One morning, I was at a neighborhood photocopying shop. It was 930 AM and the shop was just being opened for the day. The shopkeeper opened the shutters. Then, he offered a small prayer before starting business. I was second in line to get my photocopying done.

The person in front of me, got a few pages copied. And he asked the shopkeeper- “How much?”

” 5 rupees” said the shop keeper

The man looked into his wallet but all he could find was a twenty rupee note. He offered it to the shopkeeper but the shopkeeper said “Bohni”.

And then the man asked “Do you accept PayTM?”.

The shopkeeper looked even more offended. “No!” he said.

“Can I pay you the next time I am here?” asked the man.

“Bohni” said the shopkeeper again.

So, the man said he would go and get some change. He went to the shops nearby to break his twenty rupees. I am guessing he got turned down a few more times again because of “bohni”.  Meanwhile the shopkeeper mumbled to me annoyingly – “customers should get change. How could he ask for credit at bohni time?”

So what is this bohni? It’s a superstition that businessmen have. They believe that the first transaction has to be on a cash basis which would lead to a prosperous business day. But, what this shopkeeper and millions of other shopkeepers and daily wage earners  don’t understand is that if you are in business, there is only one god and that god is the customer. But shopkeepers would rather pray to the gods in the photo frame but turn away the customers. If the shopkeeper threw out the superstition and offered more friendly and polite service, he’d do much better.

Contrast that with my vegetable vendor. She is about 25 years old and very hardworking. She has a small truck and even employs a few men, one of them her older brother. Her day starts at 3 AM when she goes to the central market to buy vegetables from the wholesalers. Then they come and sell it at my apartment all day. Despite all her exhaustion, she is always smiling. Because vegetable baskets get heavy, she offers to deliver the basket to the customers’ doorstep for free. She accepts any modern payment form whether it is the first customer or the last.

Just as you can’t tell who photocopied your pages, you can’t tell who you bought your vegetables from. The product by itself is a commodity but the service is the differentiator. Some have figured it out and some pretend not to.

You may have seen this quote by Gandhiji. Ironically enough, you will find it in places that offer the worst service, like government offices and public sector banks.

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.

He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it.

He is not an outsider in our business. He is a part of it.

We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

You may think: ‘everybody knows this!’. Yet, you would be shocked to know how few actually implement it as a culture and as a strategy.  Everybody knows it, yet one company took customer obsession to another level altogether. Everybody knows it, yet a large billion dollar conglomerate in India, that sells steel to salt meted out shabby treatment to their customer. Mishaps happen in business. But what matters is whether you own it or wish it away. You can read it here.

I know Covid 19 and the lockdowns have been tough, especially for small businesses. Now, is the time for them to bounce back and they have to do things differently like practicing a new religion of customer service. If they took care of their customers better, even the gods in the photo frames would smile.