The essence of running a good business lies in empathizing with the customer and understanding his pain or pleasure points. Different people have different requirements and so you need to know your customers well enough. Sometime it pains me to see insolent businesses who treat their customers like shit. These businesses deserve to go bankrupt if they cannot give the respect the customers situation. On the other hand it is a delight to see when businesses actually take care of the situation the customers are in and make amends to their ways in order to ease the customers' pain.
I believe that it doesn't take a lot to draw this point on your customer that your business cares.
A recent example is the way in which two of India's biggest private bank ICICI and HDFC have created online interface. The above image is the virtual keyboard of HDFC bank online account.The image posted below is typical of ICICIs virtual keyboard.
And mind you, this keyboard configuration keeps changing everytime you login. Being a customer of both these banks I was trying to figure out one day why do these immecable banks have different approaches towards somethings as simple as a virtual key board.
The virtual keyboard of HDFC is the standard qwerty keyboard which rings the familiarity of the normal keboard except that you use a mouse to punch alphabets. On the hand ICICI has the dynamic keyboard where the keys move from one place to another every time you login. So why so much of a difference over something that has become so mundane. I guess someone at ICICI did a through study of user habits before arriving at keyboard structure.
And mind you, this keyboard configuration keeps changing everytime you login. Being a customer of both these banks I was trying to figure out one day why do these immecable banks have different approaches towards somethings as simple as a virtual key board.The virtual keyboard of HDFC is the standard qwerty keyboard which rings the familiarity of the normal keboard except that you use a mouse to punch alphabets. On the hand ICICI has the dynamic keyboard where the keys move from one place to another every time you login. So why so much of a difference over something that has become so mundane. I guess someone at ICICI did a through study of user habits before arriving at keyboard structure.
Most of the users of online accounts check their accounts from office or cafe where you have a reliable internet connection. But both of these places have the problem of pests who keep staring at your screen making you uncomfortable at times.
The virtual keyboard made the sites more secure towards password threats through the internet, but at the same times it makes the user vulnerable to people who are around him, who don't feel the moral obligation to let others have their privacy. You will find suspicious colleagues in office who would like to have a glance at your screen and peeping toms in cybercafes openly staring who will not stop staring unless you ask them to.
Aakhir aankhein to bhagwan ne di hai. Hum to sirf dekh rahe the.
Now I don't think people at HDFC would have thought of such kind of inconvenience to the customer. But it was a stroke of genius that hit ICICI which came up with such an idea. It goes to show why ICICI is No. 1 and HDFC No. 2. I am sure it would'nt have taken ICICI anymore money than HDFC to develop that interface, but even in those simple matters ICICI took the lead. It goes to show that you just need to let your customers know that they are the king. And they surely will reciprocate.
Aakhir aankhein to bhagwan ne di hai. Hum to sirf dekh rahe the.
Now I don't think people at HDFC would have thought of such kind of inconvenience to the customer. But it was a stroke of genius that hit ICICI which came up with such an idea. It goes to show why ICICI is No. 1 and HDFC No. 2. I am sure it would'nt have taken ICICI anymore money than HDFC to develop that interface, but even in those simple matters ICICI took the lead. It goes to show that you just need to let your customers know that they are the king. And they surely will reciprocate.
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