Wal Mart Way - My take

Hi All,

I am currently reading a book “The Wal Mart Way”. Over the next few days I will post my take on the book and compare them with my experices as a customer of Wal Mart, other retail outlets in US and India.

One of my faviourte paragraphs from the book is on relation between customer service, satisfaction, trust and loyalty. The book talks about the relation as stated below:
You can serve a customer without satisfying them. It is impossible to satisfy a customer without serving them. Customers who are satisfied at every service they receive develop trust. Trust leads to loyalty. It is very expensive to get a new customer but very cost effective to keep an existing customer.

Now let us go back a few years, when I worked and stayed in the city of Eagan, MN. The only occasion, I was not happy as a customer at Wal Mart was late one night in Fall of 2000. I had gone to pick up some stationary and waited at the billing counter. I was the last customer in queue. For some reason, the supervisor and the counter clerk decided to perform some end of day task of collating the cash from the counter. I told them to bill me as I only had about 5 items totaling to less than $20. But their procedure would not allow them to serve the customer first. I hope they have corrected their procedures now because I remember having to wait 10 mins before being billed. I did not want to switch to other counters because I was sure I would have waited longer.

Now fast forward to 2009. On 21st June 2009, I was at the Reliance Fresh retail outlet at Amruthahalli, Bangalore North. This is one of the better Reliance Fresh outlets that is clean, has friendly staff with not much waiting at the billing counter and it is easy to get parking. We decided to cancel some greens after the counter staff (a new face) had entered the item but the bill was not finalized or printed. The guy shot back in a pretty rough tone that it cannot be cancelled. I asked him for the reason and he did not have one. I asked for the manager and was told that he was not around (typically happens when a there is an issue.) I raised my tone and the manager appeared and the counter guy removed the item from my bill. This could have been done earlier.

The next week I had a different issue. I had a bag of carrot and a bag of tomatoes. The more expensive carrot was weighed first and billed followed by Tomatoes. I noticed that the tomotoes were more expensive than carrots and looked at the counter to find the carrot bag lying half on the weighing scale. I asked the lady to remove the carrot bag and bill the tomatoes again. The cost of tomatoes was half that of the carrots. My wife prevented me from calling the manager again. Hope the lady at the counter corrected herself.

The worst Reliance Fresh outlet I have ever been is the one on Hennur main road opp Indian Academy College. It has one of the worst billing counter layouts I have ever seen. I just avoid this.

Big Bazar is ok for me for standard branded groceries. Other items are non-branded but cost more or less same a branded items.

Now looking at my experience at Wal Mart and Reliance Fresh, I would say that I was fairly loyal to Wal Mart. Fairly loyal because I used to go to Khohl’s retail for my branded dress wear. But I always was able stretch my dollars and cents as much as possible at the Wal Mart.

With Reliance, I am still trying to Trust them. Loyalty is long way away.

Keep tuned for more.

Regards
Nikhil Kulkarni PMP