Dilemma of Indian IT companies

Many an Indian IT company face a dilemma today.

With a strengthening Rupee & a weakening Dollar, margins of most companies are getting squeezed between Dollar earnings (mostly export oriented) & Rupee costs (salary costs are the biggest chunk in the costs).

The obvious choice is to control (read minimize) costs via employee salaries. How many of these companies can do a Southwest (that abstained from layoff in tough times) & continue to pamper their employees with 10-15% annual hikes? Or is there a better way of managing employee morale?

Can you be customer centric without being employee friendly?

In his book Customer Mania, Ken Blanchard emphasizes that a customer strategy needs to be about "customer AND employees". So do most other thought leaders on this topic.

I do believe that an organization incapable of taking care of its employee's satisfaction is equally lost in addressing its customer's satisfaction. This is especially true of services organizations where a multitude of interactions between employees & customers constitute the customer engagement. In such firms, being employee focused is a great way of setting an example about how customers need to be taken care of.

The question is - is the above thesis inapplicable for product companies? Can an organization with a fantabulous product afford to depend on its products & compromise on the product's creators? And still expect long term success?

Creating a buzz - customer centric or gimmick?

Bengaluru (or Bangalore) has witnessed an explosion in property rates over the last few years. The city has been the nerve center of the Indian IT boom. Instances of land rates increasing by 10-15 times in 2-3 years is normal. This growth has created millionaires of people ...none more in numbers than real estate developers.

But as in the rest of the world, real estate developers are most opportunistic too. Never loosing a chance to make more money, they have the dubious distinction of being difficult to handle, not serious about any deadlines & being short sighted.

There are exceptions of course.

One of my friends recently told me about Shriram Properties (a real estate developer) who just returned back 1.5% of the initially charged (collected about 3 years ago) amount for a flat. Reasons quoted - they had overestimated on a few accounts. Obviously this friend of mine was thrilled. Not only that, he was telling me & anybody else who would listen to him that day. And now here I am blogging about it.

Customer centric or marketing gimmick? Either ways, the act has created a lot of good will. Created quite a bit of buzz in the marketplace. And has a lot more prospective buyers than they would've had without this act.

• Explore more & more ways of benefiting your customers. It will pay back.
• Every real estate developer's web site has space dedicated to how customer centric they are. But action speaks louder than words - DO something.
• The more notorious your industry, the better the chances of customer centricity helping you differentiate yourself.

I also found another post on a similar topic - customer centricity amongst US commercial real estate companies: http://cpnmhn.typepad.com/management_matters/2007/12/are-you-custome.html.

Exceed expectations?

If this questions was asked to me, I would usually respond affirmatively. Especially in the context of customer service - I wouldn't have thought there was an alternative!

You can imagine my surprise when my Google search responded with opinions that differed from mine. Here is a sampling -

• "One who always exceeds expectations is a liar. He lies either in intentionally low-balling the expectations, or in exceeding his promise. Or both." -TrustedAdvisor
• "So many companies boast they "exceed expectations" or "go beyond expectations." This is short-sighted for three reasons. First, customers are looking for companies to deliver exactly what they promise, not more, not less. Second, it sets up even greater grounds for dissatisfaction when companies fail to meet whatever promises they make. Finally, it is an unprofitable strategy. Customers vary in terms of profitability. Providing service above and beyond what a customer is worth in terms of profit does nothing but hurt the bottom line." -FusionBrand (do read some of the comments too)

It is not difficult to imagine an organization starting with too low a bar specifically to exceed expectations.

But I personally believe in exceeding expectations. I believe that by doing so, an organization not only manages to the deliver the much needed wow! factor (similar to Adrian Miller's view in the article on customerTHINK), but also raises the bar for itself. How? The next time a wowed customer interacts with you, you cannot wow them the same way. You need to have something new up your sleeve.

So sensitize your customer facing teams to the concept of exceeding expectations & how it can be delivered through non-earth-shattering means, and let them use their own creativity to find ways of doing so. If this becomes a part of your culture - you would've done a lot of good to your customer centricity journey.

Highway to Customer Alignment

Source: http://www.customerthink.com/article/time_for_customer_alignment_here

Becoming more customer-centric has moved from the "whether" column to the "when" column.

# I really wish this was true all over. Most companies & executives have read / heard about the need to be customer centric - they may concur too - but most, I believe, are waiting for some external event to nudge them into action & necessary investment (time, effort & focus).
As pointed out in the article, smart companies ought not to wait. Instead they have to the take the initiatives to changes themselves if they intend to be ahead.

The author identifies six critical parameters that determine the degree of customer alignment for most companies. These six factors provide a good starting point for honest inquiry:

• Customer relationships - management's level of customer contact & empowerment of contact personnel to deal with customers
• Strategy - They're directional, not operational.
• Marketing
• Sales and service
• Process design
• Capacity to change - Most customer aligned companies endured some measure of organizational upheaval—often considerable upheaval to become customer aligned.

The author also lists questions that need to be asked for each of these areas to ascertain how aligned you are. Just asking these questions will help point companies wanting to "hit the road" and head down the right path towards customer-alignment.

http://pro20.sgizmo.com/survey.php?SURVEY=JDNA28Q94B6C00UQ173A0S8GS9OR3C-14130-2914627&pswsgt=1192125395

# As with most surveys, rather than the result & the evaluation of the results, the process of going through the questions provide more value. They are pointers to the rights & wrongs in becoming customer aligned.