I am in the middle of a beautiful island nestled in a green ocean. Sitting on the shores, I am watching the sun go down. Engulfed in the tranquillity of the atmosphere, I am enjoying every sip of my drink. The barbeque on the side smells of amazing food. As I immerse myself in the atmosphere my phone rings. Good Morning, Ma’m. I’m calling on behalf of blah blah bank and we are offering great home loans exclusively for you…..a female’s voice rambles off all that she had been taught during her training session while getting inducted at a call centre. Yes, before you go further, am back from my beautiful dream to this wild world where there is jarring music on car stereos, vehicles honking, neighbours fighting over a litter, and yes, cellphones ringing. Being a Tamil Brahmin Iyer, I am used to waking up to the smell of filter coffee and the hymns of Suprabhatham rendered by none other than the nightingale of India, M.S. Subhalakshmi. Well, things have not changed much today. The morning shlokas still remain an integral part of my life. Of course, I often begin my day either with a publicist trying to sell his or her client’s stories or to some random marketing calls like the one mentioned above only to pull me back to the real world. I pity all those call centre young boys and girls who are trained to make random calls to people only to get bantered over the phone. It is not their fault that they are calling you at the wrong time. How on earth are they supposed to know a good and a bad time? (I personally feel there is never a good time for such calls). But what is wrong with our friendly PR executives, who in many cases have been journalists themselves. No, am not a snooty journo shunning all the PR calls naming them irrational and desperate attempts to get stories for their clients. Last month, I received a mail from a PR firm selling me one of her top retail clients. She fixed up a telecom with the respective senior manager from the company for me. Everything was going smooth till I discovered that my colleague sitting right across my table has received a similar request from another executive of the same PR firm. She had a telecom fixed too with the same client. This wasn’t the end of the story. There was more to come. It surprised (or, rather shocked) both of us the next morning when we saw the same story appear in another financial newspaper. Talk about hard-selling.

A few weeks ago, I was at the New Delhi airport to take a flight back home to Chennai. I had two bags, of which I checked in one. The other contained a stash of exotic spices I had bought in some ethnic stores in the Capital. I’d quite forgotten that they were likely to be disallowed as hand baggage so when I was asked to check it in, I fretted that the flimsy carry bag may split its sides and spill the contents of the pouches inside.

What followed was a customer’s dream: A smiley staff member of the airline’s (Kingfisher) ground staff got it scanned, tied it up securely with several lengths of scanner-machine tape, stuck ’Fragile’ and ‘Priority’ (or something to that effect) stickers on it and sent it off. “I’ve stuck all the labels I could lay my hands on,” he said with a grin. “Nothing will happen to it,” he said, waving off my profuse thanks.

Once inside the flight, we were given menu cards that our meals ultimately didn’t match. But I was inclined to be forgiving, because the warm glow that enveloped me after the help extended by the airline’s ground staff was still intact, though I did mention it in the feedback form distributed later, as I did my delight with the earlier experience.

Good customer service, rare as it is, is even more rarely highlighted. Have you been at the receiving end of such bounty? What was your experience?

Brand iconsWhat makes a brand an icon in its status? What gives a brand a cult figure? Legacy, a huge fan following, or is it just the name for it lives? H B Holt, a Harvard Business School professor, describes an iconic brand as the one that has social lives and cultural significance that go well beyond product benefits and features.Iconic brands, by and large, can never be brands of a functional genre. They have to be brands in either look good or feel good categories. In essence, they appeal to larger number of aspirants or are life-style-driven. Or, even appeal to a certain set of values or attitudes. You will find iconic brands in those genres where you express yourself or others perceive you in a way that you want if you associate with or like that brand. It is not just brand sales; they are part and parcel of your life. A brand that makes people identify with them. In that genre, a Harley-Davidson is a cult brand. Its appeal is global and works out of cultural differences.  The brand Beetles still bears the cult status. Nike, Ferrari, Starbucks, Apple (the entire world waits for the iPhone launch) and Benetton are just some names that comes to one’s mind. And there are many other brands such as IBM and Coca Cola that have not only survived crisis, but recovered from those crisis and have been forgiven too by the general public. The deep-rooted cultures help them get back on track. In India, there are a handful of names that are attractive and command a lot of attention. For example, the brand Infosys attracts a lot of hires. On the other hand, Maruti is a household name in the country. For many, it has been the first vehicle. In fact, Tata has the brand reputation across verticals. While Royal Enfield is trying to replicate the Harley-Davidson model, Hutch struggled with its brand status (thanks to the frequent change in the ownership). Among the Indian aspirants for the iconic status include Airtel and Future group with their ad campaigns. Airtel was aiming for iconic stature with its “Barriers break when people talk” campaign (that has gone off air now). Meanwhile, Future Group’s corporate campaign, Sone Ki Chidiya harked back to the golden age of India (again, this ad has not been on air for sometime now). The new ad campaign targets the new upwardly mobile middle class where everyone is indulging with the money earned. And the tagline goes – Let’s enjoy what we earned. However, not all brands have the dash of edginess, a devoted fan base, or the niche positioning to be cult brands. But those that do tend to share similar characteristics make them successful.

A cult brand is not something that you will find on a brand survey. You see it built over years. For the time being, we shall resort to our desi brands like the Tatas and the rest who have somewhat made a mark in the genre of being iconic brands. And yes, how can we forget our very own thalaivar, the Rajnikanth – who is an iconic stature himself! Having said that, the man does not endorse a single product.

I know somebody who’s rather a reverse snob. When this septuagenarian joined the gym this year, he was advised to buy good shoes that would cushion his feet and provide him the necessary support but true to style, he bought a pair of for Rs 300 and has since been using them for the last five months. Designed in pale grey and salmon pink, they, of course, had none of the cushioning or design recommended for gym activity, and I expect them to give up the ghost very soon. After which this person will return to where he bought these and buy another pair. No expectations of quality there!

On the way back home from a meeting one evening, I found myself admiring the colours of the bag the girl sitting next to me on the train was carrying. A luminous pink and maroon, it said ‘Esprit’ somewhere on the side. But wait, she didn’t seem to be the target audience of an Esprit, and was that really THE Esprit? I should have guessed! It was Esppit. The instances can go on and on. I was even presented a couple of steel utensils which were branded Nokia!

Makers of spurious goods and drugs reportedly earn Rs 60,000 crore every year. The losers, eventually, are the patron-consumers themselves, not to mention the workers who work for these counterfeiters. There are reports of how employees in such a unit in Thailand were found chained to work stations and had dog bowls of rice next to them! India has the dubious distinction of being one of the largest manufacturers of spurious drugs in the world. Various industry bodies and Government departments are acting in tandem to fight these counterfeiters.

What are some of the crazier rip-offs that you have seen? Have you bought any of these products? Price, of course, is the main reason but are there any other reasons you would rather buy these over an original? How long did these products last and what did you do with them when they didn’t come up to your expectations?

Everyone in the know agrees that little things make a big difference to customer service. Yet, I am still to find more than one store that has redesigned its fitting rooms/trial rooms to make customers comfortable. Barring one major lifestyle store in Chennai, all the others have fitting rooms that are poky, don’t have enough clothespegs and worse, no shelf or any other provision on which to keep a cell-phone or a small purse. If you have a handbag, you can hang it on a peg, but keeping your cellphone/purse on the floor is a difficult option – there’s so much hair and dust there that if it hadn’t cost in the 1000s, you would probably never want to touch the cellphone again!

There’s also the practice of a store assistant monitoring the number of garments you take into the storeroom, which is fine, but why do I have to carry those numbered rings (indicating the number of clothes I am trying on) that they give me as well? As if it wasn’t inconvenient enough to carry all the permissible number of garments on hangers, a handbag without which I cannot take care of my cellphone, and myself!

Yesterday, when I went to one such store, I noticed a stool inside one of the fitting rooms. Keeping my cellphone and purse on it, I wondered if my complaint had finally paid off, but probably not – there weren’t any stools in the other trial rooms.

How would you like to see your store change?

Posted by Sravanthi Challapalli