March 2nd Updates

How to make it better for the customers

It is hot days ( literally ) --- Most of the companies are withdrawing facilities or small little things they do for the customers -- I have seen banks take off drop boxes from their ATM's to reduce their collection effort in clearing these drop boxes frequently-- But I saw a good example of a small thing that will make customers happy ( may be do this every year when the weather is extremely hot or rainy ) -- I was at the Madurai Airport and there are no shuttles at these small airports to ferry passengers from the terminal to the aircraft ( distance is small and walkable --It was very hot even at 5 PM-- As soon as the flight ( )-- this was Kingfisher Airlines ) landed and the door opened out , support staff were ready with bright red umbrellas ( what else could the colour be ) and every Guest was handed over a umbrella to protect themselves from the Sun as they walked from the parking bay to the terminal building -- I think the passengers were surprised and pleasantly surprised -- The same process got repeated as they boarded the passengers --Not great investment but small little thing to make the customer comfortable -- --may be as the Chairman of the Kingfisher Airline thunders in his booming voice in his welcome address " I have asked my staff to treat you as guests in my home "-- they really do
there was a competitor airline who landed very close to the same time and who did not do this service

Bus Ride after a long time

Another great learning as I travelled by a normal moffusil bus --Logistics helped me take the bus and be connected with people -- Although moffussil bus , it had a DVD player that was playing movies but no one except the passengers in the front seat bothered too much about it since only people in the front two rows can watch the movie-- The bus was packed for most periods of the five and half hour journey --It stopped and picked and dropped passengers where ever it could on its route -- What a service !!
People were so accommodative and nice -- they always found space for a fellow passenger - Not a word on discomfort -- Isn't that a great quality to have -- Not complaining!!
Seating is a great design -- it can seat five in a row ( this has not changed for a long time - three on one side and two on the other ) but it is just a parking space for you-- The guys designing this are great -- You can sit, that is all --
But with all this , the journey was great -- Why -- expectations are low or Nil for that matter -- Only when we expect , do we start complaining -- When there is no expectation , no complaints -- people were accommodative and as I said space was found to stand for every traveller- Mind you this is not intra city travel but long distance and hence standing is not convenient -- One great change was everyone had a mobile phone and talked loud ( Some people think if they talk loud on the phone only will they be heard by the person on the other side )--Most of them had handsets that were not primitive
there was also a parent who was sitting in the front and had his son sitting at the back and at every stop called out to his son to see if he was still in the bus ( this after the rear exit of the bus was closed due to the door not working correctly !! Aha safety issue but who cares )
Finally , the conductor does not use saliva to issue tickets -- carries a sleek instrument that prints out tickets ( this has been in vogue for some time ) and so cash tallying and cross referencing to the issued tickets is made easy-- technology helps bring in transparency and controls -- But they still collect notes and keep them between their fingers -- that is a great trait- Wads of notes are handled this way -- Must be practice !!
Very nice journey and of course I cannot write about few " masalas " that I noticed !! I am sure that many of you travel this way quite often but to me it was after four years --