The Taste of Customer Delight
Customer delight. Customer loyalty. These are the elusive elixir of business growth. Everyone craves it. Experts write books about it. Businesses spend millions of dollars every year to try and form emotional bonds with their customers. Yet what is customer delight after all? What, once you strip out the jargon, is the secret to true loyalty?
Let me take you to the streets of Kolkata as they were 20 years ago (or rather of Calcutta as it was known back then). Busy, chaotic, frenetic. The RN Mukherjee Road-Labazar area sat right at the heart of it; a busy office district lined by office complexes on all sides. And food vendors. Hundreds of food vendors, offering a selection from all across India and indeed from outside India (albeit heavily Indianised). Crispy dosas and fluffy idlis, litti chokha, egg rolls, chicken rolls, pav bhaji, bread omelette, kadhi chawal, fish rice plate, rajma chawal, chicken biryani, veg biryani. If you could imagine it, you could get it. Indeed even now 20 years later, I only have to close my eyes to be transported back to those sights, sounds and smells.
By mid morning, even as the offices would settle down into their daily routine, the vendors would get busy with prepping for the insanity that was every lunch hour. A mad cacophony of thousands of people spilling over onto the street and demanding to be fed right there, right then. Fierce competition every way you look. Disappoint them and there are 20 other vendors within a 2 minute walk they can take their business to. Everything must be hyper efficient, hyper-effective. The right order. With the right customisations. To the right person. Each time, every time. Yet no computers, no trained staff. A vendor might be one man with 2 helpers. Depending on nothing but muscle memory and sheer will power to power through.
Of course, it was not just the lunch hour. By late afternoon, around 3.30 pm, a second wave would start to gather; this time for afternoon tea and snack. Deep fried shingaras (samosas), jhaal muri, beguni, phuchka, chai, coffee or chafee (Chai + Coffee).
Altogether I reckon the street food vendors fed tens of thousands each day. A godsend not just for office goers but also for taxi drivers, business people, tourists and so many more. Bearing the gift of freshly cooked and absolutely pocket friendly food.
Anyway, as you can guess, I was one of those teeming masses turning frequently to the vendors for my lunch. I was very early in my professional life, still at an age where the exotic appeal of street food casually brushed aside any concerns about healthy eating.
Amongst all the stalls, there was one in particular that was my favourite. It served a style of chow mein that I absolutely loved. Prepared in a broad wok placed on a roaring fire, it featured noodles, some soya sauce, a little vinegar and two eggs scrambled vigorously, garnished with chopped onions and some chillies. It also usually came with juliennes of carrot, capsicum and cabbage but these I did not like and would ask the vendor to leave out. I also loved my chow mein to be served with a drizzle of chopped green chillies marinated in vinegar. Over time, the shorthand for how I liked my chow mein became “White anda (egg)” chow mein. It was not an item you could find on the menu; it was just a shared secret between us. If I asked for White anda chow mein, I would always get my perfectly customised chow mein.
Not only that, it soon became that I did not even need to place my order. I just needed to come and stand in the crowd and the vendor, as if by telepathy, would register my presence and get working on my white anda chow mein. I say telepathy because come lunch time, he literally had no time to look up. He would be working feverishly, head down, trying to churn out as many dishes as fast as possible. Yet he had developed this ability to register the presence of his repeat customers and serve them, without missing a beat.
Looking back, the seamlessness of it all was a thing of wonder. There I would be, just one more face in the crowd, yet somehow without raising his head, he was able to register my (unstated!) order, prioritise it within his order list, execute it perfectly and then extend his arm over the heads of other customers to get my food across to me within bare minutes after I showed up. He wouldn’t even break his flow to accept payment; he had an assistant who would make sure that the payment for every order was neatly captured.
If this is not customisation, if this is not customer delight, if this is not radical efficiency then what is?
Yet the story doesn’t end here. There is a further level of awesomeness that I need to share.
In 2006, I moved to London after my marriage and got busy with my new life, memories of street food largely forgotten but for the occasional pang of craving. A few years later though, I was back in Kolkata with my husband to visit my parents. I took my husband to my office area and to my favourite chow mein stall. It was still right there at the same place, though not as frenetic as in my memories, since I was visiting after the lunch hour rush had ebbed. The only change I could see is that by now the vendor had added a range of Maggi noodle based items to the menu. A sign of changing times, I guess: fast food for a faster generation.
I went up to the stall, not expecting any special treatment. It had been quite a few years already. One of his assistants came up to ask me about our order. But it was not necessary. He had noticed my arrival. He turned up the flame, poured oil into the wok, added a handful of boiled noodles; cracked two eggs in an aluminium mug, a big pinch of salt, some chopped onion and chillies and poured it over on the noodles in the wok. Served the hot steaming chow mein on a plate and asked one of his assistants to pass him the bowl of chillies in vinegar. He handed over the plate to his assistant and lifted his head and with a nod told him “ Madam ke liye ek white anda”
I was utterly bowled over, emotional even. Years more have passed and I have eaten at many fine places; even Michelin starred places. Yet the memory of White anda chow mein has not diminished. When I think of excellence in customer service, I am always transported back to the vendor of RN Mukherjee road.