Do we know our customers?

My friend is a car buff. His office was in one of the swanky new buildings in Gurugram in the National Capital Region. On some afternoons he would stroll into a German luxury car br­and’s showroom, which was, very conveni­en­tly, located on the ground floor of his office building. He got to know the showroom manager and on some days, they spent time chatt­ing about the latest model to be la­­u­nched, high-tech features, new features and accessories. The sho­w­room manager also shared int­eresting customer stories with my friend since he, too, was in ma­rketing. This is one such story.

The showroom had just opened that morning and in walked a tall, well-built person dressed in a clean kurta and dhoti. He wanted to take the top-end car, an SUV, for a test drive. The showroom executive was not sure what this person was doing in a luxury car showroom and tried dissuading him from taking a test drive. Who knows what may happen? The argument continued till it caught the attention of the manager. The manager, a veteran, knew that the situation was spinning out of control. He stepped in with a polite comment, “Sir, this is a very expensive car and test drives are given only on prior appointment.” The request was that the customer should “book” a test drive and not walk in and demand one.

The moot point is that if the very same customer was dressed in a western attire or a business suit, chances are he would have been offered a test drive the moment he demanded one. Well, the story takes a nasty turn now. No, not what you would imagine.

The dhoti-clad six-footer was not one to be intimidated by the suit-clad showroom manager. He insisted that he wanted a test drive and as the manager gawked, he pulled out several wads of Rs 2,000 notes and plonked them on the table, almost saying, “You think I can’t afford to buy the car; look what I am carrying around, a few lakh rupees as loose change.”

The test drive happened and a few days later, the same person was the proud owner of this marque German car.

My friend and his showroom manager friend discussed the challenges of evaluating a prospect as he or she walks into the showroom. This is all the more true in some markets where huge wealth has been showered on people with landholdings that get converted from agricultural land to industrial or residential land. With many 20-somethings becoming crorepatis, thanks to the startup boom, the person negotiating on the purchase of a Rs 3 crore apartment may look like a schoolkid. And may get the brush-off.

What is true for a luxury brand may also be true in a jewellery showroom or a durables showroom. In the article “Fighting Bias on the Front Lines” (Harvard Business Review, Nov­ember–December 2021), the authors, Alex­an­dra C Feldberg and Tami Kim, point out how companies are increasingly suffering reputational damage and lost business because of discriminatory customer service practices. In the US, companies like Cracker Barrel and JPMorgan Chase have been pen­alised for discriminating against Black and Hispanic customers.

How to avoid this bias?

Feldberg and Kim say that companies have to be sensitive to the changing profile of customers by having more conversations, conducting experiments and digging into data. Are there any biases that need to be fixed? What should be done in the case of a complaint? How empowered are the frontline staff to take care of a customer complaint (the book Moment of Truth is a classic in this regard). They suggest that to curb bias among frontline customer service employees, there is a need to sensitise them to the changing demographics and also set standards for customer interactions. To this I may add that even your own hiring practices could embrace diversity more vigorously. It is a challenge to overcome in-built biases, but given the right stimulus, it can be done.

What may be true of the way Black and Hispanic customers are handled in the US may be true to other demographic, ethnic and religious groups in our part of the world. Many a young car sales executive has missed a sale by asking a young woman who walks in to buy a car: “Will you be coming tomorrow with your husband or dad to finalise the model?” And luxury German brands are well advised not to underestimate a dhoti-clad gentleman!

The writer is a best-selling author, independent brand coach and founder Brand-Building.com; he can be reached at ambimgp@brand-building.com