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<\/p>\nWhen I used to live in India in Pune, India until a few months ago, I had faced a tough time getting a broadband connection at my home in Kalyaninagar. Around six months ago, I had written a letter to a magazine about my experience. I am giving below an extract from this letter.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I recently relocated to London, where I live in the Docklands area.<\/p>\n
When I saw a spate of ads from different broadband providers (Sky, BT, Virgin-NTL, Tiscali and AOL, to new a few), I assumed that the customer would be king in such a competitive market.<\/p>\n
Alas, that is not to be! From connections not provided for months on end, to days of downtime, I’ve already heard many horror stories during my short stay of just over a month.<\/p>\n
Which made me really wonder how much of a king the customer is in the broadband market.<\/p>\n
After I went through the process of opening my bank account, I’m beginning to wonder if the customer is king in any market!<\/p>\n
I first went to the branch of a Global Top 5 bank situated near its EMEA headquarters in Canary Wharf. Citing shortage of manpower, the customer relations representative told me they were no longer able to open accounts in 2-3 days, it would take at least one week. After a week, there was no sign of my account being opened. My telephone calls and emails to the customer service representative went unanswered. I gave up after waiting for more than two weeks and went to the Canary Wharf branch of another Global Top 5 bank situated at the basement of its global headquarters. I was pleasantly surprised to walk out of the branch in 45 minutes with my account details and the welcome pack!<\/p>\n
I was shocked at the drastically different service levels between these two banks, both of whom belong to the club of top five banks in the world. I was immediately reminded about my observation around a year ago when I used to live in India: the call center hours of a leading Indian private bank were actually shorter than the branch timings of another leading private bank (which had virtually 24\/7 call center operations)! Both these banks are amongst India’s Top 3 private banks.<\/p>\n
Free market practitioners forever hold that the customer is king in a competitive market. According to them, competition will force all players to offer similar products and similar service levels at similar price points, or otherwise face extinction.<\/p>\n
With my aforesaid experience with telecom companies and banks, not just in emerging markets but also in first world economies, I wonder how true this notion is.<\/p>\n
Maybe, there’s nothing wrong with free markets … only the notion that customer is king is flawed? or<\/p>\n
Maybe, the customer really doesn’t want to be king?<\/p>\n
You tell me!<\/p>\n