CUSTOMER FIRST

During my 3 yrs stint at my work I have been close to life.Interacting with people was my job and in this process everyday I used to come across poeple of diffrent ages,diffrent backgrounds,diffrent culture and diffrent nature.Some were gentle,some were polite,some rude,some irate,some courteous,some sophisticated,some rustic,some eversmiling and so many of them that kept me wondering that how diverse humans are.


In a service sector customers are the insignia and from the very first day were trained in customers first to attain a paragon of customer satisfaction.We were supposed to be extremely polite and courteous with a helpful humane touch.Sporting a 'how can I help you?' grin all the time was a must.Everyday we had a morning meeting when all the employees gathered in the backoffice for 10 minutes to discuss the actionables for the day.It consisted of a verbose lecture by our boss on targets not being met and the omnipresent 'CUSTOMER SATISFACTION'.


'Professionals should behave the way they should and not the way they like' was his favorite one liner which we were sick of hearing.His soporific lectures did nothing good but robbed us of our zeal with which otherwise we could have started our day.At times the doses beacme so heavy that we colleagues often discussed within ourselves that are we employees of a reputed organisation or mere servants of the masses.


Though this infliction initially compelled us to behave in a way we were asked to,it was not long before that things started going haywire.Under the immense pressure we often forgot that customer is always right and went a far too ahead at times to prove our point right.

Interacting with 1000-1200 customers daily we had no time to breathe and very soon the archetypal lectures and training sessions were obliterated.The grin was replaced by usual grimace.

The final contigency was that vociferous arguments,blatant gestures,implacable grumbles were regular occurance at the bank.

Be it the impatient nature of the obstreperous customers who werent ready to wait for their turn to be served or some foolish urge of their's which for the bank was impossible to entertain.....the result was cacophonous heated discussions.


Whenever such an incident occured other employees spurted in support of the involved colleague making the concerned customer feel so puny and vanquished that he never dared to say a word in future.The placard with 'we care' hung mokingly on the wall.

Its not that we didnot care.We cared but only for people who were deserved to be cared.We never cared for bumptious,rude people who had this notion that employees of a service sector were their own servants.

Care.love,respect,kindness all are very abstract terms but one thing thats sure about these terms is that they can neither be commanded nor being forced or imposed.They have to be earned and no training and lecture is required for extending these qualities to a person who deserves.

A culture called humanity

The recent incidents of violent mobs lynching youths caught in criminal offense has put me to think that 'is this humanity?' Agreed that the incidents were not of mere peccadillos but some serious offense but the ways the miscreants were treated questioned our humanity and morality.To my utter surprise the caretakers of the law were found accomplice in the henious acts.

What is the reason for this barbarism???Why is it happening so often that an unruly mob is running amok...taking laws in their hands...not waiting for any system of laws to provide justice.

Has the so called system of judiciary lost its charm in the rigmaroles of formalites???Have people lost their faith on the system of laws which has compelled them to
act in such violent way??

Or is it that we have become so mechanical these days that the we have lost the very trait of
our nature i.e humanity???

Perhaps it is both the reasons but the latter one can pose serious thretas to our existence.

In John Cameroonn's Terminator,Arnold Schwazeneggar playing the title role once said that 'I can never understand why you humans cry and how do you feel the pain.'

Are we in the process of turning into such fleshy terminators for whom the feeling of
empathy,love,sympathy doent exist at all.If it continues this way its not late that we would
become 'humanity less human terminators and the world will be be a battlefield.' The abstract nouns like peace,love,kindness,care,empathy would lose it meanings and would
gradually be removed from the dictionary.

An age old adage says that 'HUMANITY IS NOT HEREDETARY.TO IMBIBE THIS TRAIT ONE HAS TO CULTURE IT.'
So true.we have stopped culturing humanity and so we are on the verge of becoming 'humanity less humans'.
Think about it or such savage incidents will follow.

HABIT V/S WILL POWER

While preparing for CAT one thing that I have discoverd is that MAN IS NOT THE SLAVES OF HIS HABITS AS LONG AS HE HAS A STRONG WILL POWER.Though he has the advantage of changing his habits with the help of his will power he seldom does so.

One of my 24 yr old habit was to wake up late in the morning.After leaving school I dnt remeber a single day of my life when I woke up before 7:30 am.The nursery rhyme 'Early to bed a early to rise' was a distant dream.

But in the process of preparation..when I found muself way behind other competitors...in a mocking state...I thought to myself that I need to pull up my socks to be a part of the rat race .......that was to bell the CAT.And for that the first thing that i felt was to change my habits...and be a bit disciplined.With discipline comes sincerity and with that comes success and thats what i wanted.

So it was necessary for me to set a routine for myself with my day beginning at 5:30.Initial hurdles were there in following my routine but I was determined.And to my utter disbelief I have been successful in my venture as its 5:30 that my day starts everyday and that too without any problems.

Seems such a trifle thing to discuss???Well not a bad thing to begin with.After all,our mastery in such trifle things lays the foundation to a ineffable deeds.

We are humans.We cant become GOD.........but at least try and become GOD of small things.