Thursday, September 07, 2006

Customer is the king!!!

It doesn’t matter which part of Bangalore I am in, I always go to a shell petrol bunk!!! For me it’s a paradigm of efficient business management and customer service. It hardly matters that there are only couple of them in Bangalore, and that I may have to travel a few extra miles I still make it a point to fill petrol in a shell petrol bunk…Such customer loyalty!!! :)

It’s mainly because you always know you will be welcomed there with a smile. You just have to sit in the car, they will fill petrol, clean your windscreen, fill air, bring in the exact change etc…You are treated like a king. What more do you except as a customer…It’s an experience that makes you visit them again and again…

In contrast if we go to any other “normal” petrol bunk, you always find customers there totally frustrated…More often then not there will always be a fight going on…The experience there is pathetic with each of the boys there running a business of their own in duping the customer. You just have to turn around for a second and the filling would have started with an offset of Rs.50/100. They believe it’s their birthright to start from this offset instead of zero!!! It will be fatuous to say that these corporations are unaware of the importance of customer service but just that there is no will and determination in implementing the policies.


It makes so much of a difference when you are running a business. There is hardly any business where there is dearth of competition, so more the reason for the corporations to hold on to their existing customers and try acquiring new ones. The only way it can be done is through customer satisfaction. There is no replacement for a happy customer and if you make your customer happy then I am sure there is no need for a brand ambassador…Each of your customer will become a brand ambassador and there will be free propaganda through word of mouth, instead of spending millions of dollars on advertising!!! Just ask Google how effective this can be…They hardly spend a pie on advertising, but still they are the number one search engine in the world. All this was achieved by providing a quality product and making the customer happy…

It is not an arcane issue but just that people undermine its importance…