A counter clerk of a nationalised bank was heard shouting at a pensioner recently while the elderly customer stood helplessly swallowing the insult. I also saw a poor woman being denied help by a sales girl in a supermarket once. Many are not aware that a satisfied customer is the best form of advertisement.
Many years ago, I had been to a shoe mart with my three-year-old son to buy a pair of black leather shoes for him to go to LKG. After taking the measurements, the manager politely requested us to wait, sending a man to their storeroom nearby to bring the required size. Meanwhile, he started a conversation with me. "Perhaps, this your first visit to our shop, sir," he asked. "Yes. I have just joined here. I work for the Railways." He complained that every consignment booked with the Railways by their factory in the North suffered some pilferage or theft in transit resulting in a huge loss for them."But, we have no such thefts during the past three months," he added. "Perhaps due to the special efforts taken by the Railways," I made a vain attempt to salvage the reputation of my employer.
"No sir, our factory adopted a new technique by sending the consignments containing shoes in two separate wooden boxes — one containing only left shoes and the other with only the right shoes. After this, there is no theft as no one can steal a correct pair from two different boxes," he said triumphantly.
The messenger brought the shoes, and we returned home after paying the bill. My wife took our son to school on the opening day. When he returned home in the evening, I kept him on my lap and removed his shoes gently. I was shocked to note that he was wearing right shoes on both the legs. Evidently, the mistake has happened at the shop. I rushed to the shoe mart the same evening and informed the manager. "Please wait sir, let me find out how and where this mistake has taken place," he said. "You have supplied two right shoes instead of a correct pair," I yelled at him.
As the manager was busy, he requested me to go home and come back the next day. The next morning, when I took the boy to school, I found the manager standing at the entrance with a small boy. As he wished me, without even acknowledging, I impolitely demanded my "pound of flesh". Not getting the least upset, he replied in his usual soft voice, "This boy has the answer, sir."
The manager unravelled the mystery to me. He had come early and stood at the gate to watch if any small boy was entering wearing two left shoes. He was successful and found this tiny boy entering with a wrong pair. He was the son of my neighbour in the Railway colony. We had engaged the same person to carry lunch for the boys and to feed them too. Before feeding, she made them sit on the ground removing their shoes. After lunch, she put both the right shoes to one and left shoes to the other inadvertently.
I felt ashamed at my folly and apologised to the manager. But he said that he used to meet at least a dozen difficult customers like me every day and that he was being paid by his company to deal with bad-tempered and unreasonable customers too. I learnt from him that day what is real and effective customer service.
