For over two months from now, I have been almost half a kilometer more for purchasing breakfast for my family. This is not because I love walking, but primarily because I like tasty food as others do like and I get it from the new canteen I have discovered and adopted of late. It is not a canteen, but a food stall with first food of cook-and-eat type where I have to wait for ten to fifteen minutes to get fresh and hot food with ten to fifteen customers waiting for their turn to come before I reach there. But the disposal promising to be very speedy,
I never get bored. the owner who himself would be preparing all food by himself helped by three others is so competent and capable that he performs a threesome function of greeting his customers, preparing food and serving them also. He has such a winning smile and a pleasing look that his mesmeric effect casts a spell on each and everyone visiting his shop.
All companies new or old, big or small lure you to buy their products with good campaign, attractive gifts, fabulous discounts and so on. They promise you heaven until you buy their products. No customer concern and nothing of the promised after-sales service seem visible once they part with their products. You run from dealer to dealer and from pillar to post to get the product repaired until you discard it for lack of proper servicing facilities at your centre and with the dealer also.
I have so many experiences to share with you in this regard, but I shall give you only one here. Usha has made a good brand name since my school days and I was in the habit of recommending this brand name to my friends and relatives. I have a grinder and mixture of the similar-make which gave me satisfactory service for about four years. Then the product developed snags and I had to search for spare parts which were not available with big dealers even. Only duplicate spare parts were available in and around big centres only and I was forced to be satisfied with mediocre spare parts only.
I have taken an oath now not to go for any product of the company cheating me as above and I have been recommending friends and relatives against the products of such companies which have given me headache. I wonder how such companies, whose names are legion, will fight out recession?
I find his performance the best quality quantity and cost wise: quality-wise because the food is very tasty and palatable; quantity-wise because one plate of his food is adequate enough to fill up your belly; cost-wise because a full plate of fast food is available at rupees ten only and no where in my area all the three basic parameters have not been addressed.
The canteen owner opens his selling at about 08.00AM and closes it at 09.30AM curiously ending his one and half hours business which no other sales person does it within twelve to thirteen hours of business daily.
- Price-hike Irks Loyal Customers More
- new Customers Experiment With Various Choices
- imitation And Piracy Find Routes
- price Escalation Is A Purposeless Exercise Often Ending With Futility
- quality At The Cost Of Price Binds Only The Premium Customers
- only The Premium Customers Are Not Going To Expand Your User-base
- a Company Is Vulnerable To Recession, If It Works For Its Premium Customers Only
- even Affluent Customers Shy Away From Purchase Of Premium Products Often Times
- arresting Cost Of Production And Selling At Affordable Rates Boost Sales
- the More The Sales, The More The Profit
- the Less The Cost, The More The Sales
- now, You Can Not Only New Tools To Your Kits, New Customers Also
- cheaper Product Ensures Immigration Of Customers Of Other Similar Products
- Not Only Affordability, But Cost With Marginal Profit Increases Your Customer-base
- it Creates Interest Of Customers Of Varying Interest, Interest In The Product
- educate And Make People Product-literate Not Through Media Alone, But Demonostrating And Freely Distributing Your Products And Services To Some Small And Rural Educational, Social And Cultural Institutions
- employ As Few Persons As Possible, Roping In More And More Commissioned Sales Persons And Agents, Especially From Among Educated, Unemployed Youth And Rotate Them
- guard Against Free Gift With Your Products And Sell The Products At That Much Lesser Cost As That Of The Free Gift
- give Bonus To Your Customers By Price-reduction When Your Profit Is More
- reduce Advertisement-expenses Drastically
- make Your Products Attractive Without, Of Course, Compromising On Quality
- it Does Not Matter If You Do Not Own And Maintain A Highly Decorative Official Building Or Not, But It Certainly Matters If A Good Customer Care Unit With Round-the-clock Service Is Not In Place
- always Receive Customer Feedbacks Through Various Means And Act Upon Good Customer Suggestions And Complaints
The example I am going to give here does not relate to good business, but your business will grow phenomenally if you learn from it. The case is related to a government hospital at the city of Puri at Orissa in Central India. The case is unique because government hospitals in India except may be one or two hospitals like AIIMS at Delhi are noted for their callousness, carelessness and lack of concern for their patients and the situation is quite alarming.
I for myself am less prone to preference for treatment at any government hospital and even never at Puri though my residence is at a stone’s through distance from the government hospital. But I had a very rare compulsion to visit the outdoor of the hospital for some emergency treatment which changed my opinion so drastically that I am not shying away from comparing the service and care rendered by the hospital to some very big corporate offices where the main motive behind is profit only and still their behavior is short of our expectations.
Just at the entrance, an employee was found seated who gave me a welcome smile and guided me to the room adjacent to it where a threesome group of members were found seated consisting of a lady doctor, one compounder and a writer to jot down names and addresses of persons coming for treatment. All of them had ample time to look at me with smiles across their lips which suggested that I am the most welcome guest to them and not a hindrance to their gossips and drowsiness which generally are the characteristic features of government hospitals in India.
The doctor asked me what my trouble was about and requested me to purchase a ticket at one rupee from the front counter to which the compounder guided me. Here I remember one occasion when I went the biggest government hospital of Orissa at Cuttack where to purchase the entry ticket I had to spend about one hour to locate the counter and to purchase the treatment ticket as, after locating the counter with my hectic effort of twenty minutes, I found ticket salesman absent.
As soon as I came with the ticket, the compounder took the ticket from me in the most helpful manner and gave it to the register writer who asked me regarding my name and address and my age and after recording the register serial no. on the slip, he gave it to the doctor who spoke me in most soothing manner and prescribed required medicines. The compounder then told me to come after purchasing the medicines to enable the doctor to examine the medicines and explain the dosage.
Within ten minutes, I came with the prescribed medicines. The compounder examined the medicines and guided me to the room where a pharmacist was waiting for patients to come. I still remember the greeting smile of the compounder and a winning one too. He gave me the injection and shook hands with me in a good gesture.
The inside and outside of the hospital are so much clean that they are perfectly in tune with the hospitability I received from the officials earlier. They all echoed in my ears that this is the reason for which the hospital is the only one of its kind in India to earn ISO 9006 certification this year.
