In India, that does happen though it is a recent phenomenon and one has to travel some distance to reach a shop to enjoy such an experience. Most of the business in India happens in the neighbourhood shop where you stand outside the shop, against a counter of sort and ask the shopkeeper what you want. You ask, they give and you pay and that’s that. But if it were that simple, it won’t be India. In these shops the shopkeeper’s job is to maximise their sale or profit not to serve the customer. So, the shopkeeper will engage every customer that will arrive and attend to each one of them bit by bit; much like the time sharing of computers of old. The shopkeeper will never utter the words “Please wait, will be with you in a moment, will take a few minutes etc.”. The idea is to keep every customer in the play and to not let anyone go without buying something. So, at times the customer would be waiting for quite sometime; especially if their list of purchase is long.
Now, let us get to more organised sector. The malls, super markets etc. Well, they are supposed to be copying the western model of retail but only reluctantly so. In the western model (capitalist for ease of understanding), an employee at a retail establishment will be measured by the amount of sales one contributes to; not so in India. In India the measurement seems to be about how much they could catch up with their colleagues. You will often see the shop attendants talking within themselves and it is very entertaining as the customers can partake in the conversation if they like. If a customer needs their help, they will have to politely wait for the attendants to get free of their important conversations and then do the needful for the customers. By the way, this could be the same with the smaller shops I mentioned in the beginning. These larger shop attendants are not interested in knowing anything about their product or service and if an unfortunate customer asks a question, they should expect to go through a rather harrowing experience of misinformation or disinformation. They, the attendants don’t take any responsibility for anything and one dare not confront them; initially an argument and then abuse can be expected to follow any such confrontation.
In a hospital, they are very enthusiastic to do all sorts of tests on you but that enthusiasm fades when it comes to actually sharing the results with you and help you understand what it means for your health, even in emergency situations. So, an interesting experience. One of my relatives, a 73 year old lady was taken to the Poulomi hospital in Hyderabad. She was in respiratory distress, has a ailing heart etc., so was taken into the emergency at 9:45 AM. Whatever tests they did on the lady, the reports were not out till about 2:30 PM. They decided at 1 PM that she has to be shifted to the ICU. This journey took 25 minutes between the ground floor and the second floor. Why? Oh because first the patient elevator was out of order, the alternate elevator was working but there was a pile of debris and construction material on the second floor exit of this alternate elevator. The hospital staff was not aware of this. So, they brought the stretcher back to the ground floor and took the lady to the second floor by the ramp. If only they did this in the first instance, she would have been in the ICU in less than 3 minutes. But that would happen only if the primary objective was the patient’s care; which clearly wasn’t. I wish I could dedicate 3 more pages describing how badly this lady was treated when she just wanted to get discharged three days later but I won’t test your patience with that. But I must share this, it took the lady more than 12 hours to get discharged and no physician attended her or shared any advice for care at home.
A friend bought a Toyota car, and surely the experience must be better. Well, one would be right to believe that but wrong to assume. She was sold an old car, was told the car was new but in fact it was one used at the dealership for trials etc. The car was full of scratches and the keys were too. The car was bought in September but the warranty was already activated in April of that year. Of course Toyota Bharat did not care to respond as it’s the dealership’s responsibility and I am sure one can guess what the dealership would have done; kept ignoring the issue.
There are call centers staffed by folks eager to repeat the coprate meoldy, not to help anybody. Some companies like easemytrip deliberately engage in practices like a different person responding to respond to your email every time; that it might seem fraudulent to one is only due to the lack of sophistication on one’s part. In the call centers too, the agents maybe engaged in important catchup conversations with their colleagues which one dare not interrupt.
The customer is the loser in India. The customer pays but is treated like a minor inconvenience at best and a nuisance at worst. The shop keepers, dealers; they are all nice to you till you pay the money. Once you have made that mistake, none of the promises are kept. Before you buy, they will say the sweetest of things. One will wonder if they are your close relatives but after you pay they couldn’t care less. Retail, medical care, professionals like accountants, lawyers, everybody can treat the consumer with impunity and disdain and abuse them too often despite their own incompetence.
Oh, there must be some regulations? No? Well there are many rules and regulations, but they are just for decoration. Consumers don’t benefit from them. Surely the government must be doing something? Absolutely not. The government is happy extracting taxes; consumers are smart enough to take care of themselves, right?