Desicritics Category: BizTech: Consumers

E-Governance and Grassroots Governance

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:45:49 EDT

When I engaged the services of a smart, suave lawyer to draft the Trust Deed that I had to register, I thought that I was being smart. Getting good legal advice to have the paper work sewn up well seemed to be a good move. Drafting the deed well was the main half of the story; registering the deed itself would be child’s play afterwards; or so I thought. I was wrong.

Whereas the lawyer had drafted any number of Trust Deeds and drafted mine too in a jiffy, registering the deed turned out to be a nightmare. A visit to the sub-registrar’s office to register a document – any document at all is the best possible proof that if any job at can be performed by machines and computers, they should be asked to do so without any further ado and interaction with human beings is best kept at the irreducible minimum.

The first sight to greet you as you approach the sub registrar’s office is a slew of soft drink and bottled water sellers. That sight ought to make any one’s heart quiver; for if such sellers abound like vultures, it only means that there is a market for their wares in the form of indeterminable delays.

Once you alight, you are in the midst of what can best be called a maze with all sorts of people milling around – clients, petty shopkeepers, hangers on and tough looking people in tight T Shirts. Although there are enough signage; the one most prominent is one advising the client to “beware of touts”. And yet with no clear reception counter or window or help desk, and a swarming crowd trying to find its way through the chaos, the only one who knows the drill to get the job done with as little delay as possible is the tout. Getting your job done without a tout’s help in that run down office where the babu sits behind shuttered windows under a fan and the client lines up under the blazing sun without the pretense of even a canopy is like trying to cross the Sahara desert without map or compass.

I remember the times before e-ticketing in the railways became common when the bookings were all manual. Whenever we went on summer breaks, the first job to do was to make a trip to the railway station to book the return ticket. The process took effectively the whole day and was fraught with uncertainty as the bookings were made manually on a giant ledger and with the queue moving at a snail’s pace, there was no assurance that by the time, one reached the head of the queue, the ticket one sought would still be available.

If there is one area where e-governance has made a difference to a whole lot of people, it is in the area of railway bookings. Another may be banking, especially the adoption of core banking by many of the public sector banks. Several embassies have reduced human contact and give online appointments for visa interviews and other related formalities which too are of help. But what is surprising is that despite a few proven successes in improved governance; the government has not demonstrated the political will to extend IT solutions to other government offices that the public have to visit.

The sight of unsightly and ill manned offices with unhelpful clerks in the National Capital and confused clients roaming around under the raging noon day sun surrounded by touts and other unidentifiable characters who seemingly can “fix” any thing is enough to undermine any good that the government might have done in other areas. If e-governance is the panacea of the future, it is much more so at the places where the public congregates to interface with the government and is met with uncouth, sour faced clerks than in the Prime Minister’s office and other such high profile establishments. E-governance needs to expand at the grassroots and do so quickly.

Microfinance - Money, Money, Money

Shantanu Dutta — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:44:18 EDT

Ever since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his initiatives in micro finance, the sector has been attention that had hitherto been denied it. The Professor himself has been toasted around quite a bit and the Grameen Bank has now been invited to set up shop in Assam. But the success and spread of micro-finance in India has been patchy and mostly confined to the South Indian states where there has been a long history of thrift and credit societies and then subsequently of Self Help Groups. Typically micro finance programs have had three common characteristics in India at least –a) they have been women-centric, b) They have had an NGO non profit mindset, which has meant that business viability has been undermined) They have had a rural focus.

“Experience shows that microfinance can help the poor to increase income, build viable businesses, and reduce their vulnerability to external shocks. It can also be a powerful instrument for self-empowerment by enabling the poor, especially women, to become economic agents of change.”

But micro credit has had a very limited audience to play to. In the highly patriarchal societies of North India, where women rarely are allowed out to step out of their houses, let alone assemble in groups; the gender skewed methodology of first forming groups of women and then offering loans would not work. Neither would they typically work in highly urban societies which lack the homogeneity of rural communities and the system of trust and honor on which the foundations of repayment and low defaults are built. But to scale up and really make a difference to those outside the normal banking channels, microfinance institutions need to innovate.

As Vikram Akula of SKS Micro Finance puts it, the three key issues that a micro finance institution usually faces are lack of capital, the lack of capacity and the high cost of transaction. Ahuja, who started life as a Field Officer for an NGO driven microfinance program has the answers - answers which prompted him to start his own micro finance company with an entirely different set of paradigms than the one he was first coached in.

Vikram Akula talks the language of business - of generating capital by earning profits for investors, of not being content with a couple of thousands of clients, but in terms of millions of customers as any good sized business would have and in terns of using automation and technology to manage the high cost of several tiny sized transactions. He is currently doing a pilot using mobile phone technology to manage transactions. The penetration of mobile phones among SKS’s clients is adequate enough for Vikram Akula for it to be a viable option.

Does speaking the language mean that a microfinance institution has to forsake its social obligations? Not so. Shikhar Development Services is a newly formed microfinance entity that is trying to combine sound business practices with socially relevant innovative projects. Working in an urban environment with its own particular challenges, they recently conducted a survey which revealed that many parents with school going children had a significant cash outflow in the months of April – May when the school academic year started. Often the parents would not have the cash necessary to make the pay out and the child would drop out of school. Appalled at the finding, the company is now looking at the feasibility of developing a loan product that would enable parents to meet this predictable yet unaffordable financial need.

MFIs might have entered the picture with the aim to bank with the “unbankable” and often received societal support because they were perceived as removing the scourge of the money lenders. But today they attract a fair bit of criticism too and many feel that some microfinance institutions are blurring the line between constructive microfinance and exploitative money lending. There is also criticism that easy access to credit doesn't seem to have made any perceptible change in the lifestyle and livelihoods of the rural poor and that at the cost of the poor a large number of MFIs have benefited; banks have found a convenient route to increase lending; and corporations have got a growing consumer market to target.

As more and more microfinance institutions enter the market, they would need to be ready to respond to such criticism and innovations and social responsiveness would become more and more necessary, both to compete and to stay socially relevant. Unlike the typical banks – brick and mortar structures where customers have to visit to access products; micro finance institutions have people on the ground close to their client base to listen, reflect and constantly innovate; a luxury that the typical banking institution does not have. Compared to Bangladesh, where the market as well as the clientèle has become more discerning; India is a relatively nascent market. Many will be waiting to watch to see if MFIs become hand maidens to established commercial banks working towards “financial inclusiveness” or manage to retain their independence and their soul.

The Wired Life

Manasa Pamaraju — Thu, 1 May 2008 14:25:20 EDT

Everything these days is automated, electronic and somehow or the other designed to reduce human effort/intervention. I have absolutely no complaints about these new inventions. After all, they make my life easy. But, did you notice that every such gadget has to come with a wire, usually black. The television needs a power supply, a wire here, the cable for the thousands of channels that we never see has another big wire. The laptop has wireless internet, but the router needs the power connection and hence the wire, and yes, the laptop needs a wire too. Thankfully the TV remote does not. We have indeed made great progress from the days when electrical lines used to run over the walls, I still remember my old childhood home, where the wiring was exposed in that manner. There are a number of other things that have come up in the recent past that can operate using the wireless technology and I am not unaware of them.

But, for a person who is trying to keep her home neat and clean, these wires have now become a necessary evil. In a way they bring out individual creativity. These wires give us an opportunity to utilize our brain to come up with contraptions that will help us conceal them or make them look less obvious. In our small apartment, my husband and I have tried hard to conceal a huge chunk of those necessary evils - wires. It all started many days back when I tried to clean my home. Somehow, I always felt that the hall looked really untidy and whatever I did, it never ever seemed to look prim. At the heart of the problem lay the chunk of black and white wires, running all along the room. Ma’s words then struck me like a lightning bolt . She used to remind us time and again to wrap up those wires when we were done. I can now strongly empathize with her feelings.

Anyways, back to our small home, we did manage to conceal the bunch of wires. We used some coloured paper as screens, and in the process, induced colour into our rather white and boring looking apartment. (The rent restrictions make it too much of a bother to paint the walls.) Let me confess, we still have some wires that are visible. I suppose we can’t hide everything. But, it's now much more tidy. Ah! So wires also lead to good teamwork and help in relationship bonding. After all, my husband and I were working collectively toward a certain cause that plagued us. It takes me back to another aspect, my degree in Electrical engineering, how coincidental. Now that I think of it, I used to be irked sometimes by the bunch of wires found in the labs too. I suppose my aversion to bunches of electrical wires is dated.

I have come to conclude, never take electrical connections lightly. When you decide to do your home, make sure you plan the connections and points ahead. If you don’t, trust me, they would create a havoc later in your otherwise well-planned home.

However weird this may be, our lives are wired and connected in a number of ways with all these modern contraptions - so live an Electric life!

Recovery Agent : Evolution of the Gentleman Goon

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 03:23:55 EDT

In India, the term recovery agent or debt collector throws up chilling images of unnerving phone calls, bounces landing up at the door, goons intercepting your car at a traffic signal and throwing you off as they repossess in mid traffic and all of that. So unsavory have the tactics been that the courts have often been asked to intervene and codes of conduct have been laid out as to how banks will go about the business of collecting bad debts.

But according to the New York Times, India’ s “ability” to recover debts is some thing that attracts American companies very much and it might b the next big thing, that might be out sourced to India. It seems according to the NYT report that in recession hit USA, consumers are finding it hard to keep up their payments on time and this is exactly the scenario, where India’s famed recovery agents are just equipped to step in and ring in the coins.

“India will be the only place we grow this year,” said J. Brandon Black, the chief executive of the Encore Capital Group, a debt collection company based in San Diego. India is the company’s largest operating area, with about half the company’s collection force of more than 300. Although the stereotype of a collector may be “some guy with chains and a cut-off shirt,” Mr. Black said, collectors in India are “very polite, very respectful, and they don’t raise their voice.” He added, “People respond to that.”

Of course those in dialogue with India’s debt collectors would be best placed to respond to The Encore CEO’s comments that Indian debt collectors are very polite, very respectful and don’t raise their voice. Possibly he is right and the collectors don’t need to. Who ever said that a deep, coarse and gravelly voice was necessary to send your spine tingling and your mind twirling!

So are debt collectors going to be India’s latest export? It would seem to be so, though it does not look that the business model that the US companies are adopting would see them sponsoring Indian recovery agents for an H1B visa just yet. But the ubiquitous call center executive is swiftly evolving to perform one more function - the sweet talking tele caller who will coax and cajole though not threaten delinquent customers into agreeing to pay at least a minimum amount an earn bonuses for managing to do so.

Given that the call center based recovery agents would not have the luxury of dropping into some body’s house and bull dozing them into payment promises – both for geographical reasons as well as legal, the collection agents’ methodology is dependant very heavily on through study and home work of the clients’ profile and behavior patterns. Encore is for instance coaching its staff bout the intricacies of the IRS refunds- the refund season beginning in May and the caller might know based on their study and research, just how much refund a particular lien is likely to get.

One thing to ponder here is that in this system, although there is a lot of psychological pressure and implied threats of “further action” –meaning law suits, there is no physical violence involved. The tele recovery agents essentially depend on their wits and the eventual might of law suits to get the reticent clients to pay up. Does this mean any thing for India? Will these global best practices in debt recovery which Indians are using to service debt across the oceans get adopted in their own country or the Indian experience will continue to be that of hoodlums and goons and people howling in newspaper columns and consumer courts? Let us wait and see and in the meanwhile, not wanting to take any chances, not run up any unpaid debt at all!

The Marriage of Technology and Religion

Deepa Krishnan — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:58:35 EDT

Have you noticed how neatly religion is wedded to technology in India? Like hot water and noodles, we've cleverly mixed the two to serve up God in an instant.

Take this advert for cell phone ringtones in the Hindustan Times this morning. "Devotional Special", it says, in a font that is inspired by the Sanskrit Devnagiri script. You can download mantras and chants on your cell phone for under 20 rupees, and when someone calls you, you can play them a little piece of the mantra. In the process, you dispense instant punya across the telecom network.

In addition to dispensing punya to people who call you, you can also earn punya for yourself. How? For 5 rupees, just download a religious wall paper as the background for your cell phone. The payoff? It lights up every time someone calls you, giving you small doses of darshan throughout the day. There's even a cartoon wall paper version of Lord Ram and his wife, for the young at heart. Or maybe it is meant for kids, to give them an early start in the lifelong process of acquiring merit.

I tell you, the gods must be pretty pleased with how well technology is working for them. And going by the number of prayers and chants I hear on people's phones these days, I'm sure the telecom companies are happy too.

But it's not just the mobile phone companies that have understood the marriage of technology and religion. Here's an advert on a popular website for online pujas. For $25 paid online, a priest will conduct a full-fledged puja on your behalf. All kinds of prayers and rituals are available, but what looks most popular is this one, a prayer to Kali that neutralizes any potential scheming enemies.

Astrologers have gone online as well. The simple road-side jyotish now has competition from "Ask Pandit" services, where for a fee paid online, you get horoscope consultation and religious advice via email. Advice is provided on everything under the sun, ranging from marriage, career, infertility and education. It is a tiered price structure, starting at $2 for a basic reading, and progressively becoming more expensive as you ask for more specific information. Oh and there's a shopping cart, where you can pay by credit card.

The big temples have understood technology too. The richest, Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, offers e-Darshan, a facility where you can buy tokens online so you don't have to queue up to see the Lord. The Tirupati website proudly explains that they're now using biometrics to regulate entry at the temple gates. Tirupati also has branded their other offerings - they have e-Seva, e-Hundi, e-Donation and e-Sales (whatever that is!). The website is a smoothly functioning e-Commerce centre, where you can engage with the Lord from the comfort of your home.

But if you really want to see technology working hand-in-hand with religion, you should go see Akshardham in Delhi. It's a sort of cross between a hi-tech Disneyland and a traditional temple. There is a boat ride though an artificial tunnel, a yagna-kund that is also a synchronised colourful fountain, an "audio-animatronics" show, and a giant movie screen that shows a special movie filmed in over 100 locations in India, with a cast of 45000 people.

Akshardham has welcomed technology, dreamt large dreams in technicolour using technology, and moulded technology with a confident hand to fit the special needs of its faithful. The scale and drama of Akshardham make me wish it were a metaphor for modern India - eager to accept new learning, but at the same time, vibrant and self-confident enough to convert it into something uniquely Indian. Do you think that will happen?

In any case, to me it looks like Technology is quite permanently wedded to Religion in India, and this is going to be a long and fruitful marriage. All I can say is - Jiyo mere dulha dulhan. May you prosper and produce interesting offspring!

Indian Retail and Consumers - A Followup

Anuradha Goyal — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:04:24 EDT

My last post citing incidents from experiences across retail stores is the first post out of some 250 odd posts, where no one disagreed with me and people just kept adding their own experiences. Apart from comments at DC and on my blog, I also received a lot of e-mails and a few phone calls including one from a customer services head of one of the stores that I had mentioned in the post. Now what I infer from all the feedback and rejoinders to the post is what I am trying to put across in this post.

Billing fraud in retail stores is much bigger than I had imagined. While writing about it, I was not very sure if I am doing the right thing, as it could have been series of co-incidences with me, but the replies to my post confirm that the organized fraud in retail stores can be much bigger than I first thought, or much bigger than what we can manage to ignore. There are two perspectives to this potential fraud. One is from the customers or consumers perspective, who are the ones being cheated. Now as a customer I have no clue if the employee at the counter is cheating or the retail store is also involved in the process. To me as a consumer the employee standing at the counter is nothing but the representative of the retail organization, so from my perspective the retail organization is cheating me. At the same time, if I flip the situation and see it from retailer’s perspective, they could also be at the suffering end from this problem, as the employees pocket the money or the items from the wrong billing and though store may not suffer financially but they do suffer in terms of brand value and customer loss.

Second, area of poor customer service also has ironical viewpoints when observed from customers and retailers perspective. Almost all customers feel that there are far too many people on the shop floor. On top of it, they do not know anything about what they are selling in the store, where is it located and basically are useless from the customer perspective. You would usually find salespersons cuddled together in a corner and often see customers and their queries as an interruption. All our friends in retail think they do not have enough people and quality of people is a big issue.

I can not comment about the quality of people, as that seems to be an issue across the industries. But I am sure retailers need to seriously look at number of people they deploy on the shop floor and also their knowledge of the products. In grocery stores, it should not be very tough. Probably training needs to involve usage of not so common items by staff members, so that they know about what the customer is asking for. Let me take an example, you go and ask for Tofu to any salesperson and they would not know about it, probably because they have never used it themselves, and while it is lying in the shelves they would often mistake it for Paneer or Cheese. As far as the number of people is concerned, I am sure retailers are using some benchmark numbers which may have come from the western world, and hence may not be relevant as such in India. They probably need to work out the no. of people on the shop floor based on total area of the store, the cultural element, expected footfalls and usability of those people to the customers. I am sure customers would prefer less people, who can help them when required and not intrude them when not required. I seriously believe that the retailers who can manage their customer servicing are the ones who are going to survive or thrive.

The only point in time solution that I can think of is to ‘Check your bills properly every time you shop.’ Do not think that since there is a bar code reader and a computer involved, nothing can go wrong. There are those fingers on the machine that have mastered the art of manipulating the system and hence you. Doordarshan’s ads on ‘Jago Grahak Jago’ seem to be just in time.

PS: Can’t help sharing another incident that happened last evening. I went to Nilgiris, and picked up an item which came in two sized, the smaller priced at Rs 12/- and the larger one priced at Rs 22/- , and picked up the smaller one. I had only 4 items in the basket and since my last post I have been observing the behavior of people at the counters even more keenly. The lady at the register swipes the items on the barcode reader, and when she swipes the above mentioned item the bar code reader correctly picks up the item and shows Rs 12/- on the screen. The lady very quickly goes and changes the item code and the screen now shows Rs 22/- . I asked her what is she doing, she first gives me a look of ‘what did I do?’, and then when I tell her what she did, she says Sorry as rudely as possible and then corrects the bill. Then in her frustration, gives me Rs 1.50 less than what she is supposed to return, when I ask for the same, she takes out the change and gives it to me as if she is obliging me. I was amazed to see the manipulation done with immense ease.

QuestNet Reopens as Lotus Marketing in Sri Lanka?

enidhi — Sun, 6 Apr 2008 00:38:33 EDT

QuestNet (aka Gold Quest) is yet another network marketing company which sells overpriced products to members and encourages these members to bring more members to buy its products and gives commission to member when new member signs up under him and buys the product. A binary pyramid kind of compensation plan where in one gets his money back only if he makes around a dozen of his friends/relatives sign up under him, a system wherein only few percentage of people at the very top of the pyramid reap huge benefits while almost everyone else (around 98%) lose their money to their up liners while pursuing a nonexistent dream of financial freedom and instant richness.

Simply put, this is akin to MLM scams and QuestNet is banned in several countries- the USA, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iran and many more because this kind of scheme loots people of their hard earned money and drains millions of dollars of money out of the country. They are operational in India, Singapore and several other countries, for the sole reason that there are no stringent laws under which their operation can be declared illegal.

We can go on discussing pros and cons of network marketing and keep arguing if QuestNet is legal or illegal. The Internet is full of anti-QuestNet reviews explaining how almost everyone loses money in QuestNet and you can find lots of such posts with a simple search. Let me not reinvent the wheel and focus on a special issue here.

QuestNet was banned in Sri Lanka recently after it allegedly drained millions of dollars of foreign exchange out of the country, severely affecting nation’s economy. If QuestNet felt they were banned for no reason, they should have convinced Sri Lankan Government that they were innocent and genuine and try to get the ban lifted. But, it is evident that they have silently opened another company in Sri Lanka, under the name Lotus Marketing and have started the business as usual, hunting for new prospects and abandoning millions of their earlier IRs (of QuestNet).

Details of the Lotus Marketing launch can be found here. Their website is supposed to be http://lotus-mktg.com/ which is booked under a discrete domain (so is quest.net, meaning identity of domain owner not disclosed) and is under construction as of now. The conclusion that this company is directly related to earlier QuestNet is drawn from the fact that Lotus Marketing is selling the same products which QN was selling. (BioDisc, Pendants etc, the only missing thing is gold coin, which might have been excluded because Gold Coin will draw immediate relation with Questnet which sold huge number of gold coins and is known more for gold coins than any other product). Elakiri, a Sri Lankan community forum has a detailed discussion going on in one of their threads here on this topic.

QuestNet sells the Amezcua BioDisc, an useless piece of glass priced at INR 22000 which its promoters claim will cure so many diseases including cancer. (More on this product in a separate post soon). The presentation says QuestNet has exclusive marketing rights to sell it. So if Lotus Marketing is selling this disc, it has to have backing of QuestNet.

I have already written in my earlier post that network marketing/MLM companies keep their physical assets and presence to minimum so that it will be very easy for them to pack up overnight and re appear later in a totally new disguise.

QuestNet Kingpin Vijay Eswaran did nothing to protect the interests of millions of IRs in the countries where QuestNet was banned. Those IRs were neither compensated, nor an attempt was made to prove to governments that their business is legitimate and that the ban deserves to be lifted. What QuestNet has done clearly indicates its intentions are not good and this development (Questnet abandoning its IRs post ban and re-appearing in a new name all afresh) should be an alarm for the company’s IRs in India and other countries. If QuestNet is banned in India tomorrow, all these members (Independent Representatives) will be left unaware without any compensation for the money they pumped in but haven’t yet recovered. After few months the same promoters of QuestNet, who made billions sucking hard earned money of new members, will re appear to launch a new company and start their fooling business afresh.

The blind faith and belief of the IRs may not allow them to believe in all these, but this is the ground reality and its in their own interest that they stay prepared.

Prasar Bharati, Cricket and a Free Lunch - Not!

Sathya — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:18:42 EDT

Expecting Prasar Bharti to screen test matches on Doordarshan; is it our way of seeking refuge in socialistic benefits, when being chased by capitalistic behemoths? I would nod my head in agreement and say, “yes it is.”

After all whether we like it or not, Doordarshan is a free lunch, where unlike the BBC in Britain, we don’t pay a license fee to the public broadcaster. In England, every citizen possessing a radio or television is expected to pay a license fee to the BBC. But aren’t we doing the same in our telecom sector, each of the private players pays an Access Deficit Fee to the state carrier – BSNL, for provision of rural connectivity. It is common knowledge that this is passed on to the end user, who probably doesn’t complain much, thanks to the cut-throat competition that has resulted in a geography which boasts of the lowest telecom tariffs. Worthy of mention here is the strategy adopted by Virgin Mobile, a new player in the telecom space. They claim to pay you one tenth of a rupee for every minute of an incoming call. And to think, when you are in Big Brother’s land you would wonder why you are having to pay for an incoming call – The merits of a fledgling market!

Back to the rant. The same Prasar Bharati that would fight in Madras High Court with some of these broadcasting companies, the same Prasar Bharati that would push the parliament for legislations about what it called “Sporting events of National Interest,” this time folded without giving a fight. This time it is not fighting with the Nimbus promoted Neo Sports, for broadcasting the India South Africa series.

The socialist in me is crying foul.

One, I feel the broadcasting rights in our country are extremely overrated. I don’t have any numbers with me, but the amount that broadcasting rights for these matches fetch can be only described as vulgarly excessive.

Two, the way every inch of the television space is littered with advertisements in an effort to monetize every pixel, can just be described as obscene. I didn’t complain, when advertisements between overs overshot the available time. I didn’t complain when a logo of a sponsor was embedded into the on-screen graphics. I didn’t complain when another graphics appeared for a replay, cutting off one corner of the screen. And then another one appeared, and then one more.

Today when I see a ticker/advertisement ticking over the top end of the screen taking along with it a good amount of the players’ faces, I want to look away from the game. The game doesn’t deserve me anymore.

The only way, this overrated broadcasting bubble would have been deflated to a more manageable size would have been if Prasar Bharati had put in a fight for the free signal. The companies would realize that it is not so profitable, if they were to share the signal with the state broadcaster.

Before I get onto how the bubble is only being inflated further by the emergence of the two cricketing leagues, I think I should stop and ask – Does your cable operator provide Neo Sports? Maybe he says it's overpriced. Maybe he says you would have to pay some amount more by way of monthly subscription. Maybe he is the sort who pilfers a signal and ensures that you get to watch the game. Maybe I dream of a day when I can get to see a cricket match, with fences for boundaries unlike advertising hoardings, where the ground is of green grass not painted with the motifs of some corporation and maybe a telecast sans that annoying commercial.

But alas! Like that cliché goes – There ain't nothing called a free lunch!

Retail in India - A Consumer Experience

Anuradha Goyal — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:15:56 EDT

As you travel across the city, or across cities in India, you can see the much predicted retail boom happening everywhere. There are shopping malls, supermarkets, hypermarkets and big format retail chains everywhere. Not sure how many people actually understand the difference between these terms, but the mantra is big format shopping space, a place where you have to go using a vehicle as it is not very close to your house, you have to pay for parking, have to go around the store collecting items you want to buy in a basket or a trolley and then stand in a seemingly non-moving queue waiting for your bill to be processed. If you are lucky, you will have a flawless bill with all the free / discount items packed with your shopped items, but more often than not this is usually not the case. I am using this post to summarize my retail experience through a series of incidents, which are primarily from retail chains in Bangalore, and I am assuming the experience may not be very different across cities.

Shoppers Stop: I get some 3-4 e-mailers informing me of the annual sale at Shopper’s stop. I am sure company has spent enough money to communicate the sale information to the customers, and the impact is that I do stop by while passing through one of the outlets. I enter Shopper’s stop and see the sale being announced from every corner through various marketing material. I am looking for certain things, but could not make out of this is on sale or not, I ask the nearest available sales person and she says ‘What Sale? There is no sale.” Just in time, I get a SMS on my mobile, from Shoppers Stop announcing the sale and show this to the person and she shows me a blank face. I point to the material shouting sale all over the store and this lady runs to her colleague and says “What are we supposed to do about sale?” Now, to me this is a classic case of wasted time, effort and resources, you spend so much to bring the customer to store, but when the customer lands, she feels almost let down.

Mobile Store: They have some huge stores in prime locations, considering the fact that selling of mobiles usually does not need so much of physical space. I had to buy a mobile phone and I wanted to exchange it with my old one. There were about 12 people wearing the red ‘Mobile Store’ T-shirts, and I assume they were all there representing the company and should be available for any help that the customer may need. There were 3 groups of 2s, who were busy talking with each other and were in no mood to halt their conversation to attend to the only customer entering the store. Probably they thought someone would attend me, which is a fair thought assuming the customer to salesperson ratio. Next there were a couple of ladies who were busy talking on the mobile and were so lost in the conversation that I am sure they did not even notice my entering the store. There were two people who were busy figuring out something on the only computer available on the store. There were two ladies sitting on a counter, looking nowhere and lost in their thoughts.

I looked around to see the most approachable face and discover that no one is looking at me, probably in the hope that someone else would look at and attend. I walked up to the guys who were on the computer and said I am looking for buying a new mobile phone. He looked up as if I was an interruption and said, “Which one?” I tell him my requirements and ask him to suggest mobiles for the same and he wears a completely confused look. I give up and say the models that I had researched before stepping out to buy and he points me to dummies of those models in a glass window. Finally with no hope of any help or information, I ask him for the buy back price for the old mobile, he makes some frantic calls here and there and says, if you leave the mobile here, I can tell you tomorrow. Now I do not even know where to classify this experience. 12 people on the floor, with absolutely no knowledge of the countable number of products they sell, unable to attend a single customer with absolutely defined requirements. 10% of the number of people with a decent knowledge about the most commonly used product would have helped.

More: Erstwhile Fabmall, and newly christened ‘More’, opened its new outlet near my house and I went there to buy my monthly groceries. By now I do not expect any help from any of the people floating around and fill my trolley with my month’s supply and stand in the queue. The bill amount appears a bit too much to me, but looking at the long queue I pay and come out. I sit in the car and something tells me that I should total the bill, I do that and discover the discrepancy of 300 Rs on a bill of Rs 1500/- , a good 20% amount. I go back to the store with bill in my hand and the guy quietly says Sorry and hands me 300 Rs. I ask for the store manager, but he is expectedly missing at such times, and no one has his cell number.

Westside: I went to pickup some gifts for my new born nephew. I liked something that was in 1-2 year section, but could not find the same thing in new born section. I asked the salesperson around if she could help me find the same item in the 0-3 months section and she plainly said ‘No, not available!’, and just when I turned around, I could find the item and looked at the salesperson and she said ‘If it is available, take it’. Again some 10-12 people on the floor, with no knowledge of what they are selling, what the inventory is and no effort to re-arrange the items meshed up by customers. I spoke to the store manager and got the most customer unfriendly response ‘Please buy whatever you can find, we can not help you with anything’.

Reliance Fresh: There is always an extra item added to the list, in case total number of items exceeds a certain number. If you discover, they say sorry and rectify, if you don’t, they made it. Though I can not say this organized fraud on this small sample, but I am getting inclined to think so and this may be prevailing across stores, especially on weekends where the places are so crowded that most people may not bother to check the bills for small amounts.

Subhiksha: All salesperson are sitting in one corner and chatting away. You ask for something and they take 2-3 minutes to decide which one of them will respond. Finally one person walks up to you, almost making you feel guilty for coming in way of the conversation, only to say he does not know.

Landmark: This upmarket bookstore plays some jarring music, and this is the reason I do not enjoy going there for exploring books. Once I had to go there to use the gift vouchers I received on my birthday, and I was there right after the store opened and again I was the only customer. The music was too loud for my comfort and I asked them to reduce it and they point blank refused saying there are other customers. I looked around and said where, and they obliged me by reducing it by one level. As soon as I reached the shelves, the music was up by about 5 levels, making it impossible for me to concentrate on books. I gave it one more try but I guess letting employees play music at their levels and their kinds is Landmark’s way of retaining employees. I had no option but to walk out.

M K Ahmed: Now this is a store that I love to shop at. It is not very big, but you find everything there. You can ask any person on the floor for anything and you would have that item in your hands within 2 minutes. They do not advertise any big discounts, but when you see the bill the discounts are very much there. Despite being as busy as any other store, you hardly spend any time in the queue. There is no show off, no jarring music, no lost employees, and no display of discounts that do not show up in the bill. Just plain simple customer service supported by the knowledge of the products being sold.

I seriously hope that as the retail space matures, organizations would look at educating their sales force about the products and the customers. Eventually, when there are stores everywhere, selling the same products at more or less the same price, customer service is what is going to dictate where the customers park themselves.

Hyperventilating In Bangalore's Hypermarkets

Deepti Lamba — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:25:47 EDT

If you live in or anywhere near Koramangala in Bangalore, then the mushrooming of various grocery stores and malls must have given you plenty of choice and taken away many reasons to venture into the city.

There are plenty to choose from and most are placed at convenient spots. However there are differences in all these malls that effect the shopping experience and should be taken into account.

The Oasis Mall: The Oasis Mall on the Inner Ring Road may look spectacular from outside but there are glitches that are irksome. The parking structure has sharp turns. Before turning into any level one has to reverse, take a smaller angle and then turn. The parking is a nightmare, requiring personal floor attendants to help the cars to pull out. Obviously the owners of the mall are well aware of the problem since each floor has at least six people to help cars pull out.

The hyper grocery store, Spar, has one tiny little elevator to take the trolley and family back to the right parking level. Those who don't want to wait for the elevator find themselves walking down the parking ramp with cars honking behind them.

It is unsafe and even though the hypermarket provides employees to take the stuff to the car but hey, best keep your fingers crossed that the car honking behind you and that heavy cart of yours have good brakes.

Most people who revisit the store generally park right at the Hypermarket level to avoid this inconvenience.

Above the hypermarket, there is an area for kids to play in and the food court. Prices are reasonable and most families have a good time there.

Below Spar, there is Lifestyle, the upmarket departmental store. Its a tinier version of the original one near the Stadium. It is a pleasure to be there, as usual, without bumping into people. Suffice to say its an upper class mall where you won't get the crowd you might see at the Garuda Mall.

Total Mall- There are two Total Malls near Koramangala. One is at Madiwala and the other is on Sarjapur Road. The grocery section of Total is good, the meat section awesome - fresh meat, fish and hygienic presentation. The butchers in the Madiwala Post Total are perfectionists. They also have an impressive liquor section, with a variety of local and imported wines, whiskeys, and beers.

Total Mall's clothes and toy sections are dirt cheap and very Wal-mart in their appearance. I generally buy sarees and salwars for the 'help' from Total.

There are a few other independent stores in both the malls. The Madiwala Total also has a McDonald's, their food court is awesome with a wide selection of food- ranging from Thai, continental, Indian, Chinese etc.

The Total Mall on Sarjapur Road is similar to the other, but it also sells Aquariums and live Fish. I, however, won't recommend buying Live Fish from that Mall since the public is known to net them, knock on the glass and the employee responsible for that section is too scared to tell people to look but not touch. His knowledge of tropical and cold water fish is zilch. Its best to buy fish from proper Aquarium shops, like Gulmarg in Koramangala or Wet Pets on Infantry Road.

Star: Star is a Tata venture and very similar to Total Mall except it has more variety in terms of grocery. Apart from regular dog food, they stock Whiskas that my cats love. One gets Vanilla Coke over there and unlike Total Mall, they keep curd and yoghurt. Their cheese selection is better than that of Total Mall and so is the fresh produce. They do not have a liquor section, but then again, the liquor section in Spar sucks.

The toys selection is better than that of Total but the clothes and home products are the same quality - cheap in both price and quality.

The meat and fish counter is as good as Total's but due to the perpetual crowd the butchers are not able to provide personal attention.

Forum Mall: Next to Star is Forum with a grocery store in it. Since the mega grocery stores are next to it, I've stopped visiting the new one (More) that took over the previous Fabmall grocery store.

Big Bazaar: Big Bazaar is always full of people despite the prices and quality of products being pretty much the same as the other hypermarkets. Big Bazaar lacks the finish of Total Mall, Star and Spar and while to some people that is of no consequence, I would rather shop for my groceries in relative comfort, a congenial environment and fast cash counters.

Apart from these big hypermarkets, Koramangala and HSR Layout have regular stores such as Reliance Fresh, Namdhari, FabMall (More), Spencer's etc., and of course the regular mom's and pop's stores - which will never go away.

Despite all these grocery stores I was pretty excited when Nilgiris opened up in HSR Layout, since I love the store's white butter, milk and curd. Also, they keep all the Thai pastes and other Chinese sauces that one has to otherwise hunt around in Bangalore.

Their produce section is very small obviously since people prefer to buy their veggies from Namdhari.

Time and again I have seen couples poring over their bills outside Hyper Markets. Well, in a mom's and pop's store one would buy only the essentials but in these hypermarkets we all get carried away and buy all sorts of relevant palette titillating expensive stuff.

Grocery shopping has now become an outing on par with going to the other temples of consumerism for Bangaloreans;)