How important is customer feedback?

During one of my weekend shopping, at a local retail store, I spotted a brand of wafer biscuits that I used to love during my childhood days. I was surprised to see that brand of wafers after such a long gap. I was in the assumption that the company was no more in existence. Out of my interest to give my children the happy experience of crunching delicious wafer biscuits, I bought 5 packs of 5 different flavours and took it home. To our disappointment,wefound that the wafers were not crisp. The product wrapper indicated that it was very much within the expiry date. I cut a sorry face in front of my children, to whom I had raised a high anticipation. I felt bad.

At moments like this, our normal tendency would be to stop buying that particular product again. But, something within me told me that I should not just leave it there, but take it to the notice of the manufacturer. So, I decided to write to them. Now that luckily most companies give a customer care hotline number or email id, it made it easy for me to key in an email to the company stating my experience.

Within just a day, I received a mail from them which read as under: “We are in receipt of your mail and noted the contents. We were sorry to learn that the wafer packs you purchased recently were not crisp. To help us to find the reason, please let us know the variety and packing of these packs and also when and from where (name of shop and place) you purchased them. We shall take remedial actions immediately. We sincerely thank you for writing to us.”

I was glad to see a positive response from them, so I send in the details they had requested. After a week, I received two packs of complimentary wafer biscuits along with a thank you card. This time, the wafer biscuits were truly good and it ended up as a delightful experience.

The idea behind me sharing this incident with you is to emphasize the fact that, “Good quality products and services in our country is not just the sellers responsibility, but also the buyers responsibility”. It is only through a good feedback mechanism can any product be improvised or the standards be maintained. Many a times, we brood over having bought an inferior quality product or getting a bad service. Does the experience feel good or bad? If it felt bad, what can we do to change the experience? Are we OK with inferior quality products and services in this country? If not, how are we going to bring about the change.We could either continue to brood that Indian quality goods are not in par with foreign goods, or we could take a proactive initiative to raise the quality of Indian products to global standards. The choice is ours. The initiative can be through our feedback. It is our social responsibility to give feedback with an intention to raise the standards of Indian products.

In some of the restaurants, we find a sign board stating that, “If you are happy with our service, tell others. If you are not happy about our service, tell us”. I just wish these hotels, truly mean their words. If they do, then it is really a good opportunity for them to raise their service standards. The companies that will survive in the future, are the companies that are sensitive to consumer feedbacks. If they are not sensitive or just ignore it, it just goes to say that they have started to dig their own grave.

A famous quote goes, “If you refuse to accept anything but the best, then most often you end up getting it.” This is the attitude with which we need to approach customer service. Demand for the best. Never settle for anything less. Don't buy inferior quality products because it is cheap. Let the manufacturer realise that people are willing to pay a better price for a better product. Soon, we will see the day, when Indians and Indian products are not considered inferior or cheap. “Made in India”, should be synonymous with high quality.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article  Dated July 2012

Let our Children pursue their Passion

Way back in 1960, a survey was done in America with a group of 1500 fresh college graduates who had taken up a new career. They were asked why they chose the particular career that they had chosen. They had 2 options.

V Option A:I chose this career for the money in it.

V Option B: I chose this career for I am passionate about it.

Out of the 1500, 1245 people (83%) chose option A and the balance 255 people (17%) chose option B. The same group of people were interviewed after 20 years and they found that out of the 1500 people, 101 people had attained the status of millionaires. The interesting part is that 100 of those millionaires were the ones who chose option B, during the survey in 1960 and only 1 who had chosen option A. The result of the survey was surprising. While people who aspired for money did not make it very big in life, the majority of the people who followed their passion, became millionaires. This is not irony, but the law of life. When you follow your passion, success comes to you naturally and money is just a by-product of our success. Whereas when your focus is in earning money, by doing a job you are not passionate about or not happy about, you end up doing an inferior job and never get the expected returns. Now that your children would have completed their Std X or Std XII board exams and are in the cross roads of choosing their higher education which will ultimately lead them to their career, I felt this would be the right time for me to share this thought. It is a crucial time in their life, when they have to make a right decision. Let the decision they make be the decision of their voluntary choice and not influenced by your opinion.

One of the major challenges of teenagers is that, it is at this age they are very confused in life and easily influenced by others. The best wecan do for them at this stage is to clarify their doubts and be willing to accept whatever decision they make. With a clear mind and the confidence that you will back them up, no matter how long it takes, our children would make the best choices that are suitable to them. As they grew up, from a toddler to a teenager, we would have invariably made a number of choices for them, saying that, “I know what is best for my child”, but this is not something we can take for granted. We need to take efforts to help them discover their passion. It is a matter of their life and so let the choice be theirs.

Movies like “3 Idiots” in Hindi and its Tamil remake “Nanban” goes on to reaffirm this idea, of following one's own passion. Still not every parent is convinced. They want their children to get into popular professions like Doctor, Engineer, IAS, Chartered Accountant etc. It is a matter of social status to them. Believe me, there is abundant opportunity available in every field, especially in a country like ours where the economy is steadfastly booming. There are so many new areas of interests such as a Radio jockey, TV anchor, fast food business, tour guide, beauty salon, costume designer, so on and so forth. The possibilities are endless. There is no job inferior or superior. It is our attitude towards it that makes it so. Many people have made it big by choosing the not much trodden path, because there is less competition there. A popular quote goes like this, “It is no shame to be a shoe maker, but it is a shame for a shoe maker to make bad shoes”. Being a class apart in whatever wedo, gives one the needed recognition and rewards. This can be achieved only when one is passionate about what he is doing. So, our advice to our children, should only be, “Strive to be the best in whatever you choose to do”. With this mind set our children would create wonders and certainly make us proud.

Happy Reading, 

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated June 2012

If found, please return to …

Assume you are walking on the road. You find a wallet on the ground. You pick it up and find that there is a lot of money, credit cards and many other valuable things.  What would you do?

·         Will you go and give it in the nearby police station?

·         Will you just keep it, thinking that you got lucky?

·         Will you put it back where it was, as you do not want to get into any unnecessary problems?

·         Will you try to locate the person, who has lost it?

Most of us would, opt for the last option i.e trying to find out to who it belongs to and return to him.

But now imagine if the wallet does not contain any information that helps you to trace, as to whom it belongs to, then nothing can be done about it. Whatever is lost is lost forever.   If there was a photo id card or some business cards in it, it would be probably easy to find who the wallet belongs to, so that we could call and inform the owner.  So, if there is a mechanism of, “if found, please return to” then the possibility of a person getting back what he/she lost, is much higher. Do you agree?

I learned this lesson, after an interesting incident that happened, about a year back. I had bought a new bike and not yet fitted a luggage box. My house and office are located quiet close by. In the evening when                       I returned home, from office, I looped my laptop bag in the side hand grip handle, near the back seat and rode home. On reaching home, I realised that my bag is lost. It had fallen off somewhere midway, due to some bump on the road.  I immediately rushed back on the same route, but I could not find it anywhere. I felt it was lost or stolen. The bag had my mini laptop worth 15K, Rs.25000/- cash and some other files. In a jiffy, I seemed to have lost it all.

My mind was in a dilemma. Should I complain to the police station? Can the police really help me? However with a faint hope, if someone finds it and gives it in the police station, they can return it to me,  I asked my staff to lodge a complaint in the nearby police station. After about 2 hours this incident happened, I got a phone call from a person, who asked me, “Have I lost a bag”. I anxiously replied, “Yes”. He said that he found it on the road. He picked it up and took it to his house. He then tried to trace, who it belongs to. There was no way he could find. Then he switched on my laptop. He opened my offline mail box and he saw my name and mobile number, in the “sent items” folder. So, he just guessed it must be the owner and called that number.

I felt really lucky. I then enquired the way to his house, went and got it and came back home with mouth filled with thanks and heart filled with joy.

There is a saying, “We do not value light until there is darkness”. The same is true, with our belongings. We do not realise the value of them until it is lost. The joy we get, when we find something that we have lost, is an immense experience.

As a school going kid, we kept losing our pencils, eraser, sharpener etc.  Even as a grown up adult, there are few things we are prone to lose, such as Pens, Keys, Mobile phone, Wallet, Travel baggage, Laptop or Tablet PC, USB drive, Books, and the likes.

Here are a few things you can do, to maximise the chance of it being returned to you, if lost (not stolen).

1.       Try to include your name and mobile number in your key chain.

2.       You can put your home or office phone number (not your mobile number) on the home screen or welcome screen of your mobile phone or tablet pc.

3.       Have a few business cards or personal info card in your wallet and laptop bag.

4.       Make sure your travel bag has a name tag.

5.       Have a word document with your name and address in the desktop screen of your laptop or tablet pc. You can also have the same type of doc in your USB drive.

6.       Make small sticker labels of your name, address and mobile number and stick it to your books and other possessions.

7.       Always include sender’s (your) address in your postal letters, parcels and couriers.

I hope you are not, as careless as me. Even if you are a careful person, these tips will be of help. Losing is like an accident. We never know when and how. It is always good to be on the safer side.

By the way, if anyone of you, has a good tip on how not to lose a PEN, please tell me. I will be grateful.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article Dated May 2012

The Green Icon

As the convenor of the Environmental Panel of CII Thoothukudi District, for the year 2011-12, I was instrumental in organising a one day environmental conference titled the ECO Summit. We had some of the top brains, who talked on various environmental related issues and how we could proactively engage ourselves, in mitigating the risks associated with environmental hazards and disasters.

One of the key speakers of this summit, was Mr.M.B.Nirmal,  the founder of Exnora International – A NGO based in Chennai who enjoy international repute today, for the enormous amount of work they have done in cleaning and greening the environment. This simple unassuming speaker shared his life story, in a witty way, but it was something that touched our hearts. The audience were both moved and inspired. If each one of us carry this little spark he lit within us, we are sure we will make our life purposeful. I hope sharing his life story, would inspire you too, to stretch beyond all limitations.

Nirmal was basically from a very rich family and they had a number of properties in Chennai. His father, ran into severe business debts, owing to some high risk business ventures and they had to sell all their property and their family literally came to the streets. Nirmal’s mother was persistent that she will not go and live in a rented house after having lived such a rich and royal life. With the very little money their family was left with Nirmal could only find a house in the slum, which he readily bought. It was a very painful period in their life. One of the visitors, who came to visit Nirmal’s family in their new dwelling, asked Nirmal, “Can’t you find a better place to live”. Nirmal was taken back. He had no words to say. He was in such a bad financial situation. It was that day he told himself, “My present conditions do not permit me to move to a better place, but I can make the place I live a better place.” This thought got so deeply rooted in his mind, that he focussed all his time and effort in making this slum, a clean and green place. He educated the people living in the slum, about the need for hygiene and he involved them in the process of making the place, green and clean. In his pursuit toward making the slum a better place for everyone to live in, he used creative approaches and brought about innovative solutions. It was not easy for him to convince people who were in the practice of open defecation, to use toilets. Inspite of creating toilets, no one was using it. He did innovative things like calling“public toilet” as “people’s toilet”.  In order to motivate small children to use the toilet, he painted the toilet walls with animals and cartoon images and renamed it as “Toy-let”. These small changes made a big difference, in people’s behaviour.This created a sensation, in the city and soon many people started coming to him, asking how he was able to do it. By duplicating his success model, more and more places, got cleaner and greener. This is how Exnora was formed.

  

Exnora is nowtalked about worldwide. The amount of toil, Nirmal has to put to make it a reality is something commendable. His untiring effort, determination, optimism, passion and contagious enthusiasm,has made a world of difference. In his own words, Nirmal says, “I am an incurable optimist”.

Today, Nirmal happily boasts about growing 1300 plants within his small apartment. His apartment is being visited by people across the world, who cannot believe their own eyes.Nirmal is 68 year old, but his mind is running at the speed of lightning. When you ask him, what is his goal at the moment, he says,“I want to be recognized as the world’s best thinker of our times.”

And if you think Nirmal is just an environmentalist, you are mistaken. He is a Motivator, Mind Programmer, Humorist, Orator, Trainer, Social Reformer. How can one person don so many roles? This really makes me wonder. He is an exemplary evidence, for those who question the limits of human potential. Let the life example of Nirmal, inspire us to stop thinking in terms of limitations and start thinking in terms of possibilities. For those of you, who are not aware of him, I am happy to introduce Mr.M.B.Nirmal - THE GREEN ICON.

Happy Reading,

D.SenthilKannan

Article dated April 2012

Say NO to beggars

·         Does the sight of beggars on the streets, worry you?

·         Do you feel, sorry for them?

·         Do you want to help them in some way or other?

If yes, please take my advice. Say No to them. What I am telling you, may be contradictory to the popular, that by giving alms to a beggar, we have done him some good, we have gained some good karma or whatsoever but in fact we are doing a social harm of breeding more and more beggars in the country. Tossing a coin in the beggar’s bowl may be considered by few as a sign of affluence and magnanimity, but in fact we are encouraging a social crime.

Begging is a social crime. Begging gives a bad image of our country, to the rest of the world. We are a country with huge intellectual capital, large man power force and many great social, spiritual and business leaders. We need to be looked up and not looked down.  But because of beggary prevailing in our country, we are looked down. Dan Boyle in his movie, “Slum dog billionaire” has exposed this begging practice in India, to the rest of the world. It is such a shame for our country. But we are just happy about the movie winning an Oscar award!

India is developing at a fast pace in terms of economic development. Statistics show, that our GDP and per capita income has increased. If that is true, then the number of beggars in the street should reduce. Is it not?  But in spite of all the positive developments, the number of beggars in India has increased significantly.

While there is so much of labor need in this country, why should people to resort to begging? Believe me, it is not poverty that has pushed them to take this decision. It is a lazy profession they have chosen, to make a comfortable living. Gone are the days, when people felt a sense of shame to beg. Today, begging has become a thriving occupation of many. On an average, a beggar earns anything from Rs.80 to Rs.200/- a day, which is in par with the daily wages of a factory worker. This easy way of making money, has become a preferred source as compared to having to put 8 hours of hard work of a daily labour.

In fact, I too have been supporting this social crime for quiet long. Even when people told me not to do so, I never use to heed to their words. I used to say, “What difference does it make for me, if I shell out a few coins, but at least the beggar can buy a cup of coffee”.

My perception of beggars changed, to a great extent after I saw the Tamil movie, “NaanKadavul” which talks about how begging has become a mob business, like any other mafia activity. In the movie, they show how the beggars are maimed, so that they become icons of sympathy to the general public and thereby they can earn more.  Maiming involves deforming the body, limb or face, by causing external injuries, through crude and cruel means. I thought it was just an exaggeration, but I came to see some live examples of this, in one of my visit to the SabarimalaAyyapan temple. It is then I decided that I will not encourage this practice.

I am not saying that there is no real poverty in this country. Of course there is a lot of poverty and genuine needs. If you wish to help the people with genuine needs, I suggest that you do it through some organized sources like World Vision, CRY, Helpage India or any such organization that is committed to enhance the life of the deprived and downtrodden You can also volunteer to be a member of any social organization like the Rotary Club, Lions Club or Giants club, who are working on specific projects with a long term plan. In this way, you can reach out to the needy, in a more appropriate way.

God has blessed all of us, with a soft heart; so that we are sensitive to the needs of our surrounding and help those are in need. The beggars have capitalized on this emotion of ours and made it a profession. Let us not become victim to our emotions. Let us not encourage “beggary” anymore. Let us learn to say NO to beggars.

Happy Reading,

D.SenthilKannan

Article dated Feb'2012

Are we giving space to others?

Quiet recently, I attended a 5 day TCI workshop. TCI is a unique concept developed by a German Psychologist, Ms.Ruth Cohn.  TCI stands for Theme Centred Interaction, which means a group of peopleinteract with each other on a particular theme. This interaction helps the participant to gain more insight and a better understanding of some real life situations and challenges, from different perspectives. Every TCI Workshop has a theme. The workshop I attended was on the theme, “Do men and women lead differently? We had two international facilitators, Mr.Konrad from Germany and Mrs.Annelis from Switzerland to handle this workshop, which made it more interesting.

The TCI session titles are different and interesting. One of the sessionsof this workshop was, “Drawing together with you and you…. finding my own space”.  In this session, our facilitator formed 3 groups of 6 people each.  We were given chart board with a box of crayons. The instruction given to us was, each group should do a drawing in the chart provided, but the rule is that the members within the group should not discuss or talk within the group. The time given was 15 minutes. This was a nice challenge, because there was no scope for planning what we are going to draw. So, our group sat on the floor together with the chart board in the centre. I took a yellow crayon and started drawing a sun, on the top of the chart. My team members seemed to get a clue, that we could draw scenery together and one of them started to draw a flock of birds with a black crayon and another person drew the clouds with a blue crayon. I soon followed it up, by drawing a mountain range across the chart with a brown crayon. In no time the chart paper became a beautiful scenery with a flowing river, tall trees, blooming flowers, a house, people, cattle and other things.

When the time was over, we were pleasantly surprised to see, that our drawing has come out nicely, inspite of we not speaking a single word with each other.

Now it was time for the facilitators to give their observation of each team. The facilitator, when giving his observations about our team, captured the essence of how we worked as a team. He pointed out that, it was me, who initiated the drawing, which he mentioned as a positive leadership trait. He said a leader is one who initiates. These words made me feel good about myself. He then said something that was like an invisible hammer striking hard on my head.He said, that I did not just stop with initiating the drawing, I went on to use large amount of the space in the chart paper to draw the mountain range. By doing so, I have been insensitive to the space requirements of my team members.  In the large chart paper, everyone should find space for their expression, but by occupying a large extent of space in the chart board, I have curtailed the expression of the other members of the team.

I realised that very moment, what he said was right. It was an eye opener to me.I was astounded to find that our subconscious mind gets manifested by our behaviour, exposing our true inner nature, even without having to say a single word. I felt bad about myself, but did not miss to take the learning of the day.  I learnt that I need to give others their needed space, so as to help them find expression of their true potential. I have been unconscious of my own mistake.When he spotted this out, I realised that I have aninner tendency to do more than what is expected of me. This doing more than what is expected, is not a good trait, when it comes to working as a team. As a team, every team member should feel a spirit of contribution to a project accomplished. By doing all the things, that others could do, we are in fact robbing from them, the joy of teamwork. In team work it is never ‘my work’, but it is ‘our work’.

Most of us commit this mistake unconsciously, at work place, social organisations or even family. We tend to dominate the show. We want to see the end result to be exactly the way; we mentally imagined it to be. But in a collaborative world, this sort of thought infringement would leave a negative mark of not being a good team player.r.A creative collaboration of ideas canin fact give a unique outcome, which an individual mind can never conceive.So, next time, when you are working on a team project, ask yourself, “Am I givingothers the needed space, to express themselves?”.

Happy Reading,

D.Senthil Kannan

Article dated March 2012