Assume you are running a brick-n-mortar business selling some product/service. And doing pretty good too because you happen to be a monopoly, being the only company doing that business in the whole country. People flock to you to buy the product and wait hours in the queue to avail the service.
Being a monopoly and given that the possibility of competition emerging in the near future is nil, you can afford to continue as-is, without bothering about spending time/effort/money to make life easier for your customers. But some forward-thinking guys working in your organisation take the effort to bring your business online, so that customers can avail your service from home, work or practically anywhere in the world, requiring only a PC and internet connection.
As expected, this becomes a hit with the customers as they do not need to spend long hours standing in queues. And inspite of the extra Rs.10 charged by you, this option makes lots of sense for them in terms of time and effort saved. The service is zero-risk for your organisation also because payment is either via Debit or Credit cards.
Now, if this were a logically thinking progressive organisation, they would come up with loyalty plans for customers who use this service a lot. Maybe in the form of points for every purchase, which could be redeemed for some gifts or so. Ofcourse, being a monopoly, there really is no need to have programmes for loyalty because the customer does not have any other option than your organisation.
So, even if we assume that you don't provide any frequent-user programmes, will you dissuade a user from making as many purchases as he or she deems fit and requires ? I am 100% sure that no organisation led by level-headed people would even think this way. But then government organisations are a breed apart. No wonder they are bloated with personnel and low on efficiency, which finally leads to their ending in the red.
Being a very frequent traveller with the Indian Railways, I was excited when they setup online ticket booking/reservation. No more going to the booking office and standing in line for hours to book a ticket. I could book my tickets in minutes from home / work. However, I was in for a shock today, when I tried to book a ticket on their site. The error message I got was :
Note : You are Permitted only 10 transactions per month, and you have exhausted them. Please use other services.
Basically, since I booked 10 tickets this month, I cannot book any more. How dumb can the guy be who came up with this restriction ? I am paying money to book tickets for my travel requirement, which is legitimate in all ways you look at it. But somehow some bird-brain decided that the limit should be pegged at 10 tickets a month. Instead of trying to come up with ideas that increase revenue, they want to reduce sales.
Ofcourse, there is no such restriction for those that book tickets at the booking counters - they can book as many tickets as they want. And also lest someone wonders whether this is to prevent black-marketing of tickets, that also cannot be the reason because while booking tickets you need to give your ID details and the same ID would be verified when you travel. So, it is not like I can book a ticket and sell it to someone at a premium.
So, what do I do when faced with such a stupid stumbling block ? Since I really need to book that ticket and can't wait till the month of November rolls in, I just open a new online booking a/c in my wife's name and go book the tickets.
I don't expect them to reward me for being a frequent traveller. But is it too much to expect them to not create unnecessary stumbling blocks ? But does this surprise me ? Naah, government enterprises are capable of much more stupidity and customer-unfriendly behaviour.
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