked to see that the destination was mentioned as Mumbai and the estimated delivery date was March 1. I immediately tried calling Varun (Sales Account Manager) whom I had placed the order with. No response. A few rings and he would disconnect my call. I called about ten times and finally wrote an email asking him to call me ASAP. No response.

Today morning, I spent 2 hours calling the Dell helpline. I spoke to about 12 different people. Narrated my problem and gave my order number to each one of them. Each one would transfer my call to the “relevant people” and then I would be on hold for about 5 minutes listening a female voice advertising their “premium care package” and monitors. Even when I specifically requested them not to transfer my call, they would. “All our customer care representatives are busy”, I heard that about 50 times today morning. If I chose the “Buy a new computer” option on the IVRS, I was immediately connected to a “real person”, but soon lost his interest when I told him I had a problem with an order I had already placed.

Finally, I called up BlueDart to see if I could get some clarity on what was happening. My phone was picked up on the second ring by a very helpful, live human being. He took my details and within 2 minutes told me what the problem was. Despite my giving the address in writing, Dell had screwed up and given them the wrong pincode. This pincode was apparently out of BlueDart’s “Service Area” and therefore they brought the parcel to Mumbai from Chennai and were going to arrange for a special delivery to that pincode, which would take an additional 3 days from the date promised to me by Dell. I told him that my address was 2 km away from BlueDart’s Goa HQ and there was no way it was “out of service area”. He quickly corrected the pincode but said my parcel would still arrive three days later because it was being held at Bhiwandi for the ’special delivery’.

All this, without a single person from Dell being helpful. All of the ten people I spoke to sounded like they were doing me a favor by listening to my problem. The only helpful people at Dell seemed to be the sales people who expected you to place an order. Once you place your order, you are on your own.

While it is understandable that mistakes happen, a company that does not move quickly to acknowledge and correct it, is going to leave the customer with a terrible experience. In this case, ”my Dell representative” simply ignored my calls and no one else in their customer care department was any help.  I had to myself correct Dell’s mistake with BlueDart and make sure I got the notebook. If I hadn’t done this myself, I wonder when Dell would have woken up to the fact that they had shipped to the wrong address.

Ofcourse, Dell is by no means an exception. There are companies in every industry who offer the most shabby after-sales experience and have a unresponsive, irritating and useless customer care operation. However, in my experience, Dell topped every other “bad experience” I’ve had. It was like they were behind a screen and there was no way to reach anyone who could help.

It is shocking how  companies will spend millions on advertising and marketing, but won’t fix these simple problems. None of the problems arising out of this experience are difficult or expensive to fix. But I am quite sure if I order a laptop from Dell next year, I could have the same experience. Ofcourse, I won’t order from Dell again.

With experiences like this, Dell still has the cheek to say “Yours is here”.

Accenture recently released its fourth Customer Satisfaction survey with a special report on ‘Customer-centricity’ in India. It has some revealing findings about what Indian customers care about, about their loyalty to service providers, what they do when they have a problem… Here are some highlights:

90% of the respondents have left atleast one service provider due to poor service
Wow! 90% is a lot. Globally, the figure is 67%. The higher India figure is aided by greater choice and fewer entry-exit hurdles. 15 years back you had to wait for 3 months to get a telephone connection. Today, you can get 5 mobile connections in about 2 hours. This shift in power from the ’supply side’ to the ’demand side’ is something that a lot of companies (both private and government services) are yet to come to terms with.

Banks, Internet services and mobile operators were switched most commonly
This is very obvious. Services that have become ‘commodities’ are the ones that will have the least customer loyalty and will be the easiest to switch. With number portability on the cards, mobile operators will see and even greater outgo of customers swayed by marketing messages and promotions. Incidentally, these three services are also the ones where the margins and profitability are constantly under pressure. When a service doesn’t offer anything unique, it is impossible to be consistently profitable in a buyers market.

45% respondents switch service providers because of a better price, 71% because of poor experience
Yes, Indians are price-concious. But they aren’t pound foolish, penny-wise. Increasingly, if a customer is generally happy with a service, he is less likely to go price shopping or change services for a small price differential. People have less time which they want to spend with their families and doing things that interest them. But if you make their lives difficult, they’ll walk.

52% respondents believe their expectations are never or rarely met
Are the expectations too high or are the services just out of tune with customers really want. A little of both. Companies will at some point have to say ‘itne paise mein itnaich milega’. But before that, they needs to spend time understanding how customers use their services and create service models that address these needs. There is little focus on designing services and experience in India right now.

Talk to me!
85% customers call a helpline for assitance, 68% send an email, 47% visit a website and only 31% visit a physical location

While this survey is revealing, it must be taken with a pinch of salt. One, it is limited in size. The number of respondents is around 300. Two, most respondents are reffering to customer service, not ’service experience’. But, customer service comes into picture when there is a flaw in the service model. Three, this survey probably represents a very narrow class of Indian consumers. I don’t think it is really reflective of what a rural mobile customer thinks or how he acts.

Download the India Report here or go to the Accenture website to download the global report.

Customer experience is what a customer feels about any interaction (and all interactions as a whole) with a brand/service before, during and after he buys the service. Customer Service is a much smaller sub-interaction, usually when there is a problem.

The fact is that customers are the most sensitive to how they are treated when they go to the company with a problem. This makes customer service the acid test of customer experience. If a company has an ordinary customer experience, but very helpful customer service, it will still endear itself to the customer.

Customer experience on the other hand is about how useful the customer finds your service, whether he perceives it as ‘value for money, how easy it is for him to learn to use it, if his experience with your employees is uniformly good… and other tangible and intagible attributes that constitute your service.

In a sense, customer service is a commodity, a hygiene factor. Customer experience is what differentiates your service and creates loyalty in the long run.