Looking at the Rear View Mirror...

As retailers look at the rear view mirror to see the year gone by, many may get the urge to realize what could have been done better. It is the end of Q3 as the calendar year comes to a close and in the next three months Q4 will come to an end as well, winding up the whole financial year. Q4 that begins in January and ends on 31^st March may leave an organization with only a short span of three months to get course corrections done. The rear view mirror at the end of December 31^st is so significant that it shows those gaps of unfinished tasks and results. Its now time everyone got into action to achieve the committed annual business results.

Like how the business indicators are closely followed, a few retail organizations in India see how they serve their customers. Many years ago I was working for Shoppers’ Stop, where we as a management team under the leadership of Mr. B. S. Nagesh always used to see how many customers we enrolled as loyal customers month after month. At the end of the year we used to see how many customers have been won as loyal customers of the organization over the previous year. The scoreboard was closely followed and the strategy of continuously winning customers as loyal customers has paid for the organization a great deal. A progress from less than three thousand customers in its loyalty programme in the first few months of 1996 to a few millions of customers fifteen years later in 2011 is a great achievement. It was not just a score-tracking exercise that was followed but it was a genuine effort to win and retain customers by understanding their needs closely. At the shop floors we unanimously asked the singular question of what good have we done to our customers. Unlike the current age when we deploy multifarious technology applications to reach out to customers and interact with them, those were times when we as people were responsible to serve customers. We took the responsibility of adopting a number of customers each in the team to personally serve them throughout the year. But now as technology has advanced, many customers are sent mails that are auto-generated by the system itself! And we have lost human interaction. If there was a customer complaint, our store manager was there, right at the door of the customer to say ‘sorry’ and win the customer back! Even when there went a false alarm from the electronic article surveillance system, someone from the store was always there to personally apologize to the customer. Looking ahead through the windscreen at the future, we ought to use technology and its applications mix only to have a personal touch with our customers.

Vivek’s, the South based home appliances and electronics store organization thanks its customers by offering huge discounts at the dawn of every New Year, an event known popularly as Vivek’s New Year Sale. The New Year sale started in 1977 and this year the company celebrates the New Year Sale’s 25^th anniversary. The legacy of the New year Sale at Vivek’s was the brainchild of Mr.B. A. Kodandarama Setty, Chairman of Viveks who wanted to extend the company’s gratitude to customers and he chose the New Year day to tell them a big 'Thank You' in his inimitable way! He says that every time a customer buys a product at Vivek’s he leaves behind a profit margin for the company. In his opinion it is the customer who is the very source of existence of the company and it is the organization’s responsibility to thank the customer by offering him an opportunity to buy any product at cost price at Vivek’s on the New Year day.

The soul of any retail organization is its customers. Every New year should be a celebration for winning customers and making resolutions to serve them better. Mark 8:36 says, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul?"

Wish you all a very Happy and Soul Winning New Year 2012!

- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani