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“India is a nation of shop-keepers”
… says Kishore Biyani in his book ‘It happened in India’. While that is certainly true, the maturity, the suave and the class that differentiates the truly great from the mediocre among businesses in India is yet to make a mark in this country.
The statement is quite a heavy one, given the fact that while on one hand India has truly emerged from the ashes and is making a mark globally as the ultimate destination for all businesses and a market that is still a gold mine for all kinds of products and services, what is appalling is the fact that there is a dearth of proper training for scores of small business entrepreneurs and absolutely no help and advice for the young and budding ones.
As if this wasn’t enough, the entrepreneurs who did break-out and are running some businesses or the other, have a total disregard to customer’s interests, their plights and no one gives a second thought to anyone who had once come in to their stores and purchased something. The very act of coming in and buying something is the end of any kind of relationship between the client and the merchant – a total anti-thesis for what is not to be done in an era of intense competition and rampant value creation.
Most Indian businesses have a supreme nonchalance to anything that looks like a customer. Poorly trained staff, disregard to the interests of the customer, rude accosting, indifference to customer service and a little less than pathetic customer relationship management practices.
No one cares if your mobile phone connection has a problem or if your credit card keeps getting charged. No one is bothered is your car needs a service or if your loan account statement needed a clarification.
No one gives a damn. It looks like we have just given up on our pathetic state of customer support here in India.
I don’t know when exactly Indian businesses would get to understand the simple but yet enormous power of customer satisfaction and the kind of rave business that can be generated just based on this single aspect in one’s business planning.
If you looked at it in another way, it would turn out to be a great opportunity to any aspiring entrepreneur to work out a simple business plan with greater emphasis on customer service than anything else and see his business soaring sky-high only because this business might do something that ought to have been done anyway.
I am Ashwin. I am a web-consultant, freelance writer, and an entrepreneur. I am also a Certified Behavior Analyst, speaker, and corporate trainer. I am an e-commerce enthusiast and an avid reader. When I am not working (which is rare), I travel around the world just for the sake of traveling.
Hey Ash social media has come a long way from being a mere outlet for sharing thoughts and images among friends and families. It has become a popular and effective method for business owners…