A delightful experience with Indane - a leading gas utility company of India

Generally a good consumer experience is not what one relates with Indian utility companies. But, a recent experience not only negated my thoughts but also it was a first of its kind experience for me with any Indian company be it private or public.

I am a consumer of Indane Gas Services, one of the leading provider of commercial and domestic gas in India. Recently, I booked a refill request via the IVR channel. Using of IVRs is norm in current customer service landscape across sectors, however if you are one of the users, you know the pains going through the automated recorder asking for inputs to validate your identity.

But to my surprise, as soon as I called the IVR number, it recognized my consumer number as I was using my registered mobile number to make the call. The complete process was done within a span of a single minute and also getting my booking number confirmation instantly via SMS.

I believe this kind of experience that is hassle free and to the point with no unnecessary jingles/promotions is what will keep consumers becoming advocate of a company.

Online ordering experience with an e-commerce retailer in India

E-Commerce retail has created a buzz in Indian markets with many players trying to grab the wallet share. It goes without saying that all this buzz will naturally die down (already started?) and only few players who can really differentiate will exist in few years.

Being a professional in CX/CRM arena, I believe customer experience will act as a key differentiator for players in this space. And one of the recent experience with a big name has just showed the trend of downfall if that is how they want to work with their customers.

We, I and my wife, were browsing sites for a good gift for a kid. After spending good amount of time, we managed to select one pair of Spiderman walky-talky. As it goes, we specifically chose it because of the character which kid loves. We were all excited to touch and feel the walky-talky. As we opened the packet, there was a walky-talky but of a different character.

It was an instant let down, an outright negative experience for us. not to say, this was the first and last time we did a transaction with them. Here, assuming their inventory is still not real-time reflected, a simple call from them could have made a difference.

It is not always that we need to blame lack of technology integration, the customer experience is much more ingrained in the organization culture.

I hope other firms do take a cue.