I was explaining to the poor customer care lady from my car service station (Jay Bharat Hyundai) that I cannot remember how the service was done. My Hyundai i-ten was serviced in Jan. that information was also provided by her. I can’t remember when it was done. I don’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. She still insisted that at least I know if what I said or had complaints about were addressed. Lady, how can I know that? We are right now in May. At best I might remember if you had botched up the service. Which I don’t think you did. My car is running fine right now.
After a few minutes of me stonewalling and refusing to say something I don’t remember at all she agreed and moved onto the next question in her interview. Could I please rate the service on a score from 0 to 5. Oh shit man. Lady. I just told you I don’t remember anything. Do you remember what you did in Jan. Do you remember what you did last week? What were you doing yesterday? You don’t right? How can I score you guys if I don’t remember what experience I had? It’s been four months.
Sir, but at least some score. NO. I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED. Surely you did not screw up big tie and hence I have no bad memories but I have none. What part of that did you not understand?
That’s proactive customer service for you. We care so we call you. Even four months from then and ask you what had happened then. Hopefully you don’t remember shit and you score us good. Since you guys are obviously so polite not to give us bad marks on things you don’t recollect. Hence I have a great customer satisfaction score and I am doing a good job.
I told my wife about the conversation and she was wondering why the call was made. She had already got the call a few days after the service was done. That’s a good thing. A decent follow-up call, just after. After four months your call can be at best a call that checks to see if your car is working all well. Not to score what happened four months ago. Especially on something as unearthshaking as routine car service. Why? Don’t you realise we get shit from tele marketers all the time.
While right now its pretty cool to have follow up service, my prediction is that this too will become a nuisance factor soon enough. The companies that will do well will be the companies that do not need follow up calls as their processes and procedures themselves are tight enough to provide the best service and their redressal mechanism would be swift and powerfull while being accessible.
But that seems to be pipe dream. In India we are busy chasing growth and are tapping into the vast India as it gets richer and richer. Who cares for the leaky bucket if the tap on top continues to pour its bounty? Growth always comes at a cost. Rapid growth comes at an even higher cost. If it is too good to be true then it is too good to be true. I don’t think our immature capitalism understands this yet.
I am probably needlessly taking off on Hyundai right now. It is a wrong thing to do. At least they are trying to do something. But the point is that in trying too hard they end up getting data that is wrong. Data has to be understood in its context and not by itself.
I hope companies like Hyundai understand this and not merely take action on quantitative scores. A process to get the data is as important as the data that is being gathered. Everyone knows that, even the folks at Hyundai. But we end up being so lazy that we don’t bother to put in a check for this. It won’t affect the short run but it will hide serious flaws in the wrong run. Anyone remembers ‘the broken windows theory’ made famous by Malcolm Gladwell? Look it up.
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