Lessons in marketing

Small is beautiful. Especially if you are the customer.
And old is truly gold. Especially in approach to business and relationships.

Went to one these new mega electronics stores part of a chain owned by India's largest private sector company. So what happened?

1. Wanted to buy 6 A/Cs
2. Asked them for their best bundled offer.
3. The store manager had a lot of misplaced attitude.
4. Behaved as though he was doing us a favour and not the other way 'round.
5. Made us wait over 45 minutes while he punched away at his calculator
6. Came back and said they have only 5 A/Cs and hence will fine tune his offer for only 5 inspite of us saying that we are willing to pay for all 6 immediately and don't mind waiting for up to a week for the 6th to be delivered.
7. Made a "final & best" offer with a discount of 3%!!!

So what REALLY happened:
1. It didnt matter to the store clerk or even the store manager whether their company made a sale or not.
2. The phrase "customer service" and "customer satisfaction" didn't exist in their dictionary.

So we went to our friendly neighbourhood ex-mom & pop electronics store who are now nuturing their own ambitions of running a pan-India chain of stores. What do we find? They have learnt most of their lessons from the other stores. From where we have bought ALL our home appliances over the years, the same people now give two hoots for our business!! So much for "friendly neighbourhood store" !!

In our view, service and attitude is more important than price. I wouldn't mind paying more if I know that the people I am buying from are interested in my business.

So we went directly to one of the oldest manufacturers of A/Cs. And were pleasantly surprised. They literally fell over in a bid to please and assure us. They were truly interested in selling. And it showed. And we bought. At a higher price but we are very satisfied.

Whats the lesson in all this:
1. No matter what your size, customer is still king. If she doesn't buy, you don't sell. And if you don't sell, then you don't exist.
2. Some things never change. The way to deal with customers for instance.
3. Did the executive at the manufacturer have to engage with us. I guess not. Certainly not for ONLY 6 A/Cs. Too small a number at the manufacturer level. But his attitude reflects the attitude of his organisation. And we know for sure that should we face a problem that they will be there for us. To service and satisfy.

Footnote:
Since the service was so terrible at the first two places and so engaging and satisfying at the third that I feel compelled to reveal the names of the companies.
If you haven't already guessed it, the first store was Reliance Digital part of the Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries Ltd.
The second wanna-be store was Girias.
And the manufacturer with whom we found satisfaction is Godrej.