Customer service

How many times have we called a company's customer service department and been thrilled. Almost none. There are a couple of exceptions to this case. Amazon.com  and zappos.com (now owned by Amazon). The customer service agents at both these companies have a few things in common that makes our call experience very pleasing.

They will not waste your time.
They can track your orders at lightning speeds.
They will not question your return, in fact they'll recommend an alternative.
They will not persuade you to buy any product. They just suggest.
They will sound naturally cheerful.
They will not be rude, period.

I was just reading that the customer service philosophy at these companies defy common grounds in all senses. Unlike those of  traditional companies, the customer service reps at Amazon and Zappos don't read out from scripts. They don't have a max limit on how long they can talk with customers. As a standard practice, at least at zappos, every new employee spends the first 4 weeks answering customer calls. I somehow always believed in such practices. Especially at product development companies. Developers and senior programmers often carry an air around them and come to their own conclusions about how customers should use their products. In fact, some developers and programmers treat the customer service department as their step child. It's only when they sit and listen to customers bitch and moan about a product they've developed, that they will truly understand the magnanimity of some of their 'minor' errors.


If all companies could imbibe such tenets into their philosophy, a lot of us would be happy to get on the phone with customer service representatives. What a world would that be :).

The Discipline theory

In one of my earlier posts I had rambled about discipline and how I do not like to be disciplined. I rather presented the contrarian view of how I gloat in 'randomness'.  During the yoga course I attended, I had to sit through some lectures and in one of those lectures, the topic of discipline popped up. The explanation given was so lucid and simple, that even someone like me (who's notoriously stubborn when it comes to acceptance) nodded my head in acceptance. Here's that explanation in brief:

We, as grown up adults, tend to view ourselves as the target of discipline. We tend to think that discipline is an external force that we have to use to set our body and mind to a regimen. We balk at the very idea of a routine, and we have developed an inherent resistance to discipline.
Keeping this view as the norm, if we just step back and look at our childhood days, we will notice that discipline was built into our behavior. It was very natural for us to wake up at the same time (usually early morning), sleep at the same time, more or less we felt hungry at regular intervals and hence consumed food at regular intervals. Our parent's generation, as kids, were even more disciplined by nature. What could be the reason ? There's one possibility that we had to deal with less distractions in day to day life. With the oncoming of the digital age, we came into easy accessibility with certain elements of distraction, which have modified our behavior to such an extent that we have almost forgotten our natural behavior. We have adopted practices that are detrimental to our body and today stand to think that being disciplined is something we have to force ourselves into. What was natural once has become a forceful subjugation today.

As I sat through this lecture, I began to realize how true the essence of the lecture is. I went back into my childhood days and as far as I could remember, discipline was built into my mind. Then I began to realize, at what point in time I fell out of discipline - it was mostly in college, a time in which we forced ourselves out of discipline, just because it was 'cool' to do so. It was cool to hang out late in the night, it was cool to have coffee at 3 AM etc etc. Getting into the technology industry thereafter didn't help much. Companies rewarded night outs, and praised those who worked late. Indiscipline became the new norm and the new cool and it continues to do so.

Fortunately, for me, this lecture was an eye opener of sorts. I have slowly begun to take out this unwanted 'coolness' out of my life and getting back into the old discipline self. It's not easy but taking small steps in this direction is definitely helping.