Dr Teja watched his colleagues in agitated discussion. Their intense economics was far removed from Teja's poetic life. Yet he could not help admiring how serious they all sounded. The Waltair Theatre Company was Teja's nest, nay cocoon, where he spent his life. Today, it had become The Waltair Center for Performing Arts (WCPA) as they had now built their own covetable theatre. Today, it did not have to wait for dates from other theaters to perform. It had its own stage. WCPA was the creation of Ammini Eappen and her grand aunt Omanna Eappen. This is how it happened. Ammini had been all of 21 when she met Hugh Caldwell on a cruise, fell in love, married him in Australia and before long separated from him as well because Ammini got seriously involved in street theatre in Sydney and wanted to study theatre in the US. After an intense study and practice in the US, Ammini returned to Mumbai where she invested her soul deeper into the stage. Bitten by the theatre bug and banished from her parental home in Kozhikode, Ammini was rediscovered by aunt Omanna when Ammini lay ill with typhoid in a ramshackle hospital in Kurla, Mumbai, with not enough to pay for medical care.Thereon the entire story of her life was rewritten with structure. Aunt Omanna lived in Vizag, slaving over a thankless research on bacterial pathogenesis. It was rather absurd as the lady had spent 22 years of her youth chasing microbes and their ilk and had lost touch with reality until news filtered to her from deliberate gossip flowing from her brother's illom (ancestral home) in Kozhikode, about the dying Ammini, whom she salvaged or rescued.Aunt Omanna had a four-acre plot of land, and over thin arrowroot gruel that she was spooning into Ammini's mouth, she said she had no idea what to do with it. Ammini told her about theatre. Aunt Omanna's bacteria were laid to rest, and together with Ammini, she set up The Waltair Theatre Company. As Ammini soared sky high producing plays and acting in them as well, Aunt Omanna's paper got published and together they began to shovel in good quantities of money into their savings accounts.In 2010 (18 years later), they pooled in every paisa of their savings (including the money AO got for her thesis) and set up WCPA.Now they were sitting on a real investment — land and building together valued at Rs 2 crore — but without much idea about how to turn it into a profitable business. Ammini did not have a repertory group. She already had a decent reputation in Indian theatre having performed with several groups. She knew the right talent set. She had the theatre. Vizag was hungry for culture and had the right pace for enjoying good theatre. She needed people to buy tickets at a good price so that she could pay full-time actors to perform well. Or should she keep rates low, focus on good theatre, and have many shows to pay for the actors? The classical ‘volumes or value' dilemma. Question was: were there enough people in Vizag for multiple shows? Aunt Omanna's answer was terrible: "If you investigate how L. monocytogenes manage to survive and exploit the environment present in foods...." Ammini got the drift. Many questions flooded her head: how must she price the tickets? How were audiences composed and what were their expectations from entertainment? Mercifully for her, Bali Kashyap, a good friend and a stage actor with a keen sense for business, decided to sort out the answers with her.Bali drew a line on the number of people she would hire: the theatre director, the production manager, and the box office manager who would also double in as facility in-charge. Ammini could not afford too many people, not now, not ever. Theatre drank money. All three were people with whom she had worked closely over the past 17-18 years in theatre; people she had developed deep respect for and trust in.That was how Dr Teja Lahiri was sitting there, face in cupped palms, elbows resting on the back of a chair, listening to the intense debate going on before him.WCPA's personality had been recast. Earlier, not having their own stage meant inconsistent visibility, as also large gaps in public appearance as they waited to get dates from other theatres. This also meant a break in earning, which meant that people in the repertory group had to seek employment elsewhere to make a living. This made theatre secondary in their lives — not a good idea for a repertory theatre group for which its actors were a key result area. Earlier, they would have to adapt their productions to different kinds of stages — expensive, time consuming and pointless exertions. Now they could invite other theatre groups (that use a similar stage) as well. Having your own performance area helped professionalise theatre — an important aspect of bringing quality to stagecraft.Neither Ammini nor Aunt Omanna had a business background. Their calling card was their love of theatre. And like so many people who love to ‘do' things, they did what they thought best — except now they sat in the atrium tossing questions and answers. They had wanted to create a repertory theatre. They created it. But it came with an appetite for revenues. The disturbing word ‘revenues' was thanks to Thomas Kodipalli, production manager, who also brought up the pricing issue. So while their eyes were gently touching every corner and direction of the new property, allotting it a function and role, saying that will be a lovely little reading room with quaint chairs, this will be a cafeteria, out there will be an alcove for script writers... Thomas said, "And what are you expecting the monthly upkeep cost to be?"break-page-breakBishen Dagar, the box office and facility-in-charge, had done a rough list and gave a figure of Rs 2.5 lakh per month. Sensing Ammini's question, Thomas said, "I have heard of something called break-even point; it is an amazing approach to knowing the point below which you are heading for the cleaners." Then they all took turns defining it, interpreting it. Bishen said, "Okay, so let's start at the very beginning. Ticket prices... we must charge Rs 300 a piece...."It was at this point that Dr Teja stopped rocking himself, as Ammini's voice rang out, "Oh no! How can we?! Other theatres in the city charge Rs 75. Theatre, you see, is seen as the poor man's entertainment in India."When the truth is quite dramatically different, thought Dr T. Reaching for his laptop on the floor, he flipped it open, activated his Photon, peeped into his GTalk window, found his intellectual guru Partha Pandey online, clicked him open and asked, "Bandhu! Why this perception that theatre is poor man's fare?" Partha Pandey (MR expert): As always, in India everything is context sensitive. So ‘poor man's fare' gains its definition from theatre's roots in traditional forms, which were folksy and easily accessible to all. The Ramayan (Ramlila) and Mahabharat first recognised plays. So did Bhavai from Gujarat, Jatra from Bengal, and Swang from UP. Then there is nautanki, tamasha, puppet theatre, Indian street theatre.... For the elite with western education, their references come from Roman and Greek dramas and operas.Away from his GTalk window, Ammini was continuing to dig in her heels, in deference to which Thomas had come down to Rs 250. Thomas: Times have changed, Ammini, rather the consumer has changed. The expectations from theatre and what we want to deliver cannot be labelled at Rs 65!Bishen: I would say even Rs 250 is too little. Let us look at what it will cost us to run this 200-seat theatre — keeping the lights on, the phones working, the website up and running, maintenance, and the security — each day is about Rs 9,000 a day. That is Rs 2.7 lakh per month. Rough incomes from renting the theatre for four weekends a month is Rs 1.2 lakh. That leaves us to worry about a deficit of Rs 1.5 lakh — which has to be made up through rentals for rehearsals, talks, product launches, seminars, discussions, etc. But these revenue streams necessitate that you indulge in marketing....Aunt Omanna: Mango Grove (where WCPA is located) is partially elite. So there will be takers for Rs 350 — this is true of the whole of Vizag, too, because we are talking 200 tickets, not 2,000! But there are also buyers for Rs 250 in Mango. Both price points can deliver a full house. But the two price points deliver a different theatre experience. Which is the right theatre experience to deliver, is the question. Ammini: While I want to stay with 65-75, yet, how different is the Rs 350 from the Rs 250 experience? I assume you are benchmarking the cinema theatre experience? Therefore, what is the experience that a live play theatre goer would seek as against a movie goer? Aunt Omanna: Mini, first of all, we need to dissect your ‘others charge Rs 60-75' theory. Raaga, Manishan, Naatyakala charge 75 and they hire out the theatre for Rs 2,500 a day. But they do only language theatre. As opposed to us, who will do only English theatre and the audience is very different, plus... it's a far smaller market than the language theatre's! Given Mango Grove, we are looking at a discerning, quality-conscious, English language consumer. So, the differences are huge, Mini! Bishen: I am not sure that we must think about high price, low price and all that now. First of all, serious theatre itself is a gamble. As long as we were wandering minstrels it was okay — we produced, acted and moved our caravan to a different city. Now we have a fixture, which has to be looked after and must come to stand for excellent theatre. Then again, what is the attitude to entertainment in Vizag?Movies, malls and McDonald's are also entertainment. So your Rs 250 competes with Rs 30 for a McChicken... do you see them paying Rs 250 for a play, although I believe that the audience for theatre come with a natural attitude for premium pricing?Bali: I have some concerns too — not problems — I just want us to have answers. Theatre is core to Indian culture so I don't see a roadblock there. And I believe the theatre goer is real. He is not trading a play for a McChicken. But is there a pronounced demand for quality theatre as we understand it? So should we be doing regular theatre first and then step up to investing in a repertory group? I feel the pricing will be defined by answers to all this.Thomas: How important is a repertory group to a theatre in this country that has barely experienced professional theatre? A repertory group is the raw ingredient required for regular theater with a consistent quality. Do theatre goers recognise this? Be it Vizag or Versova... what is the appreciation for quality theatre and how big is your market? Unless the theatre goers have an appreciation for this, they will not be willing to pay extra for the performances. Ammini: Okay, so the alternative to a repertory group is importing productions, but they will not have consistence in terms of theme, language, cultural fit and so on. Aunt Omanna: But in a globalised, flat world, why are we cribbing about this? Isn't this part of being globalised? What the hell are you doing eating McChicken and Pepperoni Pizza anyway sitting in Vizag? That is not even on the border of your culture! Thomas: But the bigger question here is: is theatre a buyer's market or a seller's market in Vizag? Because, if it is a seller's market, the tickets can be Rs 450, too, in a place like Mango Grove. This will now begin to exclude all Rs 250 folks and the quality of the theatre will have to cater to the Rs 450 market. Bishen: Theatre is not a buyer's market — challenge this please! The seller decides what to sell and the buyer has to acquiesce! Hence, seller determines pricing too... Thomas: Because the demand for theatre is so huge (in certain societies, economies and geographies), it is a seller's market. There was a time when people paid anything for an Alyque Padamasee or a Gerson D'Cunha play! Then came groups like Motley, and others. But the supply isn't there nor enough theatres to stage productions! So WCPA with a good play plus a good production plus a good venue is poised to be a winner! We are in a seller's market! Ammini: Are we jumping the gun talking pricing before quality? The need is for good theatre. Let us first give them the experience of good theatre, then they will be willing to pay for it.Thomas: But that's the point. To get good theatre, you need quality productions, quality actors, good sound, light, rehearsal areas, great seating... all of it goes into the creation of a comfortable and memorable experience. And better gate pricing helps deliver all this.Bishen: Local theatre has seen minimal improvement because there is no money in it. The commitment that theatre demands is single-pointed. Quality theatre experience needs intense devotion to rehearsals. The earnings are meagre, time for rehearsals will be replaced by side jobs to earn more... back to pricing, then!Ammini: True, we need commitment from actors and it does cost to train as an actor. Recognised theatre schools don't come cheap. But my point is that if you raise prices without super performances to back them, there will be no audience.Aunt Omanna: No, Mini, a lot has changed and we must rework our expectations sensibly. One, the consumer himself has changed. He lives in a virtual supermarket of choices, and demands that he be entertained. Two, the environment that caters to his demands has changed, too. break-page-breakCompetition for theatre isn't from theatre anymore. It is not just Raaga or Naatya, everything else is also fighting for the viewer's eyeballs. While you were building Waltair, the outside world changed! There is a thousand-fold increase in good television programming, access to movies has improved, live music performances, there is, oh dear, IPL! The real competition to entertainment now comes from weekend outings, gourmet dining and mall hanging.Today, for many, live performances are just a hazy memory. They have moved on to other forms of enjoyment, and may probably feel that the quality of theatre has reduced in light of other forms of entertainment. So, the theatre experience has to be really good to get them back. And, you must have ready access to theatre in the neighbourhood, say, within 4 km. Otherwise, it is too painful and you will opt out of it.Ammini: I wonder.... Theatre caters to a special kind of audience. And if you are a born theatre aficionado, 4 km is mere dancing distance away! What differentiates plays from movies? Tata Sky and DVDs make movie watching flexible but mess up the anticipation value!Thomas: So what has changed? The socio-economic fabric, the definition of ‘good', or the definition of recreation? Yet let's not forget that a PVR can charge Rs 250 for a movie that comes out of a can... and we fear taking it beyond Rs 75 for a live performance!Ammini: A play is a different experience, Thomas, I am not even sure you watch a play for entertainment! Live entertainment is a big part of Indian culture: a live performance by Sonu Nigam or SRK is prized. People pay huge amounts for it. Why this is so is difficult to tell. Maybe it has to do with the proximity it offers to cult heroes. Maybe it is the aura of the super stars. For example, the musical Bollywood dance extravaganza at Kingdom of Dreams, called Zangoora, is priced between Rs 750 and Rs 3,000 and is not considered high priced! Bali: I am keen to understand the mindset and behaviour of a movie goer and that of a play watcher. For example, an avid movie watcher, if he goes to a movie hall to watch Tanu Weds Manu (TWM), does not get tickets, he will buy in black. If that fails too, he will jump into an auto and go to another hall and watch any movie! No doubt he will come back another day and make sure he watches TWM, that loyalty won't change, but the ‘need to watch a movie' is a high one for him.Can we say this about a play goer? Bishen: If a theatre goer is unable to get tickets to Tumhari Amrita, he won't go to some other play. He will wait for Tumhari Amrita to come around again. Loyalty to theatre is very high because it is not about ‘getting entertained', it is about being stimulated in a specific manner.Bali: Correct. So, we are seeing two different kinds of people; two completely different behaviours. And from behaviours we get to demand types, needs from environment, from entertainment. Am I speaking your language now?Bishen: There is economics involved. For a movie hall, the key result area is bums on seat. If it is a 500-seat hall, and he gets 500 bums to take a seat each, he is happy. He doesn't care if some of the audience didn't like the film. In a theatre, the owner shoots for much more than bums on seats.Ammini: So, what are we charging for? For content or for packaging? On the other hand, what does the consumer pay for? For the experience also or the content only? Dr Teja: The answer lies in changing your belief that theatre is poor man's entertainment. Let the play unfold... it will call its audience!Classroom DiscussionIs the theatre consumer outside the defining shackles of conventional marketing parameters?casestudymeera(at)gmail(dot)com
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It is difficult to define ‘good theatre', which is central to the issue of pricing a live theatrical performance. There are other elements that come into play — if you will excuse the terrible pun — into the pricing matrix: the script, its relevance to the audience, the calibre of the performers, the music, effects and props, the nature of the theatre facility, the sound and light infrastructure, the theatre's location and the timing of the show. I can relate to the dilemma faced by Ammini and her aunt Omanna. I am trying to answer the same questions they face at The Waltair Center for the Performing Arts. Is theatre somehow a ‘superior' form of entertainment and should, therefore, be priced higher? Should theatre do all it can to bring down the cost of productions so that a wider swathe of society can enjoy it? Is there a way to package theatre so that a production becomes accessible to different audiences?I need to answer these questions because after 25 years of being in theatre, I am finally on the cusp of my dream — we (my husband Jagdish and I) have a theatre of our own that opened its doors in early-2011. Jagriti Theatre is a 200 seater in the quiet suburb of Whitefield in Bangalore. So, Ammini and Omanna are like our twins.For quality theatre to emerge, a repertory group is an essential accelerator: professional actors bring consistency to productions. Audiences like that. They know what to expect and are willing to pay for it. For a repertory theatre group to make an impact, the actors should take to theatre full time and professionalise their approach. To do this, they must earn enough from theatre. Ergo? Everyone has to raise the bar, including the paying audience. From an audience (consumer) perspective, what is the right price to pay for a play? I wish we were a biscuit producing factory. I'd have the answer pat: don't change anything, just bring down the packaging size for rural consumers, so that they can afford to buy two biscuits at a time at a lower price than the 14 biscuit-pack; supersize the packaging for urban consumers with fat wallets so that they don't face the problem of going out to buy the biscuits repeatedly. And the problem of pricing is solved — a real piece of biscuit. Fortunately for biscuits, packaging does not make all that much of a difference. This is not so with theatre. Packaging plays a role in the pricing, the quality of the actors does and so does the quality of the director. But the bigger problem continues to be the definition of quality theatre. I have been to performances where I dozed off but the cast got a standing ovation. And I have been to performances where I was deeply moved, but I had just a dozen other people in the audience with me. And critics panned the play. Yes, even Thespis would agree, theatre is slippery and quality theatre is subjective. We have a repertory theatre company called the Artistes' Repertory Theatre (ART), which has 75 productions under its belt. And now ART has the platform to stage its plays with regularity at Jagriti. But a repertory group like ART needs to have full-time actors who are paid just compensation for their effort and talent. It is not possible for actors to work in a BPO by night and rehearse during the day for a month, then stage the production and make just about enough to pay for the taxi fare back home. Stage actors need to be paid like anybody else. They need to make enough to be able to afford a course at a drama school, hone their skills and turn acting from a passion to a profession. I must confess that a self-sufficient, independent repertory group is a dream at the moment; perhaps an even bigger one than having a theatre of our own. It certainly appears to be a more daunting dream. But its outcome will have far reaching effects on the business and quality of theatre in India.When theatre gets professionalised, youngsters will begin to consider it as a career option. More talent will be infused into theatre. Audiences will be assured it is theatre they are consuming and not an embarrassing charade. More people will be encouraged to set up theatres in their communities because audiences will be willing to pay — and come to think of it, will have one more alternative to IPL!What are the answers that Jagriti has for the business end of theatre? We have figured out the packaging conundrum. We are planning to package 6-7 plays in a Jagriti Season. You can buy tickets for the entire season up ahead (there, we supersized); and if you wish, you can buy tickets for a single show (well, in a manner we downsized). But, crucial to the success of the strategy is consistency. This, of course, brings us back to the concept of a repertory group that introduces consistency and makes everything else possible. Exeunt, stage left.Arundhati Raja has over 30 years experience in theatre, and is founder and artistic director of Jagriti, a centre for performance, in Whitefield, Bangalore
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Like all startups, growing up pangs are clearly visible at Artemis. The initial eight-year phase was consumed by growth and the startup team consisting of Madhur, Atul, Rassal, Harish and others seem to have been comfortable working through the issues without focus on structure and other required levers that are an imperative to scale and complexity. The case throws up many issues: structure, decision-making styles, fairness and issues around transparency. These are very typical of organisations at certain tenure and scale. The current situation offers Madhur and team a chance to re-look at operations to ensure critical organisational processes are geared to manage future growth. Else, they are bound to flip-flop along the way. The first question that needs to be understood is, how come Madhur gets to know the real issue of financial misdemeanour at the last stage. Why has Harish not discussed this with Madhur to ensure proper governance? Using organisational re-design as a means to message poor performance is poor management. How come Harish took so much time to cite the real cause? What happened to mutual trust and confidence? If it is to do with financial mismanagement, then it does not have to go through all these layers of confusion and chaos. The decision making is simple and straightforward and asking Atul to go is, in fact, good for the organisation and its culture. But what happened in the process makes Artemis very vulnerable to employee perception of fairness and other related interpersonal issues. The other important area that needs consideration is the role of HR and how to effectively leverage the capability of that function. It is understandable that managers are always under pressure to perform and ensure task completion, but the difference between being effective and ineffective lies in the ability to draw upon skills of other colleagues to ensure focus on all matters. Rassal’s travel is no excuse to not involve him. And what about seeking Madhur’s opinion when Harish took the call to change the structure? It is sad to note that Madhur also gets to know of Atul’s role change through an e-mail! And if hiring Ashwin is to do with a larger strategy of forming a JV with Gevore, it seems to be submerged under many layers of Artemis’s decision-making styles. And when Rassal points out the conflict of interest, Harish’s remark “these things happen in business” should make Rassal stand up and think about Harish’s outlook to ethics. Madhur and Rassal also need to investigate deep into the roundabout views of Harish on Atul till he finally states it to be a case of financial fraud. When considering factors that influence a firm’s success, topics like strategy, technology, markets and leadership get significant managerial attention. But the important factor of organisational design — the accountability system that defines rights, roles, responsibilities is often left to evolve naturally without conscious planning and thought. This is clearly the case at Artemis with such a casual approach by Harish. Structuring is a critical area that requires a lot of deliberation and involvement of all key stakeholders. What is worse is that Artemis is using organisational design as a means to oust someone. Structure is not fossils like coral reef that can be used by people in power. Madhur should take note of this and make necessary changes in the roles and responsibility matrix regarding organisational design responsibility. HR should own this area and Rassal and his team should use this case as an example to set things right. Last, it is important for practitioners of management to know and understand that human interactive networks are a lot dependent on organisation structure as much as they are on informal relationships. It facilitates the flow of information in an organisation and that directly impacts the culture. Strategy, structure, culture flow need to be appreciated so as to build organisations that withstand human errors of judgement and individual egos. Structure is a critical component of corporate governance and sooner Madhur and the founding team realises that, the better for the future of Artemis. There are many levers to ensure and sustain organisational success. As Artemis grows in size and scale and complexity overpowers people into chaos, the current situation is a great starting point to make necessary changes. The writer was till recently Executive VP & Global Head of HR at EXL Service (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 20-10-2014)
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Dr Tara Chaitanya was stunned to see the installation engineer walk out of her clinic casually. After much drama — and four week’s delay — the AA-SW13, a top-of-the-line ultrasound machine, had been installed. But uniquely, when she tried to fiddle with its keys, the machine had failed to respond! Tara, who had to deal with so many problems during the purchase of the AA-SW13 from Company A, had been alarmed. This had been a huge purchase, made with her life’s savings and her husband’s...Why were the keys not responding? What else was going to fail? But Rasesh, the installation engineer, had pressed a few keys and remarked: “Just press two or three times, it will be all right, slowly-slowly...” And when a stunned Tara had protested that it was not normal, Rasesh had shut shop saying, “My job was to unbox the machine and set it up. I have done it. You please call the company and log in a complaint...” All Tara could do was refuse to sign his installation report.Tara called Company A’s Awasthi, the regional sales head who had sold her the machine, and told him stiffly how shocked she was. Awasthi tried to placate her, saying: “These things happen. Keep using, over a few days the machine will settle down....”That same refrain! “What do you mean settle down,” she asked. I have unboxed similar machines in the past, they never behaved like this! I am not using a whimsical machine! The AA-SW13 is a healthcare device, not a plaything. I don’t buy this ‘settling in’ logic! There is clearly a malfunction, please come and fix this!” She waited for a day, and a week, then a month. Her attention now shifted from her patients to the machine and its whims. Press the keys gingerly... look at the screen, did keys respond? No?... This was not how the machine was meant to work!Company A did not jump to attention and Tara kept calling Awasthi asking him to change the keyboard. Yet Company A kept stonewalling, call after call. Till one day another service engineer Paul Anand landed up for a probe calibration. Young, bright and just out of college, he immediately acknowledged the problem. Testing the keyboard, he agreed that several keys were unresponsive. Thereupon Paul called the call centre and ordered a replacement. And within seconds, Tara even got a confirmation SMS! And sure enough in two days, the new keyboard arrived. The simplicity with which the problem was fixed astounded her. Paul had called the call centre, not his boss, and ordered replacement with confidence. It took him 20 minutes to open the machine cover, unplug the old keyboard from its connector, replace it with the new one, and screw back the cover. Dr Tara: Why was your colleague unwilling to admit there was a problem? Paul: Just different people, I guess. (Then dropping his voice) Please don’t quote me, but sometimes engineers do not withdraw spares since they are appraised and evaluated on how low their spares consumption is! That’s also the reason my boss would not have supported me if I had called him for the new keyboard. But I made the call directly to the call centre. That call from a field service engineer cannot be buried...”Tara was further stunned. Company A’s service-ability was clearly person-specific! She had been compromised in order to aid someone’s appraisal! Company A prided in being a world-class organisation, but its service team could tweak the system to ignore her pending service calls, and even her refusal to sign off on installation closure, which were less important than the value of spares withdrawn? The scales fell from her eyes. Anyway, the AA-SW13 was now working fine and her practice was back to its pleasant hum. A year later, Awasthi asked to meet Tara to present to her why she should consider upgrading to the new model, AB-SW15. He chased her, left numerous messages... This was the same man who had absented himself when she was in difficulty. But Awasthi was a salesperson and knew where to mine his commissions. He followed up repeatedly to tell her about the special offer: Company A will take back the AA-SW13 at nearly 40 per cent of the cost of the SW15. He hard sold that the SW15 featured not only a new software version and a faster processor but also boasted of a new feature, cavito-sonometry. Tara had been hearing of cavito-sonometry — Company A had been drumming up its benefits for over six months at every conference. The new feature will be a good addition, she thought, a scanning modality for the future.... She was familiar with the series too and some leading specialists had recently upgraded to this model. Tara accepted the offer. And so the premium SW15 was ordered. Of course, it arrived late yet again! And with a fresh bag of problems! Unbelievable! This time the keyboard worked fine — but the touchscreen did not. The touchscreen, which was designed for the doctor to mark points and select areas on the image for various measurements, was now mere cosmetic. But this time, there no Paul who had left for higher studies. Another young service engineer, Aman Yadav, had taken Paul’s place. Tara again logged in her complaint, stating the touchscreen malfunction. Aman did not acknowledge the touchscreen as a problem. Even as he entered, he looked at the machine from afar and told Tara it was likely that her hands ‘got greasy through the day’ and touchscreens do not work if hands are unclean. His tone was offensive.He hadn’t even tested the screen himself! And what was that about greasy hands? She had been working on touchscreen machines for years at her previous jobs, including the SW13! This man hadn’t even inspected the screen, let alone try it. And the next thing she knew, he was leaving. Tara was beginning to find all this surreal. Just then, her husband Shiv called to ask, “Did he fix it? What did he say.” He was worried. After all, they had just coughed up another Rs 25 lakh to upgrade! “Shiv, something is weird. The touchscreen is clearly not working and I have used these machines before, but this new service engineer they sent has come up with an absurd verdict!” And she narrated it to him.Shiv: Arre, but you use touchscreens all the time, your Nokia touch phone, your iPad... Dr Tara: I have been thinking. That man’s response was based not on reason but on conditioning. He spoke to me like he would to a woman in his environment, an unequal. Shiv: Then he shouldn’t be allowed to get away, whether he’s showing his incompetence, or poor attitude. Dr Tara: I am very angry. This is a top drawer machine manufactured by a Fortune 500 company. That automatically comes built with values, and must assure me right attitude and right approach. So, where does this guy come in? Oh, damn! Shiv: Perhaps you are right. He may be from a place where women are not seen in positions of decision-making and control. Hence, he lacked the script to speak with reverence. But... that does not exonerate him. So, he will learn on the job, Tara! I tell you this time and again, don’t be overwhelmed by the situation, instead overwhelm it. Climb above his disdain and tell him where he gets off! Never mind the machine.Sadly, Tara’s problems were only just resuming after a pause. For Tara, the machine was verily an extension of her brain. It ‘talked’ to her, performed the commands she ordered, while the patient merely lay down, placing total faith in the doctor, to find the problem areas…Tara was at a loss. In the absence of the touchscreen’s proper working, she was forced to use the keyboard, losing speed and precision. Presently a new quirk showed up (even as Tara promised herself never to touch Company A again and also warn all her colleagues). This one was a shocker. Read Analysis: Harish Natarajan And Dr Uma Nambiar break-page-breakTara used two printers to print out the high-resolution colour images of the scans (which she gave her patients as part of her report), and it had worked fine with the earlier AA-SW13 machine. Now, the printers had been connected with the AB-SW15 on which the printer driver software files had been successfully installed. But now, the new machine would intermittently not print the scan images. Patients had to be told to come the next day. They grew worried...But Aman blamed the printers, not the SW15. But the printers had worked fine with the SW13, then what was the problem? The printer was a DD790, manufactured by Dustin Dempa, a world class name in printers. DD’s service engineers checked and serviced the printers thoroughly and gave both printers a clean chit. If anything they felt that the new ultrasound machine was likely not rigged up properly to download its data to the printers, however Aman again stonewalled, “Ours is a world class machine, it is sought after by doctors and works successfully everywhere. Only at your place there is a problem. I suggest you buy a new printer,” he ended confidently.The printing roadblock was a huge hurdle for Tara. Patients could not take a scan image with their report; most patients had onward appointments with their gynecologists or their physicians. Tara was struggling to be fair and helpful to her patients. So she made a quick decision: she asked Dempa to send a new colour printer at a cost of Rs 25,000. But oh! No. The AB-SW15 continued to malfunction —the print command would invoke the printer, then midway printing, the print would begin to get distorted. Expensive photographic paper and even more expensive ink cartridges were wastefully consumed. Time was wasted as images had to be printed twice, three times, to complete a satisfactory report. Tara was confused.But by now, she sensed that the trouble lay with the SW15. Dempa’s service engineer, who waited while she tested the new printer on the SW15, was surprised that she was buying a new machine at all, when both her current printers were perfect, and, in fact, one was still within warranty period. Now, when the third printer too did not respond, Aman was again called. This time he asked her to move to a different brand of printers justifying that with some exotic explanation. So, here was Dr Tara Chaitanya, having just upgraded to an even more expensive AB-SW15 after trashing two printers, bought a new one also costing a small fortune and had gotten nowhere. She looked at Aman and saw there a novice, who knew nothing. He had no trouble-shooting skills, nay... he had no installation skills to begin with. He was using her as a guinea pig to try anything that came to mind. She could not help recalling Paul — same age, same skill set, but what a difference in their approach and effectiveness at problem resolution!Meanwhile, another situation had quietly arisen. Just eight days after the new machine had thrown her life out of gear, Tara noticed that the SW15 had started to hang or restart while the patient was being scanned. This is what happened. Mariam, a 25 year old suspected to have an ovarian cyst, was being scanned. Tara was explaining to her about the cyst that was likely not growing, but there were some darker areas on screen that needed to be investigated ... and then, the machine just froze, the probe stopped responding, the screen image disappeared…and all too suddenly, the machine restarted on its own after 20 seconds.This happened again with another patient. And again. Twice in the first week. Four times in the next week. Tara felt like she had been handpicked for disaster. Like the printing problem, this too was intermittent and clearly pointed to some problem with the machine’s hardware or software. Tara knew machines. She worked with them all the time. Something was not right. She called Awasthi, who promised to get more technical help to probe and address the issue.But her clinic was in trouble. All in all, work had become such an unusual challenge — caused not by lack of clientele, or funds, or lack of wisdom... but because of the most critical aspect of her practice — the ultrasound machine — which helped the patient’s body communicate with her. Tara was waking up to her worst fear: probable loss of patient confidence in her. It was no use telling the patient, “Sorry, this is the latest, best machine...” Especially if the machine was suddenly shutting down and the patient was reading the error message. How would they trust her? Tara was in her clinic one Saturday, the busiest day of the week, when the printers again malfunctioned. Patients had been waiting for two hours and more were landing up at their appointed times. Given how poorly the machine worked, the time per scan had risen significantly and she had begun to work weekends as well. She called Company A’s service line and Aman’s mobile several times. Her patients left, unhappy, but also confused. She moved some of them to Sunday morning in the hope that by then a solution would be found. Read Analysis: Harish Natarajan And Dr Uma NambiarShiv knew when enough was enough. He did not call Awasthi but left a most menacing message for him: You get an hour from now. If I do not see you at the clinic the AB-SW15 will be up on Pinterest with this caption: Don’t trust this machine. Tara only marvelled at why men worked best when treated like a beast. For, Aman and Awasthi arrived within the hour making poor excuses. Together they reinstalled all printer drivers, taking till midnight to do so. As Shiv kept vigil, Tara printed a few pending reports but with problems. Patients had to be texted in the middle of the night to please come on Monday, their Sunday appointments now rescheduled. Tara was totally unhappy with the way things were going on. This was never how she worked. But what ailed the SW15? To be continued...casestudymeera@gmail.com (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 02-06-2014)
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Poor Dr Tara Chaitanya! Murphy’s law appears to be working overtime in her case. There are several dimensions to the problem: 1) The overzealousness of the salesperson 2) The lack of post-sale customer engagement 3) The gender debate — was Tara being mistreated because she was a woman?Below these are the more serious ones that are being faced by the entire healthcare industry of which Tara is a part: 1) The inability of many hospitals to provide meaningful careers to bright doctors 2) The rush to buy the biggest, newest, most expensive machines — and the consequent pressure on utilisation, revenues and pay back 3) The paradox of wanting to do things the right way — but lacking the deep pockets and staying power 4) The entrepreneurship vs employment dilemmaThe Awasthi model salesperson prides himself at being able to sell snow to Eskimos. He will promise and do anything to make the sale — ignoring customer needs. At the core of the issue is how companies traditionally manage performance. Salespersons are seen as hunters — and are lauded for deals struck, customers acquired and the size of the kill! Companies are now beginning to recognise this folly and rewarding repeat business and customer engagement disproportionately. While not adequate, it’s a start.Similarly, service engineers should be rewarded for customer delight, equipment uptime, mean time to repair (MTTR) and mean time between failures (MTBF). To ensure that service engineers like Rasesh and Aman will not sacrifice customer satisfaction for better appraisals. In this instance, the company appears to have taken the easy path — of tracking revenues and costs. It is all about fixing the “what” of performance measurement before getting lost in the “how”.Then, there is accounting nomenclature — land and buildings are tagged as “assets” but spends on brand equity building and customer service are labelled “costs”! This has to change if companies want to send the right message.Companies like Nordstrom, a US-based fashion retailer, on the other hand, have done this very effectively. Nordstrom customers can return items without even producing receipts. This has, over the years, resulted in happy customers buying more! Ritz-Carlton allows employees a discretionary spend of $2,000 to redress guest complaints — and delight them. “Good service is all about surprise and delight,” says Diana Oreck, vice president for the company’s executive training facility. These simple actions reflect the attitude of the company, empower employees, model right behaviour and ensure that core values percolate to the last person. One admires Tara’s courage for plunging into entrepreneurship to serve her patients better. Yet, will she be able to face up to the challenge of her investments not paying off for several years? Many doctors start as crusaders but are soon faced with the inevitable challenge — compromise on your ideals, or go under! Is there a middle path — one that will help Tara build a sustainable business without compromising patient interest? I firmly believe that there is — by building long-term care partnerships with patients, families and communities.Tara needs to resist the urge to be everything for everyone — and do just what the patient needs. She should stick to what she does best, and build strong referral networks to direct patients to when their condition warrants different equipment or expertise.Best machines don’t always produce the best results. In fact, most experienced surgeons swear by techniques and tools they have developed comfort with. Most successful practices are those that operate within their means. They will upgrade their equipment when their practice demands it. Tara may like to think about this.The road to being an entrepreneur can be incredibly tough and arduous — it is only when one takes the plunge does one realise the full extent of the challenge. Yet, to quote Thomas Edison: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.” Tara has to draw inspiration from within — and have faith in her own ability. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 02-06-2014)
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This case clearly is a manifestation of some serious maladies in the manner some of the equipment makers function. Whereas a large part of the problems encountered by Dr Tara Chaitanya in the case study has been due to certain deficiencies in Company A’s outlook and focus on its after-sales service coupled with poor customer relationship management, there is also a problem of the doctors’ lack of understanding of different aspects of purchasing any equipment. Company A, a Fortune 500 company, clearly has a very good product in its stable in terms of technical superiority but is plagued by highly inefficient, uninterested, untrained and unmotivated after-sales workforce as evident throughout; which is at cross-purposes with an aggressive sales force. Such a contradiction in its customer relationship management will most likely backfire in not-too-distant future to spell doom for the company. It appears that Company A just wants to makes sales at any cost, a very short-term approach. Despite the fact that it enjoys a good market position today, it clearly lacks a strategy for efficient after sales or for technical and behavioural training of its employees. The technical workforce of the company (barring a few) is not only limited in its knowledge of the products but seems to also suffer from a ‘laisse faire’ attitude. These pose a serious threat to the company’s market positioning since trained a workforce is as much an asset of the company as its products are and they compliment the technically superior product. Servicing of clients by professional employees is the key to retaining loyal customers. The word-of-mouth publicity, which a satisfied client can give, is one thing, but the word of mouth of an angry Tara can destroy the reputation of the company in the very exclusive and elite client base of specialist doctors. Each equipment in healthcare is critical and any equipment posing the risk of inaccuracies related to diagnosis is unlikely to remain popular with doctors. It is imperative on the part of Company A to ensure that whether by way of technical nature or by effective servicing of complaints, this continuum of patient safety is maintained. Accuracy, rapid response, and patient safety features are also the cornerstones of the confidence of the doctor which translate into patient satisfaction and successful practice of a clinician. Given that Tara was already an aggrieved customer of SW13, one would have thought that Company A would have ensured its systems had the mechanism to identify Tara as a special client to be ‘handled with greatest care’ and spent extra effort on increasing her faith in the brand. None of this was evident in this case. In fact, the same team in the field continued to dispense very shabby treatment to a client who was already a dissatisfied customer. This, for any company, is a serious error, bordering on indifference. Company A really needs to do some soul searching and institute mechanisms to upgrade skills of the technical staff in addition to its gender sensitisation and behavioural/ attitudinal training. It must also look at changing the appraisal mechanisms so as to incorporate customer satisfaction as an important key result area than cost savings on spares! On the other side, doctors also need to educate themselves about purchase agreements and conditions of after-sales service and payments. It is important that the initial agreement must clearly define and include criteria for satisfactory installation, user training on the equipment and payment should be pegged to performance — both installation and satisfactory working of the machine. This clause ensures that the finance department of her outfit follows up the payment and identifies failures and pins it to the performance clause. Clinics and hospitals will certainly benefit by insisting on a penalty clause. Additionally, at the time of making a second purchase (or upgradation) was the best time to correct this mistake. Tara had an opportunity to insist on a performance clause and include downtime of equipment, loss of patient confidence and subsequent potential loss of clientele. The writer is special advisor to the Minister of Health, Djibouti. She has worked in India in diverse capacities across the industry as neurosurgeon and senior healthcare administrator(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 02-06-2014)
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Dr Tara Chaitanya’s unfortunate experience during the purchase of an expensive medical device is by no means an isolated episode. She has clarity in terms of specifications, functionality and price of the device and high expectations regarding ethical and professional performance. The cost effectiveness of the ultrasound equipment is critical to the viability of Tara’s investment and practice. That she is sensitive to gender-related disadvantages to women in India that impede access to affordable healthcare and plans subsidised prices for them is noteworthy.There is an apparent disconnect between a motivated and target-driven senior management and mid-level and field staff who exhibit delayed responses and poor preparation for meetings. There was marked improvement in behaviour when Company A’s sales staff interacted with Shiv, Tara’s husband, revealing gender bias. This unfortunate and widely prevalent attitude is due to cultural conditioning in the male-dominated Indian society where professionally competent women are consistently at a disadvantage.Company A’s management approach is lacking in many ways: a) Information was highly compartmentalised between the technical team and the sales staff leading to lack of a holistic picture of available options for Tara. b) The company did not inform Tara regarding delays at Customs, which was mandatory. c) Site assessment and determining the cost of any modifications required was not addressed in multiple meetings. The suggestion from the installation engineer to repeatedly press keys to make the device function reflects another typical Indian mindset of jugaad in the absence of reliable quality parameters. Does the high-end Company A’s management know about this?The Indian medical electronics industry, currently valued at $1 billion, has been growing at an average of 17 per cent for the past couple of years and is expected to grow to nearly $6.5 billion in size by 2020. “There are so many orders. What all will I remember” is a telling comment from Company A’s Akhilesh Awasthi, indicating the attitude of a sellers’ market.To reduce the pain of purchasing expensive medical devices, doctors like Tara can take some steps: The buyer needs to have a thorough knowledge of the functions and exact specifications required. The specifications should be categorised as vital, essential and desirable so that price-functionality payoffs can be easily decided. Feedback regarding performance and the after sales service provided is essential.Buyers should be armed with a format listing out every parameter that can impact decision-making, including price, insurance, transportation, taxes, customs duties, AMC (annual maintenance contract) with and without spare parts, possibility and incentives for upgradation, annual and lifecycle operating costs to enable realistic comparisons.While one expects that the vendor will be diligent about site evaluation, but based on Company A’s conduct, it is best for buyers to obtain information about regulatory site requirements — spatial, electric, temperature, humidity, etc.One valuable advice to doctors like Tara: Form a consortium for purchase of medical devices. This pools expertise and enables volume discounts like centralised purchase in hospital chains.Tara and Shiv should also have negotiated so that the final instalment of 10 per cent is paid only after satisfactory functioning of the equipment for some weeks, thus removing jugaad while operating the equipment.As for gender bias, this will not go away for a very long time in India. Lady doctors can, in the interim, hire/ persuade a tough looking male to sit in on their purchase sessions, learn to talk turkey and develop a thick skin.Shocking, but one has to advise vendors to include gender acceptance in their training, as well as how to respond promptly to calls, be on time, go prepared for meetings, etc., by role playing sessions and simulations. Finally business success will demand that companies like A, B and C adopt process standards that will reduce buyer angst. Good luck, Tara! The writer is a medical doctor from AFMC with a PG in Hospital Administration. She is Dean, Faculty of Health & Allied Sciences and Director, Amity Institute of Hospital Administration(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 19-05-2014)
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Clearly there are two angles to the case study and both are valid: One, was Dr Tara Chaitanya treated differently by the sales team because she was a woman?Two, is there a dire need to dramatically improve the level of service orientation and responsiveness in healthcare sales force in general?Attitude and beliefs towards women and potential discrimination in behaviour is a problem across the world. Currently, in the healthcare industry, the number of women radiologists is much lower (less than 10 per cent) than the proportion of women who are in medical schools (40 per cent). The ratios have increased in the past decade, but are still dramatically lower than what we find the world over. One of the reasons cited for women not gravitating towards radiology is because it lacks direct patient contact. Tara comes across as a very dedicated radiologist, very knowledgeable in the field, and also someone who knows her mind very well, having made a set of deliberate choices. In my experience, so far, in collaborating with women radiologists, they tend to be quite assertive in their opinions and needs. When I was presented this case, I called a few of my close radiologist friends who are women and got their input. They mentioned that they had to learn to deal with vendors and invest significantly in preparation, more than their male colleagues, by speaking to several radiologists on the deal before meeting vendors. It is unfortunate that women have to work harder than men, but are paid less than them. This is the collective responsibility of society, policy, HR and the individual to address the issue. Tara could have asserted herself as a customer to the sales team in tone and in approach. If I had been in her shoes I would have negotiated harder and perhaps prepared more thoroughly. It is not to say that women are poor negotiators, though some studies have suggested that. Was Tara right in giving in and involving her husband than directly negotiating herself, perhaps with support from her husband in the background? In this day and age of “leaning in”, did she sufficiently lean in? What was more apparent in the case was the lack of coordination and poor communication between the senior and junior sales team members in companies A and B. If the lack of customer orientation was due to the fact that the customer was a woman, it shows that the companies need to invest more in training their sales teams, and maybe their own overall mindsets, and invest in soft skills training and better responsiveness. Several companies have invested in a training function but more needs to be done to ingrain training not just for features and product differentiators but also for developing the emotional quotient of the sales team. No company today can ignore the need for gender inclusive training. For example, Walmart, Home Depot, IBM, Microsoft, etc., invest upwards of $300 million each year in training their sales teams. In some B2B companies, the proportion is sometimes as high as 10 per cent of sales. In the healthcare industry, more needs to be done by way of training. A good sales person at the outset should have had a conversation with Tara on her overall needs and addressed it 360 degrees as a solution tailored for her. The big three of the industry form an oligopoly in the medical equipment industry and if they do not invest enough in training, relationship building and retention, they could potentially lose share to the newer entrants in the market who come completely gender-sensitised.On the basis of this case, there are three key takeaways:— Women need to invest more in preparation and in asserting their roles to demand, command respect— Sales teams and sales representatives should be trained in gender inclusion as well as soft skills such as listening better and understanding needs before addressing the customers— Companies mentioned in the case, such as A and B, need to improve communication and coordination within their sales teams As an industry, healthcare needs to serve ALL — men or women! The writer heads marketing, strategy and is the oncology business head for Philips Healthcare in India. The views expressed are hers and not representative of Philips(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 19-05-2014)
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Sriram Iyer was surprised to hear the introduction to the casually dressed Anil Guha. This was the Chief Operating Officer of Trix India! What unusual coincidences life presented. They were at a CII forum on ‘Customer service in the context of the 2000s’ and Guha was the guest speaker on customer systems and service efficiency. When the Q&A session began, Sriram promptly asked, “If a customer encounters a problem twice, what is the system you have to ensure the problem is flagged and thrown up for investigation at the brand level?”“That is an unusual question!” Guha replied, “At Trix, it will get lost in the statistics. The probability is 1 in many thousands; Trix has never had a problem getting repeated.”Sriram: Despite the fact that the same problem has occurred twice, your system rounds it off as ‘not significant’? It does not cease to be a problem. Does it not bother you from an R&D point of view?Guha: No point worrying about something insignificant, so won’t waste my time! ... Next?Sriram was not surprised anymore. This laid back attitude cut across the rank and file at Trix India; his experience had shown him that.Last year, his daughter Ursula received a Trix laptop as a gift from her cousins. One morning, less than two months later, she woke up to find the right side, outer side base plate was totally cracked. Teary eyed, she dragged her father into her room and showed it to him. Sriram was surprised but immediately took it to the Trix service centre (SC). The local manger said, “Yes, it is in warranty. But because it is an external damage it cannot be covered under warranty; You will have to pay Rs 7,000 for the hinge and the entire base plate, which will also need to be changed. Otherwise you cannot open it and if you do so the screen will also crack.” The warranty did say that it would not cover damage due to misuse. Ursula swore she had not dropped or banged the laptop. But her mother suggested she may have been careless. And poor Ursula was most disappointed. She had wept the whole day. Sriram left the laptop at the SC, accepting their verdict that the damage could not have happened without the user being careless. The laptop had to be repaired. But he said to the guy, ‘Be sure it is not the hinge that is at fault. I do not want this to recur.’ In a day, the SC called Sriram and said,“You are lucky the hinge is okay, we are going to change the base plate; your laptop will be ready in four days.” Based on this, the repair cost would be Rs 4,000, the SC guy said.Sriram gave them the go ahead. On Day 6, he called them up and asked, “Is it done? I am coming to Mango Street, I can pick it up.” But the laptop was not ready. The service engineer told him the part had not come. He suggested that Sriram wait for 3-4 days. Several days passed and on Day 11, Sriram went to the SC wanting to know what was going on. The engineer said, “This is a cosmetic part, we don’t carry inventory of these parts. They have to come from Singapore or Hong Kong.”Sriram: Then on what basis did you message me that the laptop was ready? This is a model you are selling currently in India! How long will it take? You give me a date, please! It is part of warranty and already two weeks are gone. We can’t use the laptop. But the service centre blamed the company and said, “We are the franchisees; we can’t do anything about policy.” Sriram then asked to speak to the manager. The manager was called. Sriram recognised him as he coming out of his cabin. This was the same guy he had come to for a problem with a Trix TV last year! When Gulab Rawal came up to him, both caught up in their mind their mutual recognition and discomfiture. “Oh, it’s you, Mr Iyer!”Sriram: Yes, we meet again! I do hope we are not going to see history repeat! But already the symptoms are identical! What is your policy on the matter of laptop parts? You are charging me Rs 4,000, despite being in warranty, on a false assumption that I damaged the laptop. I am paying, but now after telling me the laptop is serviced and ready for delivery, I come here and am told that ‘Oh, parts have to come from Hong Kong’. But nobody can tell me how long that will be? This is so slipshod!Rawal (embarrassed by the attention they were drawing from other customers): I need some time to get back to you. I will put it in the global tracking loop so that once recorded your need will be accessible to all service centres globally. I am sure the chain will access the part faster that way. Sriram’s colleagues at work were also involved in the case. Soon, another contact at Trix Global emerged, through one of his colleagues. This new person said, “Arre, yaar, you should have come to me. But now once you are registered in the global track system, I cannot do anything!”Sriram: What would you have done that these guys cannot?New Contact: I would have told you to register under the global warranty quota. Then, I would have shown it as an ‘outside’ repair, as if a foreigner had come on a two-day visit to India from Hong Kong, suffered a product breakdown, etc., That way, you would even get the service free! Did that mean they had the inventory? wondered Sriram, taken aback. He was slowly seeing the underbelly of Trix and its secret dual policy.After his experience with getting his Trix TV repaired last year, Sriram was not expecting much now from the laptop division. But he felt he must get the area sales manager involved if he must get his laptop back. He obtained the ASM’s number from the SC and called. The ASM informed him blandly that he was aware of Sriram’s case. Sriram: What is the wait time now? It’s already been so many days...No one seems to have an idea! I don’t expect this from Trix!ASM: Look, we are doing our best. If that is not good enough, you are free to go to consumer court!Sriram was taken aback by this unexpected assault. “How dare you talk to me like that?” he yelled, as others in the SC winced. “Of course, I will damn well go to consumer court! But you are not the brand, you are only a paid employee so you can lose your job for abusing the brand, bear in mind!”Others at the SC began to calm him. A furious Sriram walked out. Next morning, the SC manager called Sriram and put a date to when the part would come. Peace returned. The part did come exactly 27 days after they committed and finally the laptop was repaired. Ursula was delighted as Sriram placed the laptop on her table and opened it. Right before his eyes, the laptop cracked in the same spot, in the same pattern, same shape, while he was opening it!He got up and went straight to Mango Street. The manager was away, so a service engineer attended to him. “Give this in for repairs, sir,” he said. “The part will have to be ordered and it will take 27 days....” he rattled off in practised manner.Sriram threw a fit. “This is getting to be a joke. This laptop came from repairs this morning! You need to replace that laptop! ... baat karta hai... What nonsense! Where is the manager?”A fuming Sriram decided he was not going till he met the manager. After two hours, Rawal, the manager arrived. He shot off an e-mail to the head office saying, ‘This should be repaired free of cost’.Sriram: Please tell me, what is the story? Kahaani kya hai?Rawal: Kya bolegaa, sir! They don’t want to listen. We are the service people, we know design defect when we see it. But the company does not agree. It wants customers to pay. Kantaal aa gaya! (Am fed up).Sriram now began to prepare for war. He returned to his office, immensely annoyed over the lost time and the stupid inefficiency of companies that consumers believed in because of their global image. There was already an e-mail from Trix India. It said: The part cannot be replaced free of cost. You will have to pay Rs 7,000.Sriram replied: ‘If you think I am going to fund your experiments with faulty design, you have another think coming. Watch this space...!’But an automated system replied to him, ‘You have not agreed to the estimate. Please pick up your equipment and take it back.’Read Analysis by: Chandan Dang & Rajan Chhibba break-page-breakSriram went to the SC again. He walked right into an angry fight between the SC and another customer. Seeing Sriram, the man said, ‘After warranty I spent Rs 18,000. That computer has not worked for seven months!’ Everyone there was an aggrieved customer. When his turn came, the service manager said, “I am unable to help you. I did what I could. I made the request. I even told ASM to come and see the product problem. But woh nahi aayega... Company has a standard stance on this. They won’t budge.”Sriram: But there are two claims: one, refund of Rs 4,015 because the problem could not be corrected; two, this time the repair should be done free of cost because it is clearly a manufacturing defect or a design defect. I will now take this to the streets if I have to...Rawal: Karo, sir... I hope they see how wrong they are...Nothing happened for a week. Sriram drove to Trix’s office in the far suburbs. At the reception he asked to see the seniormost sales manager on the premises. The reception said if there was a service problem, I should meet the service manager. Back at the Mango Street SC, Sriram waited for 45 minutes, calling all levels of people but nobody came out to meet him. By now furious, Sriram began to shout. He had had enough. Other customers gathered around him and soon they were all sharing issues they had with Trix. The raised voices did not augur well for Trix. Out of nowhere, a slightly senior looking man in blazer emerged and taking Sriram to a corner, he shook his hand. Sriram realised this was the peace corps. So, he said, “What would you do in my place? What would you think of a company that avoids addressing the issue, whose service team is clueless, whose ASM tells you go file a suit in the consumer court...! What would you do? Slightly-Senior Man: You tell me. Sriram: Give it in writing that you won’t repair this!Just then, another man came up and showed the complaint to the senior man on his tablet. Sriram noticed two photos sent by the SC of both panels — the one that broke the first time and the one that broke the second time. And a comment from sales: One-off occurrence. Does not warrant leniency.’ Sriram read that and gagged. “Leniency? You owe it to me, dammit! How about respect?” Sriram was hollering by now. “Is there anybody here who takes responsibility for the brand?” And out emerged another even more senior-looking man. He was the assistant VP of the SC. Apologising as he sprinted towards the lobby area where Sriram was raving and ranting, the new man said, “Sorry, I was in a meeting, simply could not...”Sriram: In a meeting? I have dropped all my work and come here to save a Rs 40,000 laptop. But you don’t worry for a Rs 40,000 crore brand?!The assistant VP, Sumedh Chary, remembered Sriram so well. Sriram’s Trix TV, a wall-mounted model... the SC had taken it for repairs from his residence and as his luck would have it, the service engineer went and lost the bolts that held up the TV. And when Sriram asked, Trix’s SC asked him to pay Rs 6,000 for the bolts! And now Sriram recalled to Chary, “How do you expect me to have any faith in anything you say or do? The last time, your guy was acknowledging that he had lost them, yet you asked me to pay. Do you recall? And what was your plea? That your head office was not approving the cost. How was that my problem, Mr Chary? But you made it my problem!” But the repair itself was a nightmare, Sriram recalled. Four times in 15 weeks he had to take the TV back to the service shop. And even after four attempts, they were unable to fix it. Finally the engineer told him to get the repair done in ‘private’. Frustrated Sriram had dug out an old electric repair chap, Alam bhai, someone who used to repair his transistors and recorders 20 years ago. He fixed the TV for Rs 3,000, including installing in it an original Trix motherboard. But Trix did not replace the bolts!Chary chaffed at the memory and said, “Ok, let me give this my best shot. I need the MDs approval to get this done.” And sure enough, the next morning Sriram was told, “Ok, we will replace it free of cost.”But what about the Rs 4,000 he had paid the first time? Trix did not send a written reply, but a telephonic reply was given to him: That transaction is over. You have paid for it, and that cannot be refunded.’ Sriram pondered on the condition that India was in, where senior management of companies in which society placed great faith, rampantly abused right behaviour . The service staff was where the brand really fought hard to survive. He now recalled Madan Johri, the service engineer, who had said, “We had sent photos of the crack to the main office and told them that it was a design fault.”The front end was saying, Serve the Customer. The back end was saying, Damn the Customer. Madan explained: the moment you book a complaint, a copy of it goes to Trix India, to Trix APAC and to the HO. If anything has to be replaced free of cost, it needs to be approved by Trix India first. The chaps who say ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are tucked far away into the system and you cannot get access to them. The mindset was becoming clear: the Trix India system was not designed to service individual customers. Is customer service really a service, or is it a profit centre? Is it not a means to enhance a customer’s brand experience? Or is it a live R&D operation funded by the consumer? Given this, is Customer Service a service or a business opportunity? Read Analysis by: Chandan Dang & Rajan Chhibbacasestudymeera@gmail.com (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 05-05-2014)
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Trix is a victim of a deep malaise that strikes many durable product brands — the great IT-enabled service fallacy, which is often grounded by big data. Enterprises like Trix set up expensive IT systems mainly with the objective of standardising service response and improving response time. What is often achieved is a lot of live data, but the main use of the data is to drive “service” profits and not customer “happiness”. When Sriram reached Trix’s service centre, his complaint was promptly recorded as yet another statistic; the system checked the service response protocol that said any physical breakage is the customer’s fault and instructed that all such services will be “paid” even though the product was in warranty. It failed to recognise the repeated product failure and had no room for the front line service engineer’s assessment. The service model is clearly designed for maximising service revenue. The result: a very angry customer. What had Trix forgotten? That service is a front-end activity and not a back-end play. Service means responding to the customer through the four Ms — mood of the customer in the most recent context; materiality of customer beyond today’s billing; message to the customer regarding his need first and money commensurate with the actual cost. These would have applied in this case thus: Mood: When Sriram came the second time after the body had cracked right in front him while opening the laptop, the mood at best was “rage”. Rage at the laptop base cracking again and the fact that Trix had cheated by charging him during warranty. His second visit just could not be treated as another call or statistics. Given that the mood was clearly adverse, the dealing mechanism should have altered. Only the front end, represented by the service engineer, can assess and manage the mood. On the contrary, Trix’s IT driven service decision system had disempowered the front end’s ability to manage the “mood”. Materiality: From Trix’s point of view, the materiality lay in the Rs 4,000 it earned as revenue. The front-end team knew that Sriram was a multiple product user, so the client materiality or life-time value was far higher. The complaint should have got flagged as “save a customer”, which is the real material impact on Trix’s business. Message: Trix’s effective message to the customer was that its systems slowed response the first time round. The second time, it conveyed that its processes come first and then the consumer. It conveyed that the staff Sriram was dealing with had no real power to perform. The service engineer saying that “we agree that it’s a product problem but the Trix office is not listening” is very damaging. Money: Trix priced its service as ‘premium’ yet had no means to show it. Consumers respect a fair ‘profit’ but not profiteering. Trix was clearly into profiteering. Sriram should have been told that he was a valued client, but they couldn’t be sure if this was a product problem or a client fault. The customer may need to pay right now but if there was an iota of doubt that it was a product problem, even if the first one on their record, the amount would be refunded! It may be useful to mention that spare part pricing should not lose sight of the part cost versus the original equipment cost. In this case, the part cost was initially quoted as 30 per cent of the new machine cost, within warranty. One always wonders if there should be a discount on part costs during warranty repairs. After all, the aim is to ensure that Trix’s equipment keeps working for at least a year. Also, it seems that while strong IT systems are supposed to improve service response time, in this case, the laptop was non-functional for at least three months of the 12-month warranty period. Did Trix offer to extend the warranty? To start with, Trix should have offered to check if it was a technical fault instead of assuming client fault. Next, it should have got the front end to flag a regular Trix customer. It should have proactively kept the customer posted. When the second complaint came, it should have offered to either replace the machine or refund the first Rs 4,000. It did neither. Chances are that it lost more than a few thousand rupees. Given the circumstances, one can safely predict that Trix will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history if it fails to realise that its service is a fallacy and that it is destroying the brand. The writer is the MD, Intrim Business Associates, a global management consulting firm (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 05-05-2014)
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