Here is an experience highlighting importance of People - "P" in Services.
Brief description about the beauty saloon: Anoo's a porch looking beauty parlor in the heart of Bangalore city. The place is right on the main road, in front of Koramangala-Forum. The place appeared to be very nice, although I knew that it will cost me more than the normal barber shop, visited the place with high expectations.
Let us analyze the 7Ps.
• Product: He did the hair cut well. So full marks on this P.
• Price: Very high 300+, soon after looking at the location and price chart, I had very high expectations about the service coming towards me. Because I normally get a good haircut in a friendly environment for Rs.100+, my expectations from this place were naturally high. Remember, price describes the quality of service.
• Place: Very nice connectivity to the place, you have wide road and good porch area. Because they are expecting high profile customers, the location was well set. There was no car parking, but I don't mind, because I had taken 2 wheeler.
• Promotion: More word of mouth marketing is employed rather than advertising, which is fine. Because the road is frequented by lot of people who can afford the service, not much of advertising is needed. In fact, I went there, just by looking at the place on road side.
• Physical evidence: I parked my scooter and went inside. Nicely furnished reception, with fairly good looking front office ladies :) The hair cut chair, mirror setting, was all nice.
• Process: Receptionist greet me well and taken details like, what is the service I am expecting etc... After waiting for five minutes, the barber called me to sit in the chair.
• People: In a place, where you are paying 100s to get hair cut, you expect the barber to be friendly.
1. Note that the barber did not great me and then call, he just called me.
2. I went and sat in the chair, he put a cloth around me, he could have taken a fresh cloth, but he used the one which was used for previous guy, which was little bit wet. So I politely told, take the cloth out and get other one, he asked why? I told it is wet and I have allergy. He started shouting at me, trying to prove that it is not wet. Service guys can not afford to shout at a customer in any situation, particularly when you are charging high premium.
3. In a negative indentation, trying to tease me, he asked can he put water to hair or cut hair without water. I told I do not want my shirt to get wet; bit of water on head is fine. Teasing a customer on his first visit, unacceptable!
4. In spite of my clear instruction, he was wetting my head much similar to the way my mom put water to ground in front of my house every morning. So much of water started flowing on the cloth, making me feel cold. Because of barber's anger customer health is getting affected, no ways any customer will compromise on health every time he goes for hair cut.
5. While shaving, instead of cutting my beard, he hit my chin with that electric machine.
6. Through out the process of cutting hair, barber did not utter a word or smile at least, like an angry young man, he just kept on reducing my head weight. Normally we expect barber to talk nicely and kinda entertain in those 15 minutes.
7. After coming out, I shouted at the receptionist in front of other customers, for all the misconduct the barber did and of course I didn’t want them to call back for any reason, so clearly told I do not want to give them my contact number.
8. The lady did not have enough skills and training for recovery action, so she just let me go although she understood that, I am "Ex-Customer" from now on.
6. Through out the process of cutting hair, barber did not utter a word or smile at least, like an angry young man, he just kept on reducing my head weight. Normally we expect barber to talk nicely and kinda entertain in those 15 minutes.
7. After coming out, I shouted at the receptionist in front of other customers, for all the misconduct the barber did and of course I didn’t want them to call back for any reason, so clearly told I do not want to give them my contact number.
8. The lady did not have enough skills and training for recovery action, so she just let me go although she understood that, I am "Ex-Customer" from now on.
What went wrong?
As we can understand, the first 6 Ps were fine, but the last P-people, just destroyed the entire efforts put by all other Ps together. Had the barber be friendly, kind enough to greet customer, to treat customer like a king, to understand and respect the small concerns of customer or at least, if the receptionist was properly trained to recover, then I would have been a regular customer.
Some times, we need to experience, what is bad, to understand, what we had earlier was much better!
