Disruption!

Hehe, I read my Sunita Menon forecast in Mumbai Mirror today and it said not to make any business commitments today and that work will be busy and full of disruptions. This happens to be true because one of our associates is here and his presence prevents my blogging extensively! Makes me wonder what my actual work is hmmm?!

My God I'm exhausted. Need to pass out for more than 12 hours.

The seminar yesterday was pretty good! About "Retaining Customer Loyalty", conducted by one Dr. Wilfred Monteiro. Sweet guy... quite interesting too... so only managed one mediocre 55.

I can never get over how UGLY the carpeting is in hotels, no matter how expensive, particularly conference rooms! Not to mention unmatching wall colours and paintings. Is that the intention - to deliberately make the surroundings so ugly that the audience is forced to concentrate on the proceedings? How devious. Also what is pissing off is that the food at the conferences at these hotels is NEVER as good as it looks! Probably so that you won't stuff yourself silly and then want to fall asleep after! That's why it's probably a good idea to have activity sessions in the afternoon - which is what Mr. Monteiro wisely did.

Monteiro said some pretty useful things about Indian people in the context of customer service as well. About our terrible phone manners that sound like we're actually shouting out the window to someone than talking on the phone... the "Haan! Bolo! Hmm!" About all the excuses and blame-passing that we make, terrible "Chalta Hai" attitude to quality and service. He said it basically stems from our cultural history as consumers used to terrible experiences and endless waiting from our government service providers, who are still in the process of slow, resistant change after the entry of private bank/phone service providers. He was mentioning how it used to take 10 years to get a phone line in the 70's. I SHUDDER at the thought. (At this point I also acknowledge how stunned into speechlessness I was when my friend threw his mobile phone in the river in my presence at uni!) But I guess those were the days when the phone was still a want and not really a need. Frankly I'm getting damn pissed with the tardiness and inefficiency of bank personnel and phone providers. Why the hell do bank need 3 passport photos, 10 signatures on a form written in some obsolete legalese that no Engliah speaker can understand, and copies of those forms and other documents? Then they require the presence of every nominee on an account to introduce a new member or remove an old on what nonsense. Coordinating things like this can take up to a year because it's so frustrating! Not to mention bank timings! Who the hell in this day and age is only open half day on saturdays and closes before a workplaces closes? Thank God for ATMS now but I still wouldn't know where to go to find one if I didn't anticipate all my expenses at work, and if I wasn't living with my parents. And the MTNL guy hasn't come to give me a broadband connection at home and it's been a month!

But that's not an excuse now! Everyone's doing better and better and yesterday's differentiators have become today's tablestakes. SO we have to keep on improving, in relationships, at work, at service, in life. The thought of it is so stressful!

He also talked about how McDonalds' failed in India. (It did? I wasn't aware). That's because it didn't give consumers what they wanted but rather what it could give them. They should have geared their offering more towards vegetarians (but I thought they had the salad sandwich the aloo tikki burger and the vegetarian burger, as well as the filet-o-fish and the Maharaja Mac for the nonvegs - I personally like the Mickey D's here better. The quorn chicken burgers in Bath were GROSS. Burger King has good veggie burgers though.) Therefore I found the Mcdonalds as culturally specific as it could get while at the same time maintaining efficiency and consistency, which are its core values. They have congee and all in China apparently. And they had definitely developed their menu from the launch of their first Bandra branch about 8 years ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they have people to clean the table and take away the trays nowadays, rather than have the customers throw it in the bin? (I haven't been to one here in years) I quite like the concept actually, teaches us Indian brats who are used to being waited on hand and foot some basic manners. My college President used to clean her table at the cafeteria when she was done eating. There's no dignity of labour in India unfortunately.

Yes so it was quite fun. He was quite enthusiastic about making me participate, which was sweet and sad. Because it reminded me of this one salesman from our company who had been let go of due to different company visions. I had been basically made to be in touch with him because I was the girl and therefore more patient and willing to read his long emails. He mailed me a couple of times after that and in his last email he said he hopes he will get to meet me someday (yeah we haven't met). I feel bad.

:(

Okay, now I should do some work! :)