Remember the time when most of us used the word ‘government outfit’ to explain why any place ran like it has Rip Van Winkle as CEO? Especially the khadi bhandars, and the state handicraft emporia, and suchlike. Today, for various reasons, it is not at all a given that a government-run place will give customer service the ignore. Many of them do a great job in sourcing things, displaying them, and selling them with a smile. The new perpetrators of crimes against customers are, at the Pune end of things at least, most franchises. Oh, not only is the customer here not king (or queen), he (or she) is treated most times as an annoying nuisance to be either discouraged from buying anything or served shoddy merchandise/sloppy food/half-hearted services.
When I first encountered this (at a well-known eatery franchise of a famous Mumbai steak house), I was rather shocked and wrote off hotly here and there. Three years down the line, I have become much older and way wiser. Franchisees of bigger-city restaurants, salad bars, supermarkets & fast food places, courier companies, bookstores…you name it…most are doing such a fantastically bad job in our city. I wonder how the franchiser doesn’t care about his name, goodwill and investment built over decades, being poured freely down the drain at the Pune end of things.
A few examples will suffice…I’m sure readers will have many of their own. A well known food store opens a franchise here. Their cold storage section, after the first few clean and virtuous weeks, is a sight that the PMC might want to examine. No ventilation, badly functioning refrigeration and air-conditioning, rivulets of melted ice and blood (of fish and fowl) running across the floor, and a welcome dance by 16 shapely flies. On top of it, when you invoke the name of the famous food store that is their Father Franchiser, the man inside this disaster zone says brashly: “Flies are everywhere ma’am; and the floor will get cleaned in the afternoon.”
I walk into a big clothes store, frachisee of another biggy from a big city. Same story. Not flies and yukky floors here, but empty shelves, gum chewing staff that is busy talking to each other, stopping only to shout gaily to you: “Out of stock ma’am!”
And so it is with the bookstores (whose staff was till yesterday maybe working at the clothes store) where you draw blank looks if you ask for anything beyond an ageing diva’s books. Unawareness and who-cares-ness rules here too.
Courier companies, bless their confused hearts and souls, simply don’t reach their destination at the Pune end. They don’t think its part of the job. And if you follow this up to its bitter end, you’re likely to hear: there was no one in your house, or your address is very difficult. If you ask why they couldn’t call you from the phone number on your packet, they shout out loudly, laughingly, to someone else in the room in Marathi or Hindi, the rough translation being: “Hey somebody take the phone and talk to this ill-tempered aunty who’s asking all these questions.” The person at the other end laughs riotously back and advises: “Array rakh dey na phone nichay, idiot.”
I kid you not, these are all franchises of huge national and international brand name companies.
I didn’t go to B-school and I don’t come from a business family, so maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but isn’t franchising a system of marketing and distribution in which an independent businessperson, for a fee, is granted the right to market the goods or services of the franchisor according to the established, successful standards and practices of the franchisor? Ideally, I am told, the franchise system forms the perfect marriage between big business and the small businessperson. The franchisor obtains new sources of expansion capital, new distribution markets, and self-motivated vendors of its products, while the franchisee acquires the products, expertise, stability, and marketing savvy usually available only to larger enterprises. “Both franchisor and franchisee have a strong vested interest in the success of the brand and keeping their customers happy,” I read somewhere.
Kuch gadbad hai. Maybe it’s the steep climb up the Ghats, but something seems to be falling by the wayside. High time the big ticket franchisors made their way up to Pune and took a look at what their franchisees are really up to, don’t you think?
When I first encountered this (at a well-known eatery franchise of a famous Mumbai steak house), I was rather shocked and wrote off hotly here and there. Three years down the line, I have become much older and way wiser. Franchisees of bigger-city restaurants, salad bars, supermarkets & fast food places, courier companies, bookstores…you name it…most are doing such a fantastically bad job in our city. I wonder how the franchiser doesn’t care about his name, goodwill and investment built over decades, being poured freely down the drain at the Pune end of things.
A few examples will suffice…I’m sure readers will have many of their own. A well known food store opens a franchise here. Their cold storage section, after the first few clean and virtuous weeks, is a sight that the PMC might want to examine. No ventilation, badly functioning refrigeration and air-conditioning, rivulets of melted ice and blood (of fish and fowl) running across the floor, and a welcome dance by 16 shapely flies. On top of it, when you invoke the name of the famous food store that is their Father Franchiser, the man inside this disaster zone says brashly: “Flies are everywhere ma’am; and the floor will get cleaned in the afternoon.”
I walk into a big clothes store, frachisee of another biggy from a big city. Same story. Not flies and yukky floors here, but empty shelves, gum chewing staff that is busy talking to each other, stopping only to shout gaily to you: “Out of stock ma’am!”
And so it is with the bookstores (whose staff was till yesterday maybe working at the clothes store) where you draw blank looks if you ask for anything beyond an ageing diva’s books. Unawareness and who-cares-ness rules here too.
Courier companies, bless their confused hearts and souls, simply don’t reach their destination at the Pune end. They don’t think its part of the job. And if you follow this up to its bitter end, you’re likely to hear: there was no one in your house, or your address is very difficult. If you ask why they couldn’t call you from the phone number on your packet, they shout out loudly, laughingly, to someone else in the room in Marathi or Hindi, the rough translation being: “Hey somebody take the phone and talk to this ill-tempered aunty who’s asking all these questions.” The person at the other end laughs riotously back and advises: “Array rakh dey na phone nichay, idiot.”
I kid you not, these are all franchises of huge national and international brand name companies.
I didn’t go to B-school and I don’t come from a business family, so maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but isn’t franchising a system of marketing and distribution in which an independent businessperson, for a fee, is granted the right to market the goods or services of the franchisor according to the established, successful standards and practices of the franchisor? Ideally, I am told, the franchise system forms the perfect marriage between big business and the small businessperson. The franchisor obtains new sources of expansion capital, new distribution markets, and self-motivated vendors of its products, while the franchisee acquires the products, expertise, stability, and marketing savvy usually available only to larger enterprises. “Both franchisor and franchisee have a strong vested interest in the success of the brand and keeping their customers happy,” I read somewhere.
Kuch gadbad hai. Maybe it’s the steep climb up the Ghats, but something seems to be falling by the wayside. High time the big ticket franchisors made their way up to Pune and took a look at what their franchisees are really up to, don’t you think?
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