“Customer is the king” – is a cliché used ad nauseam in business circles. With the kind of buying options available today in every walk of life, even a casual glance at the market only corroborates this claim. Why then do we need to question the apparent truth? That is because it’s only the casual glance at the market place that brings about this belief. The cliché is derived through a static perspective wherein we observe only the market-place instead of people. To question this cliché, we need a dynamic perspective that entails we follow customers through their day to day lives.
This apparent truth would’ve been the absolute truth if customers and vendors were a mutually exclusive lot. This, however, is not the case. In this complex society, any given person is a customer to someone and a vendor to someone at the same time. The increase in options makes the customer more demanding while every increased demand means someone somewhere has to slog at work. The vicious circle ensures that almost everyone works harder, as a vendor, to meet those never ending deadlines. The bigger ‘King’ a customer becomes, the more slavish every vendor in that industry becomes. The circle ensures that the monarchy of the customer, however, is short-lived as he soon assumes the role of the vendor.
An example might help elucidate the point. Consider the hospitality industry. A man is on vacation with his family in a five star luxury hotel. The man expects top class service from the hotel. He ‘demands’ continuous Wi-Fi access, spic and clean rooms, gyms, spas, pickup & drop, travel advisories, smart attendants on their toes and not a semblance of discomfort. Anything less and he threatens never to come back to the hotel. So the hotel makes receptionists, cleaners, waiters, drivers, accountants, IT technicians and many others work overnight in shifts. For every such customer, vendors across many such verticals and/or horizontals are kept on tenterhooks. The hotel wakes up an IT techie at 3 a.m. to fix the Wi-Fi for this esteemed customer having problems watching ‘online streaming videos’. The IT person’s family is frequently troubled with such support calls at night. Often, the family can’t sleep properly, affecting their daytime activities. This IT person is generally competent but badly overworked and this support call is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. He is not able to come and fix the Wi-Fi. The customer on holiday is pissed off, creates a scene and books a room in a rival hotel. The first hotel chain, having lost its ‘kingly’ customer, cancels the contract with the IT vendor providing the support people. The IT vendor that had a contract of exclusivity for the hotel chain in the entire country loses its major customer and takes a bad hit. The news spreads the next day and its shares nosedive. This company is an IT venture of a famous business house of the country. The parent company calls an urgent meeting with all the CXOs to address this exigency. Coincidentally, the hotel guest in question gets a call from his company informing him of cancellation of his vacation and asking him to report immediately. He rues his predicament, not knowing what in the world went wrong to have his vacation curtailed. He is the CFO of the parent company.
In the real world, the circle may not be so small or the strings of events may not be so fortuitous but what cannot be argued is the fact that you begin the trail that ultimately leads back to you. In other words, there is nothing that is not your business. As Justin Timberlake said, “What goes around, comes around.”
So the next time you feel like ditching a vendor for a small lapse of service, think twice: you might be creating a world that ruins your own holiday.
This apparent truth would’ve been the absolute truth if customers and vendors were a mutually exclusive lot. This, however, is not the case. In this complex society, any given person is a customer to someone and a vendor to someone at the same time. The increase in options makes the customer more demanding while every increased demand means someone somewhere has to slog at work. The vicious circle ensures that almost everyone works harder, as a vendor, to meet those never ending deadlines. The bigger ‘King’ a customer becomes, the more slavish every vendor in that industry becomes. The circle ensures that the monarchy of the customer, however, is short-lived as he soon assumes the role of the vendor.
An example might help elucidate the point. Consider the hospitality industry. A man is on vacation with his family in a five star luxury hotel. The man expects top class service from the hotel. He ‘demands’ continuous Wi-Fi access, spic and clean rooms, gyms, spas, pickup & drop, travel advisories, smart attendants on their toes and not a semblance of discomfort. Anything less and he threatens never to come back to the hotel. So the hotel makes receptionists, cleaners, waiters, drivers, accountants, IT technicians and many others work overnight in shifts. For every such customer, vendors across many such verticals and/or horizontals are kept on tenterhooks. The hotel wakes up an IT techie at 3 a.m. to fix the Wi-Fi for this esteemed customer having problems watching ‘online streaming videos’. The IT person’s family is frequently troubled with such support calls at night. Often, the family can’t sleep properly, affecting their daytime activities. This IT person is generally competent but badly overworked and this support call is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. He is not able to come and fix the Wi-Fi. The customer on holiday is pissed off, creates a scene and books a room in a rival hotel. The first hotel chain, having lost its ‘kingly’ customer, cancels the contract with the IT vendor providing the support people. The IT vendor that had a contract of exclusivity for the hotel chain in the entire country loses its major customer and takes a bad hit. The news spreads the next day and its shares nosedive. This company is an IT venture of a famous business house of the country. The parent company calls an urgent meeting with all the CXOs to address this exigency. Coincidentally, the hotel guest in question gets a call from his company informing him of cancellation of his vacation and asking him to report immediately. He rues his predicament, not knowing what in the world went wrong to have his vacation curtailed. He is the CFO of the parent company.
In the real world, the circle may not be so small or the strings of events may not be so fortuitous but what cannot be argued is the fact that you begin the trail that ultimately leads back to you. In other words, there is nothing that is not your business. As Justin Timberlake said, “What goes around, comes around.”
So the next time you feel like ditching a vendor for a small lapse of service, think twice: you might be creating a world that ruins your own holiday.
6 comments:
interesing perspective
I would say good perspective, but not quite there.
The Monarchial status given to customer in the service industry cannot be refuted based on few anecdotal evidences. The adage characterizes the eminence that customers have enjoyed at a broader level, by which change in their preferences drives changes within the service industry…Good or bad.
And it is still relevant. Here in the US, airline industry has most recently witnessed the “customer is king” phenomenon more than any other. The erratic pricing along with shoddy customer service lead to people choosing alternatives to airlines for domestic travel. This change in behavior by customers over time has culminated into airlines suffering massive overcapacity. Result is a list of bankruptcies and ultimate demise of well-known carriers. Indeed the fares have increased due to this removal of capacity, but the airlines have surely learnt “Customer is the King” (the hard way).
Another classic example is Dell. Its direct sales model via the Internet(with no retail stores), whereby buyers could customize and order their computer systems online was all well and good, until buyers exceedingly felt the need to “touch and feel” the product they were investing into. This change in customer behavior, saw DELL sales plummet and HP gaining PC market share. Ultimately, this lead to DELL introducing its laptops and PCs in retail stores.
Other examples include some of the biggest names in the service industry like FedEx. In this case, customers realized that not everything they shipped needed to be there at its destination at 8 AM in the morning. They started moving from premium-priced “overnight” service (on airlines) to cheaper ground options (on trucks). In this case, FedEx had to change its business model to expand its trucking operations and in the bargain customer paid lower prices for its service. Yet again, Customer is the king.
The anonymous comment is of a very informed and well read person. However, it would've been better had you written your name.
This comment of mine is a reply to yours.
None of what you've said is incorrect and I completely agree to it. Yet, it doesn't invalidate anything I've said in my article.
Nowhere in my article did I deny the importance of customer. After all, isn't the idea of the hotel ending the contract with software vendor an example of the importance of the customer?
The central theme of this article is that as the customer becomes more smug and demanding, he alters his own life (as a vendor) for worse in some other walk of life.
Rgds,
Kamlesh
interesting article...my personal view...wnt totally accept that customer is KING...ya its true that company's exist only if there are customers, but wen customers are very rude & demanding & start misbehaving, then you get a feeling that customer is not a KING but a DEVIL WHICH SHOULD BE SENT TO HELL.....
seems funny but trust me its my real life experience.....("_")
Good one. Ideally, if most customers understood this, the world would be a much nicer place to live in. On the contrary, this menacing 'customer' was hit where it hurts!
A very interesting article here. I wish I could justify or oppose your premise with some smart repartee of my own, but I find myself a little short of such knowledge.
All I can say is that the more sophisticated and picky our choices become as a customer, the more the wheels are set for a newer chain of demand-
manufacture- distribute-consume motion. That's when some benefit, and others are left behind. Commerce was always an integral part of mankind's progress. That it has become so important that man himself has become enslaved for its perpetuation is a relatively modern affair. When progress is equated with roping in even larger sections of society from self sustaining economic systems to more globalised
pattern of consumption (rendering them so vulnerable to outside
forces), one cannot deny that there is bound to be chaos even if its appears controlled.
You should marry your writing skills with your business acumen and pen more of these articles. I am sure there are plenty out there who would be interested in these insights.
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