Category: Leadership

Apologies from a CEO

(Photo from stockxpert)
Thanks to global sentiments & a mega local IPO, the Indian stock markets witnessed choppy times over the last few days (it still continues in the same vein for now). The market swung crazily between new highs & lows. Accordingly, investors had a hectic time on the floor.
 
Here is an example of the cheif executive of an online trading portal apologizing to its customers about loss & lack of its service during various points the last couple of weeks.
+es
  • Who doesn’t falter!! But how many accept they falter!! This is the difference that an act like this highlights. Publicly accepting the short fall is the first step in one’s efforts to avoiding the same being repeated.
  • With this note, the CEO is setting a good example to his team – its oki to say sorry as long as there are genuine attempts to avoid repeats. This is also a public affirmation that the business values its customers.
-es (could’ve done better)
  • Going by my experince, many have had monetary losses of varying magnitude due to Sharekhan’s loss of service. Maybe Sharekhan should have explored material ways of compensating – even if it were to be a token act. Maybe a brokerage free day / hour / transaction, or a gift hamper, or a charge free service from the Sharekhan portfolio.
  • I would be delighted to see a Tarun Shah follow up mail a few weeks from now enquiring on levels of service. And Sharekhan should try & ensure there is a marked improvement in service during this period.

Have to say though that I am glad I am a Sharekhan customer. And glad to see a services organization raising the bar wrt customer focus in this space.

A lot more Indian services companies need to cover a lot of ground in this area – not because their service is bad, but more so because this segment intends to be world beaters.

—–
Dear Customer,

 

The last few days took all of us off guard. To make things worse, a lot of you faced issues with our service levels. Some of the issues faced by customers were trading system downtime, customer service cell not responding, fund transfer not happening etc. We don’t want to offer any excuses on why this happened as there can be no justification for the hardship you have undergone.

 

We apologize for the inconvenience caused to all of you. We will strive to make amendments in all the areas concerned to improve the service delivery to you. We exist because of you- our customers. It’s the confidence that you have placed in us that has resulted in us doing more than 4 lacs transactions per day and adding 45,000 new customers this month. We accept that we were found wanting on service delivery due to the sudden spurt in transactions/queries caused by this fall. We commit to improve upon the same in the days to come.

 

Warm Regards,
Tarun Shah
CEO
—–

Processes are enablers of customer success

Ever so often, customer facing teams become so obsessed with internal processes that they forget that processes are meant to be enablers of customer success. Achievement of process goals become the be-all and end-all. Instead of striving for the customer, these customer facing teams become slaves of internal serving (mostly) processes.
How does an organization escape from this kind of internal serving behaviors?
An organization vision that makes clear the overall objective of the business needs to provide an overarching direction to keep all teams gunning for the customer – not only customer facing teams, but also other teams that serve internal customers.
Another factor that promotes appropriate behavior is an active recognition framework. When designed & implemented appropriately, this would essentially keep the teams focused on whats important for the business.

Customer delight high on the agenda – Infosys

For someone passionate about customer centricity, its a delight to see an organization mention customer delight in the first quarter of its quarter ending report to its shareholders.

Infosys does exactly that in its latest report to its shareholders. They go on to list the awards & appreciations they have received from their customers for being focused on delight rather than just satisfaction.

If Infy takes this spirit beyond letters into action, the shareholders can rest assured that their networth will take an upward journey as a result.