“Happy journey, sir!”
Five o’clock in the morning and I am making my way towards this auto with trepidation and a sense of resignation – trepidation that the guy will reject my request to take me to the nearest BIAS stop (now that’s another tremendous service I’ll talk about one of these days), resignation to the idea of bargaining first thing in the morning. Auto drivers by definition are great negotiators, it seems, so I am pleasantly surprised when he says “OK” without hesitation. Must be my lucky day, I tell myself, and hop in, waiting for the bombshell on the price. The guy turns around and flips the meter, signaling clearly that he’ll go with what it says at the end of the ride. Oh my God! This is truly my lucky day – no tension, no discomfort. Maybe all my sales calls in Hyderabad today will work out this well!
We ride out towards the bus stop near Esteem Mall and get talking. While he merrily prattles on about how the Govt. isn’t doing enough about everything from the roads to the cause of Kannada, I’m thinking about how unexpectedly easy this whole transaction has been. I’m thinking this is how every customer interaction should be. I’m thinking what we can do for our customers not only to make their interactions with us easy but to help make their clients’ interactions with them easy. After all, that’s what good CRM is all about, right? So, between polite “Houda?”s and “Correctu”s, I’m thinking of touch-points in Impel that we should focus on, to make it even more effective for our customers.
Ten minutes later, we draw up to this bus stop, I get out and pay the fare. As I turn away, he says: “Happy journey, sir!” I tell you, that just made my day! Here I was, at the end of what I’d consider a good sales interaction, and the service provider just moved it many, many notches higher. He inferred my intent from the location he was dropping me at and, while he did not need to wish me, he did. That shows a number of things about the man – a general service-orientation, of course, but more importantly, a genuine, predictive interest in the well-being of his passenger. That latter factor is a terrific characteristic in some people, but the point of good CRM is to help a whole organization behave in this manner. IMHO, that’s what a good CRM solution needs to do for a company – make client interactions with it not just good but great. It is our intent with Impel to do just that.
