An event in life that has changed my way of thinking in a significant way...

There are many events that have changed my way of thinking in a significant way. I would like to mention one such instance that happened when I was working in the Sales & Marketing Division of Mahindra International Ltd, a Joint Venture company between Mahindra & Mahindra, the largest Utility Vehicles manufacturer in India, and International Trucks, USA. I was given the task of understanding the customer expectations of trucks that we were developing for the Indian and Asian markets. For that we had to interact with the truck drivers of various parts of India.

We traveled extensively to parts like Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad etc and interviewed the drivers, owners, small and large fleet owners, and other users from a wide range of industries like Cargo Movers, Petroleum, Frozen Foods, Couriers, Steel, Mining etc. I was very fortunate to have worked in a company that gave us a lot of freedom to learn from real life experience; a company which believed that making mistakes is not a sin.

I was of the impression that developing the most technologically advanced vehicles was the most important thing, and that we could do it sitting inside the company. We had many impressions and ideas that we thought would be so useful for the customers. But when we talked to the customers, especially the truck drivers and others, we were startled to hear that many things that we thought were important to them were not important. Likewise, many things we had ignored were given high importance by them.

In fact many of them, the so called illiterate and not-the-techno-savvy-types came up with great ideas and suggestions that they felt would help us make a better truck than that was available in the market. We realized that they knew much more than we about various trucks and the problems/complaints/defects associated with each company’s trucks, although they expressed those in their own colloquial terms. Many of them took us in their trucks and gave us a real feel of the problems during actual usage. Some of them had made some modifications to their trucks themselves, which was something many engineers in the company could not have even thought of, unless they faced it practically.

We brought along these suggestions back to the company, and our management was very eager to look at each of them very carefully. We had brain-storming sessions with the Research & Development (R&D) teams, and many of those suggestions were implemented. To cut costs, some of the features that the customers felt unimportant were dropped.

The above experience changed my entire view about the importance of customer feedback. I realized that customers are the most important part of a business, the process should start and end with the customers, i.e., we should develop the product keeping customers in mind; quality has to be ensured keeping customers in mind. Same was the case with after-sales-support, warranty policy, pricing, advertising, and every aspect of business. I realized that big ideas might actually come from even the so-called illiterate people. There is nothing that can compensate for the practical knowledge and experience that they had.

This experience changed my thinking significantly. It has taught me the great lesson that we need to listen to the feedback and suggestions of our customers-prospective and existing. We need to open our minds to criticism, complaints about our products because, in this flat and globalized world, constant innovation and improvement is a must. We should be ready to interact with all kinds of people, because, we never know who has a great idea. Since this experience, I make use of every opportunity to interact with as many people as possible.