Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Consumer activism

The four of us are a bunch of extreme consumer activists (my 3 partners led the movement and I reluctantly joined, but am a total convert now!) and we rarely go through any service without positively or negatively reinforcing the quality of it! We've had long crusades against service providers like Hutch (in one case, Bhushan made a Hutch shop stay open for 2 hours after its closing time!), Reliance, CCD, and some infinite restaurants! But, we've also given some amazingly positive feedback to the staff at Blue Dart, Curries and Subway in Ahmedabad, sometimes even call centre employees who actually get things done! So, we are constantly evaluating the products we buy and the services we get, and have almost made a religion out of not settling for "unfair" treatment, but also going out of the way to appreciate service excellence! But, the point that I often end up thinking about is what the front end staff of these companies, that do an overkill of slogans like "Customer is King", is incentivised for! Several times, the problem just boils down to wrong incentive structure! I wonder whether the incentive is to satisfy the customer's need or just give her an illusion of it, and whether feedback is collected out of a desire to improve or just to demonstrate that desire!

But, I guess the balance is slowly tilting in favour of the consumers with each passing day, and hopefully the information age will bridge the final demand-supply gap that allows companies to make profit in spite of doing a shoddy job of what they themselves state as their dharma! The man, who uploaded a video of his apartment on youtube and actually got Unitech to suddenly respond to complaints that had first been made ages ago, has really shown us the way to creative consumer activism without having to literally raise our voices! So, one thing that companies are surely beginning to realise is that they cannot get away with the "hit and run" strategy of ignoring a few dissatisfied consumers here and there and hope for information asymmetry in the market!

Of course, as long as I am the evaluator, it's damn powerful and exciting!

But, the real question for me now is what I will do in my business to enhance the customer experience that I have, so far, considered sacrosanct for any business! Will I forsake short term rewards to gain that edge in maximizing consumer experience because that is what creates long term value? Will I go out of my way to invest in front end staff who I can grant enough power to actually solve consumer problems and not just be punching bags for them? Will I be able to create systems and processes so robust that the customer is actually the King, no matter who serves him? Will I be able to create a company that actually believes in the power of consumer activism and bows down to it without being unceremoniously forced to?
Well, to my mind, the only answer is that if I want to survive in the long run, I bloody well will!

Monday, July 23, 2007

Life means more!

The last few months of entrepreneurship have been so completely mind-blowing in terms of my learning curve that I have had several occasions when I have let the "learning" just zip past, unable to do justice to it because of lack of bandwidth! At one level, it is damn exciting to be so busy and so involved in something that I'm really passionate about, but at another level, it hurts to let those exciting ideas and important lessons that deserved to be dwelled upon just go by! And to think that it is all because of a bandwidth crunch, when all my life I have prided myself in my "life means more" philosophy! Of course, this is one of the reasons why I had chosen to be an entrepreneur! I wanted to be thrown out of my comfort zone where I believed that I could smoothly manage a lifestyle in which I would do full justice to my work, apart from reading, gymming, picking up a new hobby, and spending time with myself and with the people I love! I enjoy being in the "constant optimization of time" mode, but only when it yields something substantial, only when I can drop dead asleep every night knowing that I have done so many wonderful things during the day, only when I can wake up every morning with the thrill of the unpredicatbility of the challenges that I know the day will throw in front of me, only when I know deep inside that I am living my life to the fullest, and not just appearing to be busy or stuck in an activity trap!
So, as I am discovering for myself, entrepreneurship is not just about risk-taking, it's not just about freedom and wealth, it's not just about dreaming! Entrepreneurship is also about getting more out of life; it is also about being constantly alert to external stimuli; it is also about bursting with well-thought-out ideas, it is also about rigorous planning and still having to think on one's feet, it is also about knowing that you have reached the peak of your personal bandwidth and then very nonchalantly creating some more! So, as this happy realization dawns upon me, I figure that as far as I'm concerned entrepreneurship is all about growth!

Imagination vs. faith

Illusions by Richard Bach is an extremely hard-hitting book, in spite of the fact that I was getting progressively readied for the hit with every interaction with Barood. It's pretty dramatic to start considering oneself a Messiah and every action as a choice. Well, truth be told, denying these two facts about existence has been a very convenient excuse for taking the easy path in life, that of not having to take responsibility for every single action and every single decision of mine!
The Vampire episode, I felt, was specifically meant for someone like me who chooses to justify her actions on the basis of their impact on others, and who always believes that one has the freedom to do as one likes, provided it does not hurt anyone else! But, the truth is that I cannot hurt anyone till the point that the person chooses to get hurt by me. This is such a liberating thought, and excites me completely about my power to choose all that I have brought into my life. It is especially liberating because I have, so often, found myself swamped in guilt, guilt for how I have treated others, guilt for the pain I feel I have caused to others, guilt for not being “sympathetic” enough. And it is this guilt that drains me and the free spirit that rests inside me! But the moment I use the vampire framework, I feel so proud about my choices, where finally I did exactly what I wanted to, but carried the burden of guilt for being selfish! I quote Bach, “Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.” It's a philosophy that the others will never understand or appreciate, because it goes against the concept of “niceness” that we are all indoctrinated with till we begin to internally accept. So, even though I found the Ayn Rand-ish objectivism really cool and exciting, I couldn't a) see myself enforcing that in “real life” and b) it was a much milder version of the kind of freedom that Bach is referring to! Oh I really love this way of existence and am tempted to adopt and internalise it right away, but before I do that I have to reconcile it with Karma, the philosophy that I have so far found fool-proof no matter how many tests it has been put to! Simply put, I believe in Karma because there has always been disproportionate returns for actions in my life (even though the sum total, I'd like to believe, has balanced itself!), and it thus becomes essential to de-link each action and its consequence so as to retain the vigour and energy in life for all actions irrespective of the expected consequences. The energy and vitality that Karma gives you is one level less than that given by the “freedom” philosophy where you take responsibility for the action and the consequence and you remove the noise in the black-box called Karma. It was the noise in that black-box that I attributed the mixing up and disproportionating of consequences to and it is this noise that the “freedom” philosophy rejects, which is why Karma was about faith, whereas “freedom” philosophy is about imagination. So, the choice really is in my hands, as usual, and that is the choice between freedom and karma, which effectively boils down to the choice between imagination and faith!