At your service ...... If I wish

Some days don't work out very well. I mark them as learning days in my calendar. Yesterday was one such day. It showed me different shades of attitude problems among service providers and how it impacts their customers. Though this is a service related issue, I am writing this post in a Sales blog since attitude towards customer service is critical.


Pic Courtesy - Imageshack

Morning 6:30 am: I travel to Pune Railway station to catch the Deccan Queen Train to Mumbai. At the station, I discover that my wait-listed ticket has not been confirmed, so I cannot take the train. Reason – The person in our office who booked my tickets showed a callous attitude. Inspite of my calling him on Friday @ 5 pm, with more than 3 hours available to book the tickets on Friday, he finally booked my tickets on Saturday evening. The reason for delay, he never checked the requisition about which date tickets were required. Outcome – tickets with wait-list of 40. Further, no attempt was made to try alternatives.

My perception of his Attitude: Callous, Insensitive and Indifferent.


Morning 7:30 am: I then returned home to catch a cup of tea and rush to office. I decided to use the opportunity to drop my daughter at the bus-stop, something which I rarely get to do with my hectic travel schedule. At the bus-stop, I encountered one of the strangest behaviors seen from service providers. As the bus approached us while we stood at the bus stop, the driver saw us standing at the stop, but decided to pass us by, for some strange reason go to the next stop, pick up those kids, then come back and pick up my daughter. This took around 10 minutes during which time we kept wondering whether the driver is going to come back to pick us up or we are expected to reach school ourselves. His reason in his own words – So what if we had to wait another 5 minutes and keep wondering about this?


Attitude seen: Contempt for the customer, not acting in the interests of the customer.


In both cases above, the outcome was the same. I have taken steps to begin the process of replacing the service providers. They have lost my trust. Neither of them intended this outcome. Neither of them started the day saying they are going to attempt to loose their jobs today by treating their customers badly. It was their attitude which was their un-doing.


Do your customers ever get this feeling? I often look back at interactions with customers and think if any aspects of my behavior contained shades of poor attitude. Poor attitude is never by desire. It is by habit. In most cases, it is unknown to the person who exhibits that poor attitude. The difficult part is that one only gets to know about poor attitude when it is too late. Sphere: Related Content

Display of Sincerity

Three Incidents impacted me last week. I am writing about 2 of them today, and the third one I shall write later.

I was travelling most of last week meeting customers, trying to push sales, create new openings and explore customers / segments which will offer business opportunity. One of these calls was a formal presentation to an Architectural house - a very important call. We had a fairly large team from our side to take care of various product verticals. Among our group was one individual with an unshaven chin and wearing sports shoes to work. He is a promising young fellow in our team, and has come in with very good references. He has a good record of customer service and is generally liked by customers. But his attire sure did upset me a little.

Pix by hyougushi

The Other incident was at Bangalore airport. All flights are running empty these days and passengers are few. As I approached the counter of the airline I was flying, I saw that the 3 check-in clerks at the counter were involved in a friendly banter and I my walking in on thier banter perhaps served as a slight intrusion. On my right was another set of counters belonging to another airline. This airline too had no passengers at the moment, but all counters were manned, and each person appeared either busy working, with a couple of them always eagerly awaiting customers so that they could greet them with a warm smile and smoothly process their check-in.

Mind you, my own check-in was extremely smooth and the staff was polite and nice to me. But I found a subtle difference in the approach. While the other airline appeared sincere and friendly, the staff on the airline I was flying was only friendly. While it is great to have fun at the work place, I thought it was equally important to convey a message of being sincere in approach. The second airline seemed very sincere and determined to ensure that any customer walking in would be treated like Royalty and made to feel extremely welcome. They ensured that a lack of work was not visible to the customers.

I have been thinking about these two incidents over the weekend. If I was a customer, I would carry an image of "casual" about the employees and effectively, the company.

While being casual may have been ignored in the frenzy of work going on during the boom times, during a slow-down, this is simply a no-no. Customers will give business to those individuals and companies they like. And first and foremost, they will like sincerity.

Sincerity has to be VISIBLE now. In every action, in every e-mail, in every telephone call and in every aspect of your persona.

In our next post, we will explore sincerity further. In the meanwhile, tell me your views on sincerity. Share few stories where sincerity impacted you. This sharing will be of great learning value to other readers.

Let us together spread Hope and Faith and conquer fear and dispair. Sphere: Related Content