Most service firms in India are very tentative in their approach to customer service and lack consistency in their dealings. Surprisingly, multinational firms which have set up shop in India also do not exude professional commitment when it comes to embracing customer-centricism as a philosophy. This article highlights the present state of affairs, reasons for customer-centricism receiving mere lip service, the need for and importance of service firms to be customer-centric, and steps to be taken immediately to remedy the situation.

The services sector contributes almost 60% to India's GDP. Marketers of services are fully aware of the specific strategies to be adopted for marketing of services, as opposed to goods. Further, there is no dearth of literature on this subject and most of the business schools in India offer specialized courses on a full-time basis for marketing of services. Case studies of successful Indian service firms are available on the Web, as also in the textbooks written by renowned Indian academicians. In spite of all this, the degree of customer-centricism among Indian service firms leaves much to be desired.

The other day, one of the delivery boys from a courier company of international repute brought an important document to be delivered to me. It being a working day, I was not at home; and my wife who is also a working lady, was also not at home. The delivery boy had left a slip stating that he missed me and provided some numbers to be contacted for further assistance. The next day being a Saturday, I made it a point to be at home so that when the courier boy made the next trip, I was around to collect the document. When he did not turn up even by 3.30 pm, I rang up the number provided by the delivery boy.

After explaining my case to the girl who picked up the phone, I was asked to furnish the 10 digit airway bill number. I promptly furnished the required information based on what the delivery boy had mentioned in his note. The girl presumably fed the number given by me to the computer. Apparently, there was some mistake in the number and the computer asked for the correct number. The girl, in turn, asked me to furnish the correct airway bill number. In spite of my pleading with her that there was no way I could access the correct number and whatever number mentioned in the slip left behind by the delivery boy was what I gave her, she regretted her inability to be of any help to me. She even suggested that I get in touch with the consignee who was located in Mumbai and would hopefully sort out my problem. As for the whereabouts of the delivery boy, she expressed her helplessness; as she was responsible only for tracing missing documents on the system, and there was no way she would know the name or other particulars of the delivery boy. All this unproductive interaction took more than 15 minutes.

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