Author: S Ramesh Shankar

Born in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, I have been brought up in different parts of India. Graduate in chemistry and post graduate in personnel management and industrial relations. Have been a HR practitioner for 38 years in the industry and have experience in working in steel , automobiles, FMCG and engineering industry. Was head of HR for Siemens in South Asia based out of Mumbai till March 2019. Currently founded hrishti - joy forever, a social enterprise to give back to society and work as Chief Joy Officer.

Customer orientation

I always wondered if being customer oriented is a difficult thing. I was travelling in a flight recently. We had pre-ordered our snacks. When my wife requested the flight attendant to exchange her pre-ordered Upma for some other snack, she was rude to state that it has been pre-booked and cannot be changed.

I then recalled the research I had done on “Customer orientation” during my corporate career and I realised that being customer oriented does not need complex things to be remembered. It is just having a positive attitude, being empathetic to the customer and keeping up your commitments. It is as simple as that.

It does not depend on the product or service you are offering. You may be dealing with any product or service. It is your ability to being positive in your attitude, putting yourself in the shoes of the customer’s shoes and understanding their issues and then keeping your word. That’s all we need to be customer oriented.

Let me analyse how this behaviour of the air hostess could have been customer oriented. When my wife requested her to exchange her snack, she could have understood the reasons why my wife asking for the same. Then she should could been empathetic and understood the pain of the customer. After that she could have checked with her seniors if needed and exchanged her Upma with another snack of equivalent value. This would have not only satisfied a hungry customer but delighted her and airline would have not lost a penny.

After she refused to exchange the Upma for a snack, my wife requested for some tea, which also got delivered after two reminders. This shows you have not keep your word although you promised the customer that you will serve tea and hand over the Upma box. You did neither.

I have a met a lot of employees dealing with customers day in and night out. I have done workshops with thousands of customer facing employees and listened to their stories. When I analysed the same, I found that customer orientation is not dependant on the product or service we offer. It all depends on the attitude we have towards our customer.

Customer orientation is all about “Attitude”, “Empathy” & “Commitment”. Our ability to instil the positive attitude in our employees, making employees empathetic by feeling the pain of the customer and then living up to the commitments they make without fail every single time.

Now I wonder as to why organisations cannot be customer oriented when it is so simple. I realise that the simplest things in life are the most complex and hence may be we are not able to instil these values in our employees and ensure that they consistently follow them.

We need to believe that retaining customers is more important then winning new customers. It is like retaining employees is more important than recruiting new employees when they leave organisations.

Let me summarise that “Customer-Orientation” is as simple as “AEC” ( Attitude, Empathy & Commitment) and let us not complicate it any further.

Let us start being customer oriented today. It is true for individuals as much as organisations.

S Ramesh Shankar

23rd May 2022

Marriage as a social institution

Marriage is the legal partnership between two individuals and accepted by society as a social institution. Both men and women study, grow, work and then look for partners in their lives. Some find them in their study place while others at the workplace. Parents find partners for those who are not able to find a partner for themselves.

Marriage is an equal partnership and built on mutual respect and love. It grows with age and ability to adapt to each other. Some marriages last their lifetime while others break over time ,due to lack of compatibility.

In the past ,partners stayed with each other and sacrificed their personal preferences for the larger good of the family and the children. This could have created a lot of hardship to either of the partners but they lived with these challenges. Today divorce is not a dirty word in our society and this is good. Incompatible partners are not forced to stay with one another for life ,even if they did not enjoy being with each other every day.

If we look back at marriage as a social institution ,especially in India, we realise that it has been a binding factor in the family. If we leave out those incompatible ones, who sacrificed their lives for their children’ sake, it has by and large been the glue ,between partners.

I sometimes wonder how some marriages last a life time and not others. If I look at my own marriage, I realise it has to be based on mutual trust and respect. We come from different families, social and academic backgrounds. It is our ability to learn and adapt which makes a marriage click.

Conflicts in marriage are an integral part. We start with a honey moon phase when everything looks hunky dory. Then as the family expands ,children arrive and responsibilities increase, there is bound to be difference of opinions and conflicts between all partners. It is not presence of conflicts which worry me , but the lack of patience and adaptability to deal with these conflicts.

In my view, it is better to separate and lead peaceful and happy lives rather than keep fighting every day and make life miserable for self and others ,in the process. Sometimes the flimsy reasons for divorce make me believe that we need marriage counsellors and family counsellors like in the west ,since joint families and seniors in the family do not play this role of mediation any more.

Family as an institution has already degenerated and in the future, marriage as a social institution ,may not exist in the current form. Over the last decade I have seen that one in three marriages that I have attended ,has failed. This is a scary statistic and I am not proud of it.

We have to prepare ourselves to live in a society where family and marriage are no longer sacrosanct social institutions. We may get new types of partnerships and also new types of families ,which may be different than the past definitions ,we are familiar with.

May be time to redefine “marriage” as a social institution and get ready to live in this new world.

S Ramesh Shankar

28th May 2022

 

Loyalty may not be a virtue anymore

I was brought up in the family with the strong belief that loyalty is a virtue. I believed it and saw it being practised around my family members and in the communities I lived.

Then when I started my career in a public sector undertaking, my role model was my father , who served the central government for almost four decades in his career. It was considered inappropriate even to think of leaving a government or public sector job , primarily driven by job security which people believed ,the private sector would never offer.

Even in the community around me, loyalty was considered a virtue. This could be seen in family run businesses and even in kirana shops and vegetable vendors and so on. Loyalty was not only a virtue but was rewarded and recognised by organisations.

I remember we used to get a special award on completing 25 years in the organisation and all of us looked forward to it. After serving the public sector for 14 years I moved to the private sector and then worked for multinationals. The silver jubilee award almost became extinct and was replaced by 5, 10, 15 years awards and so on. Nowadays, employees get rewarded for serving for one full year in a organisation and the anniversaries are celebrated.

This transformation in employee loyalty ,has reflected in the social fabric of the community as well. Marriage as an institution is breaking down and may soon become obsolete. While I do agree that in the past couples coexisted in marriage , more for the sake of their children or others ,even if they did not get along well, divorce is no longer a taboo.

I have the habit of attending any employee marriage in a city I lived, if I was invited to it. Unfortunately in the last decade, one in every three marriages I have attended ,have not survived. I do not want to blame anyone for this. However, it is a fact that loyalty is no longer a virtue, in marriage as an institution too.

I am for couples to voluntarily separate and re marry if they find themselves incompatible for whatever reasons. It was sad to see couples under one roof, even though they could not see each other’s face every day , in the past. But not to believe in marriage as an institution ,may be the evolution of the next century.

If children are not loyal to their parents, it is time to realise that family as an institution is also transforming. It is normal for children even in India today to let their parents stay in old age homes and they are comfortable financing it rather than taking care of them.

While the rest of the world is learning yoga and other Indian traditions of the past, we are learning to redefine our social institutions like marriage and family from the west. It may be time for a churn ,since life is after all a full circle and we will begin all over again.

My belief is that “Loyalty is no longer a virtue in family, society or organisations. It is time to sit back and reflect on the same and move forward to the society of tomorrow.

May be time to redefine the word “Loyalty” itself ?

S Ramesh Shankar

20th April’s 2022