Column

How would you define a customer in 2007? Is she somebody you constantly badger, make tall promises, and often speak rudely to? Is she a person you call just because you have to meet your daily targets? Or, is she just a phone number that requires no investment in time, money or effort, to build a long-term relationship?

Well, some of those questions were answered last week after two people called me, identifying themselves as relationship managers. They said they wanted to meet me to know me better. “Don’t worry, this is a human interaction,” one of them said. “So far, you have been dealing with the bank through the net, phone, and ATM. And many of those interactions do not enhance customer satisfaction. We have now decided to include the human interface as well.”

But why, I asked. After all, CRM (customer relationship management) technology has been working fine, business is booming, and Sensex is smashing records. So, why should you bother about customers? Here’s what the first relationship manager said: “We have been receiving complaints about our call centre and have decided to add another channel of communication. It would help us to strengthen our relationships with customers.”

In a few days, I was met by another relationship manager who also wanted to renew the bank’s relationship with me. He noted quite a few things: my lodged and unlodged complaints, my financial planning needs, and the profile of my family. The conversation was shorn of spiel, aggression, and motive. It had one objective: let’s move on.

Of course, the two conversations did shed light on customer satisfaction and why it had changed in 2007, but not completely. Well, it remained so until I met an entrepreneur, J, who had an interesting take on what was happening. He showed me the architecture of his office to explain his theory: “Every office has a first mile, a middle mile, a last mile, and a final destination. The first mile is the entry-level staff; the middle mile is the middle management; the last mile is the sales force; and the final destination is the customer.

We don’t have a middle mile. How can you satisfy a customer when the first mile doesn’t know what the last mile is up to?”
J believes a booming India has hobbled hierarchy. Without middle managers, every organization looks like a virtual organization where even customer satisfaction is outsourced to call centres. Once you outsource your key asset, customer satisfaction, to people who have no idea of your culture, you auction your customer, says J. “The sad part: there’s nobody around anymore who understands our organisation’s values and processes. They have all left for bigger stakes and higher salaries.”

But this is not just J’s problem; it’s India’s problem too. As India positions itself as a call centre to the world, it is also trying to become the world’s customer interface or relationship manager. Every time an Indian call centre takes, or makes, a call, it has a huge reputation to protect: the status of its client and the image of the country. But the sound of the economic boom is so loud that India is finding it difficult to hear its customers.

In the midst of this boom talk, it’s refreshing to read what Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com’s founder, has to say in an interview with the Harvard Business Review: “I think somehow I am congenitally customer focused… If you’re competitor-focused, you tend to slack off when your benchmarks say that you’re the best. But if your focus is on customers, you keep improving.”

Perhaps the Indian telemarketer is also doing his job. In an economy that’s running on steroids, he must keep his phones buzzing, and he must find faceless people and turn them into prospective faces. That’s how he defines customer satisfaction. Even if he follows a competitor-focused strategy of aggression and acquisition, it’s because he’s never been told that there’s another, delightful, way of wooing customers. No wonder he always overcomes the futility of customer rejection, customer abuse, and dropped calls — and keeps calling you. That’s the cost, or curse, of growing.

So, next time a telemarketer calls, don’t despair. For, his is the ring of Sisyphus.

Email: vinaykamat@dnaindia.net