Ceteris Paribus, People make the difference!

Online shopping is really gaining momentum. Citibank recently launched the online shopping festival for its card holders. And now another online shopping festival is underway, with more offers & attractive discounts. I have become an almost consummate online shopper, shopping from books to MP3 downloads, from flowers to groceries, from fruits & vegetables to gifts…


However my online shopping experiences have been mixed. From good to disgusting, from great to disappointing. The reason is not too difficult to comprehend. In online shopping the technology & interfaces are almost similar from seller to seller. However, since there is no physical meeting place for the shopper & marketer, customer support (service) becomes a crucial differentiating factor.

Every such online shopping site has a 24×7 customer care helpline. But then some of these helplines really makes things uncomplicated, while others need help themselves :-) ! Online sellers like Jabong, Flipkart, Bigbasket, Phoolwala have delighted me, some others have been let-downs. Let me tell you two such poor & good experiences.

Poor First

Bad news must always precede good news, if both have to come together, hence the poor experience first. On one such online seller site called home shop….., I selected a gift that I wished to send to a friend in another city. I checked the delivery areas on the site and it was mentioned all over India. To double-check, I called the 24×7 customer care number and the lady on the other side confirmed that the gift could be shipped to the north-eastern city of India, where my friend resided. After spending about an hour on this much touted online seller, when I finally decided to buy the gift, that I had selected, a message flashed that the product could not be shipped to the city of my choice. I was surprised since both the web & phone confirmations earlier had revealed a different result. I again called the helpline. This time it was some other lady who first took a long time to understand my problem and then her response was so casual that it irked me. She told me in hindi – “aisa ho jata hain Sir, kabhi kabhi aap jo product select karte hain woh kuch shaher mein deliver nahin karte”, meaning that ‘it sometime happens that the product that you select, we cannot deliver it to some cities’. Then I asked her that why did they not reflect this on their website and why did the previous customer care executive confirm the possibility of delivering it to the same city? To this she again said very casually – “aisa ho jata hain, Sir”, again meaning ‘this sometime happens, Sir’. I was feeling as if I was an idiot that I could not understand this simple rationale. Idiot I must be, for I should have guessed the ‘chalta hain…’ culture is indigenous! And anyways Katju has stamped it that this country does not have 3 but many more idiots! I abandoned my shopping there itself.

The Jabong Experience

Ok! Now the good, rather the great one! After giving-up on the earlier seller, I entered Jabong for the first time, suggested by a colleague. I followed the similar process, selected a product, confirmed the delivery areas and then tried to purchase the same. I could not successfully place the order at the first-go since I has missed clicking on a small check-box that would segregate my shipping & billing address. I did not realize this till I called their customer care number. My call was answered by a lady who later turned-out to be the most patient & extra-ordinarily helpful customer care executive that I had ever come-across. She patiently listened to my problem and immediately spotted the cause for my payment not going through! Most other customer care executives, at best, would explain the process and then hang-up. But this lady on the other hand explained me the process and then offered to stay on-line till I completed the whole process. That was so helpful that within minutes, I could complete the whole process and successfully place the order. Not for a single minute, did she express any hurry or irritation at my error. On the contrary she was genuinely supportive and very courteous. Very contrastingly, two days back when I had called the bhartiya rail call center, the executive would wait for me to take a pause & without waiting for me to finish my enquiry would thank me & hang-up. I had to call the rail call center 5 times to get the small bit of information that I was seeking! But here at Jabong, it was superb! If I remember correctly, the name of the Jabong executive was Kanika Mehta. When I gave the feedback to her supervisor Ritu, she told me that Kanika was amongst the star performers and my appreciation was her hat-trick for the day!

Why Jabong rocks?

What would make the home shop...... customer care executive respond so nonchalantly and the Jabong executive respond with so much empathy & warmth? While this could be easily dismissed as being encountering two different individuals, the truth may not be so! My previous encounters with home shop...... has not been very good. Besides, there is ample data with me (considering that I am shopping online quite often, additionally I speak to a lot of my acquaintances who are regular online shoppers) to show that certain online sellers just do not get it, while others simply rock! Isn’t the same true with physical sellers as well?

The difference is not the individuals but the culture that prevails in these two organizations. While one is regressive and lacks cohesion & engagement, the other is progressive & engaging. The result - employees start behaving differently. I strongly believe that the ecosystem has a great influence on the behavior. In this case the organizational ecosystem cultures are impacting employee behaviours differently.

The point is…

External engagement (with customers) is a function of the internal engagement (with employees); and the strong determinant of the internal engagement is the organizational ecosystems’ culture.

Need I emphasize more? Anyways I am definitely going back to Jabong, the next time I think online shopping!