...Lekin aap to santusht hain!

I was once watching a children's quiz on a regional channel. The participants were all in their early teens or younger, and one of the rounds involved asking the children the spelling of some common word. Up came an eager-looking kid who gave the spellings of words such as “excellent” excellently, though he did stumble at words like “hazardous”. Finally he was asked the spelling of the word “vacuum”. He seemed to be confused, but ended up answering “vacyum”. The correct answer, as the quiz master and the on-screen display said, was “vaccum”.

That reminded me of a quiz I had participated in many years ago. It was held on the eve of independence day, and students from 5^th to 10^th class were all participating. At the end there was a tie between our team and another, and the tie-breaker was the question: who was the iron man of India. We hit the buzzer and answered confidently, “Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel”, only to be told it was Lokmanya Tilak. All participants from the 5^th to the 10^th claimed it was Patel, but the quiz master (mistress?) batted for Tilak.

Of course, what had happened was that the quiz master had probably selected the questions from one of the handy quiz books and had by mistake, perhaps copied question 141 and answer 142. Or maybe the quiz book itself was wrong; because certainly every single book of history says it was Patel, not Tilak. And anyone familar with school textbook history would know why.

Now look at it in a bigger context – people conducting a spelling competition where the organizers don't know spellings themselves and their knowledge of Patel is weaker than those they are testing. “Vacuum” is an easy word to spell wrong, but if the organizers had just typed the word into MS Word, they would have seen a red underline below it. That was the bare minimum that was required to ensure quality for the quiz. The other quiz organizer could have referred to any history textbook before asking questions, but she didn't. And when all students from 5^th to 10^th class were saying unanimously that it was Patel, perhaps a fact check was in order. But that never happened. It was as though the allegation of inaccuracy did not even merit a verification! It sounds funny, a kind of “life is unfair” moment, and that's perfectly acceptable.

What is not acceptable though, is the total negligence of quality. A quiz that tests others should be first and foremost, impeccable in its own general knowledge and diction. But these quizzes weren't, and this disregard for quality isn't confined to quizzes. It is part of almost every dealing we've had in our lives.

Service for any internet provider is an example. In my own dealings with three prominent companies, I've seen that none of them have the slightest idea of the technicalities involved. Running my system on Linux, I was facing some problems which I tried to resolve with one of them. As it turned out, the tech support guys said they had no idea about Linux. Well, the moment a networking guy tells you he doesn't know Linux or Unix, you can be sure he's a fake. Networking is taught on these operating systems, yet people running an internet service have no idea about it. But as I later found out, I had been expecting too much from the company, because as it turned out, the customer service of the same company had no idea how their own company billed its customers – the very customers they were supposed to be servicing!

Be honest: when was the last time any Indian company floored you, as a customer, with its sheer service quality? Look all around you, from your internet to your cable TV provider, your telephone service to your passport agent, anywhere. When was the last time you could book a ticket online without a glitch? When was the last time you faced a technical problem that was solved in one call?

Is it because we Indians can't provide good service? No, that is simply not true. Good service is the reason why companies like Dell and HP and McAfee put their call centers in India. It is documented for many companies that technical and customer service available in Indian call centers is better qualitatively than support provided in China or Philippines or sometimes even the home country of the company itself! My own friends in some international call centers told me that if they were as clueless as the customer care in Indian companies, they would be fired from their jobs.

Then why are we unable to provide the same world-class service to our own people? In fact, why is world-class different from the class offered to fellow Indians?

The free market should have solved this problem. The amount of choices we have today is drastically greater than the choices we had even 5 years ago. This should have meant, in theory, that market forces would have favored those companies that provided good service. But theory hasn't worked.

There was a recent ad by Shahrukh Khan which I think has the answer. Khan talks about how cable operators provide grainy coverage, fewer channels and paltry service, and he taunts the viewer sardonically, “... lekin aap to, santusht hain,” (but you guys are still satisfied). In other words, we are easily satisfied with even the poorest service that we get. We don't produce quality for our own countrymen because our own countrymen never demand it. We are, as Khan puts it so brilliantly, “santusht” with poor quality.

Which is why we have ATMs that don't work for a whole month in a city like Bangalore. We have customer support who don't know when, how and where a bill payment must be made. We have cable operators who put their phone off the hook because they say too many people complain about their services. And we have quiz masters not knowing who the iron man of India is or what the spelling of vacuum is.

The same ad also suggests a solution: “please, please and please, don't be santusht! Thoda aur wish karo.” Don't be satisfied with poor service. Don't be satisfied with people who don't know what they are doing. Wish for more and ask for more. Demand excellence.

There is a story about a shoemaker who provided the whole town with shoes. But the shoemaker himself, and his family, walked barefoot because he was never able to make shoes for any of them, because they never asked him to make shoes for them. So the question is, do you want to be that shoemaker's family?