WOW Experience

When was the last time you had the WOW experience as a customer! We are all customers. We act as internal customers as well as external customers. Everyone claims that “Customer is King”. But actual experience we have as a customer is not always that of a king’s experience, sometime it is worse than that of a street beggar. Here I wish to take you through some of the wonderful and not so wonderful experiences I have had all these years.

Be it a bank, telephones, internet providers, photographers, caterers, restaurants, we are always treated very …………ly. I leave it to you to fill up the blanks. 

When I was touring Hyderabad in 90s I had to dine in a mess. The food was delicious and spicy, thus rice had to be eaten with gun powder and many spoons full of ghee. As we were dining there was a lone customer dining in the nearby table. He was asking the server many questions. Thus the server got a bit annoyed and started walking away farther. This lone man did not leave him and started shouting to seek his attention. 

The server then walked up to him and asked him in native tongue a bit loudly what the matter was. The lonely man stated that he was the guest of the establishment and therefore the server should stand near him and repeatedly ask and serve him whatever he wanted. The server literally lost his cool and rebuked him in higher decibel “ If you felt that you wanted to behave like the proverbial son –in-law you should have can gone to your mother in law’s place. You had walked into a wrong place. Hog and move out as soon as possible.” That was the end of the story. In my next visits despite the wonderful and tempting Andhra food in that place, I never stepped into that mess. 

There is another classic episode on food. There was a marriage of a friend of a classmate in Pallakole a small town in Godavari district. A few friends got together and took a train from Guntur and got down in Pallakole station around 1 PM. We had no clue on how to reach the venue . We walked up to the station master and asked him showing the invitation necessary direction. We were made to wait in his office and after 10 minutes a bullock cart came and we were sent to the venue. The marriage was in the night but we had no idea of the timings & customs. Therefore we had reached 12 hours too early. 
The bride’s family requested us to wait for 10 minutes. Fresh rice was cooked as they felt the groom’s side people should not be served cold rice and we were served delicious food and sent to a local movie hall for a Telugu movie to spend our time. 

Though there was no commercial interest involved we all did have a WOW experience because in any city we people would have been treated as a nuisance but we were treated like state guests of Godavari District in Palakole. 

Banks….Till a few years back I used to dread the experience of going to any commercial bank. My father was instrumental in getting an extension counter for one public sector in our colony. He was the first one to open savings bank account in that branch. He transferred his pension account there. Alas he was bed ridden for six long years. Every year to get a existence certificate from the branch manager to claim the pension was an Herculean task as my was immobile. The branch manger would never oblige to visit our home to verify his existence despite offering a free ride in a bike or car. 

We had to hire a van to take him to the branch in a stretcher. Insult to the injury was the refusal of the branch manager to walk up to the gate to meet him but forcing us to carry our father to his desk. 


Compare this with my experience in Malawi third poorest nation in the world. If one is not greeted by the counter staff properly you would get a credit of 10 Kwacha to your account. Thus after spending time there when I moved to Thailand my experience with the bankers was very pleasant. Being an expatriate all the form filling was done by the local bank staff. You are periodically given gifts like flasks, umbrella, wind cheaters etc. as a good will gesture by the bank. The manager there used to distribute sweets to everyone on the queue in case of inordinate delays etc. 

On reaching Hyderabad I had to open a salary account with a giant public sector bank. It took me three hours to deposit INR 1000 to open the account. The assistant manager who used to live next to my house was screaming from the roof top asking staff not to accept cash or cheque as there was no power in the branch. The ATM area was totally dirty with over flowing paper slips strewn all around the place. 

After five years, when I went to close my savings bank account in a private sector bank in Bangalore the manager did not even bother to ask for the reason of my action to close the account abruptly. All that I was asked was to surrender my ATM card and Cheque books thus a relationship built and nurtured for more than five years snapped in a few seconds !!!

I keep looking for some WOW experience!! May be one day I will be able to narrate one !!