Certainties & Serendipities

Flipkart, the pioneering e-Commerce store in India, just delivered last of the four books that I had ordered. This is the seventy-eighth book they are delivering to me, in the past three years. I could boast that I am a loyal customer; but I couldn’t have been one without their exemplary service. If you thought, I am getting a special service because I’m a long-term customer, you are in for a surprise – they don’t even have a loyalty program. I have been their customer all these years, only because their service is consistently superior.

Flipkart is not the first of the e-commerce stores in India. I used to be a customer of Infibeam for about a year. They had a loyalty program and given my book purchasing habits, I joined that. All was well until they had to cancel an order. At first, the delivery was delayed by ten days. That ten days was stretched few more times. Eventually the order got cancelled. But the amount for that cancelled order did not reflect in my account. At first I thought it was an oversight. It took me relentless follow-up for two months to get the refund. I was furious that, a) they didn’t have the inventory details b) they took time to inform about their inability c) they took even more time to refund the amount. I decided to look for alternatives.

I asked on twitter for options and narain informed about Flipkart. When I started with them they were small. Not this “India’s startup success story”. I proceeded with caution, but at every interaction my trust increased a little bit more. Not that there weren’t any problems. Of about thirty orders I have placed, they had to cancel two books. On both occasions, they informed about the cancellation and the amount was credited to my account on time. Another time, there were two books of the same title – one with a CD and another without a CD and I had ordered the one without a CD, a representative called me to confirm the order before delivery.

Recently they introduced electronic items, thirty day refund policy and cash-on-delivery payment model. I ordered Toy Story movie for my son. They shipped DVD of a wrong region. When I informed them, they picked it up free of cost. And the amount was credited into my account immediately.

When the trust is high, I could overlook a mistake or two. Isn’t it?

It is not just Flipkart which is getting the e-commerce right. I have been using ZoomIn for quite sometime and they too are fantastic. The range of products that they have is ever increasing. I’ve been able to impress my family members with their photographic products – photo albums, mugs, calendars and like. Some of them are so impressed that they have become their repeat customers.

FirstCry is another e-commerce store on the right track, though they are relatively new.

E-commerce was once the ‘new-thing’. Now it is a competitive market. You can’t win just with low price, discounts and loyalty cards. May be these gimmicks will get customers to try your product or service. But its the service delivery that will convert the try-outs into loyal customers. Conventional management teaches that customer service starts after sales. Its no more true in the electronic world.

Customer service starts as soon as a web page is served. And it continues through product search, cart management, order processing, delivery and feedback handling. Customers expect appropriate communication at every stage. And the experience has to be consistent as the orders are repeated.

You may change any of the components of the process, but that shouldn’t affect my experience. For example, over the years, Flipkart redesigned their website, introduced wish-lists, added electronic items, started own delivery network and so on. But none of that affected my experience. I still get the products delivered at home at the date mentioned¹.

Will I switch to a competitor in the future? May be. But for that to happen, Flipkart has to get their act wrong as well as the competitor has to beat them in service.

Image by: adrianmelrose

Every week I post a digest of very fine links. Here are the best links I found in the past week:

• Balance satisficing and optimizing : Whether looking for the root causes of your problem or identifying solutions, you must be collectively exhaustive (CE). That means looking for all the possible solutions. That’s fine in theory but in practice, that induces paralysis by analysis. So you need to learn to balance your quest for collective exhaustiveness with practical considerations.
• Sell the problem : Lesson for consultants: No business buys a solution for a problem they don’t have. And a lot of people aren’t willing to embrace that they have a problem unless they also believe that there’s a solution. So you should both sell a problem and hint that there’s a solution that others are using, or is right around the corner.
• 8 Symptoms Of Social Schizophrenia : Companies are establishing a presence in social media to build their online reputation. They establish levels of service in social media that differ significantly from service levels in other channels. Does your company suffer from this ailment?
• Technology Selection and Cultural Fit : The basic question at hand for most technology selection projects really comes down to “‘what do we need and how much is it?”
• The right way to position against competition : How do you cope with competition, incorporating it into your strategy while not letting it consume you?

Every week I post a digest of very fine links and tweets I find around the web world. Here are the links & tweets from the past week:

1. The Globalization Map – 12 tips from the Million Dollar Consultant, Alan Weiss, to take your consulting business global.
2. 13 Ways to Better Monetize Your Blog Posts : ‘Marketing is queen and the queen runs the household’ and other tips to better monetize your blog.
3. Sad State of Job Portals in India [Startup Opportunity] – Pathetic state of job portals in India and that may not be a bad thing.
4. Books/Blogs for Startups « Steve Blank – Essential reading list for startups by a Serial Entrepreneur.
5. How to Conduct A/B Tests for WordPress Blogs – Test your WordPress blog to increase response rate or other desired outcome.

and tweets:

1. MarkFritz: THE EXPERIENCE THEY REMEMBER: Customer services is just as much about the feelings as the facts. It’s the experience.
2. portnik: A person who can speak many languages is not necessarily more valuable than a person who can listen in one
3. portnik: Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
4. MarkFritz: AVOIDING THE ISLAND SOLUTIONS: Strong leaders drive processes to avoid island solutions spread across the company.
5. youarefiredboss: There is no shortage of money, just a shortage of people who think they are worthy of earning piles of it.

‘Customer is king’ is a mantra that Sales team lives by. But there are times we need to differentiate between bad customer service and annoying customer demands.

There is a scene in the famous British romantic comedy – Notting Hill. In that movie, William Thacker – the protagonist – runs a travel book shop. One day a well dressed customer walks into the shop and the conversation goes something like this:

Customer: Do you have any books by Dickens?
William: No, we’re a travel bookshop. We only sell travel books.

Despite that clarification from William Thacker, the annoying customer goes on to ask for a ‘John Grisham’ thriller and ‘Winnie the Pooh’.

At that point, what is expected of William Thacker? Should he send his assistant to get the latest John Grisham thriller and hand it over to the customer as a show of exemplary customer service? Isn’t that what customers demand so often?

Such scenes are repeated all over the world in the business. Sadly, companies entertain such annoying customers only to loose reputation of their business. Companies fail to understand that they can not satisfy every one of their customers. If they can satisfy 80% of their customers well and that 80% can pass on their satisfaction to others, businesses will flourish.

In later part of the movie, there is an interesting sequel. The same customer will be entering the shop. And immediately William Thacker will command the customer to leave. He was ‘firing’ the customer.

Established companies often restrict their customer base. Such restrictions give resources – both time and energy – to these businesses to concentrate on their selected customer base and please them well.

Originally posted by me at EzineArticle