How many of you know that ICICI offers you privileged banking if you maintain a "salary" account with them? I for one certainly didn't, and I am sure many of my friends share my experience. I came to know that I was a privileged "Gold" (or whatever) card customer when I lost the privileges since I changed my main account.
I don't normally care about this or that privileges that companies say they offer to their customers. However, these ones are supposed to have prioritized servicing at all of their branches. If you are like me you will visit the branch once in a decade, may be, and it is then you actually find out the queuing system! The branch near me has this token servicing system based on FIFO and availability of manpower. If you are planning to visit the bank on the way to office, you are certainly getting pricked at personnel not in office even by 09:30 hrs (promised time: 08:00) and the seemingly hundreds having a token number lesser than you. Now you would love that silly privilege, wouldn't you?
My next question - even if you know such privileges existed, do you really believe things will work out smoothly? I invest in Indian stock markets and can take a safer bet that it probably would, after painstaking arguments and escalation to the manager. In due course, people just end up with the glossy card and nothing more.
Now, what is this content doing in this blog you ask? Well, Andrew McAfee's recent blog post (http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/why_some_business_innovations_cant_get_off_the_ground) got me thinking of similar instances in our day-to-day lives. This whole experience could have been much better if the IT system enforces the privilege rule or the token issuing system somehow is tuned to recognize the type of customer. Regardless of the employee mood, the privileges are always extended to the most valued customers. The bank successfully gets its message across.
One good example I have seen is my recent experience with Big Bazaar. I use Sodexho Meal Pass to buy groceries and those who have used it know how clumsy it is to handle and at the same time, trying to avoid the steely look of people in the same queue. More important perhaps, shops do not hand over cash change if you use those coupons. This particular day, I handed the counter sales-person coupons worth Rs. 1700 against the bill amount of 1698.25. Like all other good software the system did not like the Rs. 1.75 more. The person at the counter confirmed with me his inability to hand back change and entered a dummy card number to redirect the extra 1.75 to a Children's Fund. To top it, this counter guy was no old hand, had an id card of a trainee. Simplicity and effective enforcing of business rules, must-have elements of a great software. Specific to CRM, it enables organizations to reaffirm commitment to the customer is each transaction or at each touch point. If you are implementing CRM, you now know the importance of all those pesky business rules that you grudgingly customize.
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