Customer Centric?

Water purifier had something broken in the inlet pipe so I called up the company’s customer care number and a serviceman came to repair it. He opened up the purifier, removed and discarded the broken part and started putting the machine back as his work was done. I felt like a fool – if it were so simple, I could have done it myself! (I did not realize that the smart companies are making their appliances so simple to maintain, not for us, but for their service personnel to save time!) He said like a monk, “why should we replace this part when we can do well without it? Why spend unnecessary money?” Amusing!

I saw there was a hole left because of the discarded part, so I acted intelligent by asking, “what if a cockroach enters the purifier through that hole?” Smart guy asked me back, “has your house got too many cockroaches?” I said, “Well, what if one is too adventurous?” (Just like all ancient human civilizations settled near rivers, insects choose to multiply near water sources till date! All I am not sure is if they pay premium for ‘purified’ water sources!) On afterthoughts I realized that I was supposed to say “no”, because it was supposed to be embarrassing to say your house had cockroaches!

When he started to plug the hole, good sense prevailed in me and I asked him to leave it. I decided to utilize my 2 year old pink cello-tape for the purpose.

When job was done, the service person gave me his personal number and said, “Call me directly; why waste money and time by calling through customer care?” Was he dishonest? May be, but if Customer Care calls me to ask if I was satisfied, I would say “hell yes!” And if his company has customer feedback as the basis of his performance rating; he surely will get most stars! So he will get salary hikes from his company and also earn personal money through out-of-the-channel work! I think his apparent dishonesty can also be called his ‘customer centric’ approach :)

God save the companies which plan to fill up tanks with holes in the bottom-line!

(C) Rahul