Sunday 12 October 2014

An open letter to the guy who wrote an "open letter to flipkart and to India’s assholes"


Hi

Let’s admit it, Flipkart's "The Big Billion Day" was a disaster. It left me disappointed and enraged. But then Flipkart did something that managed to reduce my anger by a considerable amount: an open apology to all its consumers.

Everyone makes mistakes, it takes balls to accept it and apologize.

As a customer, one might or might not choose to accept the apology. That’s left to one’s discretion, and rightfully so.

End of Story.



I choose to write on the topic, not to endorse or demean any brand; be it flipkart, amazon or snapdeal.

I write this in refute to an article which some of my friends have shared on facebook; it goes by the following name: Open letter to flipkart and to India’s assholes

I find this article wrong on so many levels, that I might as well call it: Inception of mistakes.

So, I decided to write “An open letter to the guy who wrote an open letter to flipkart and to India’s assholes”

You Sir, in your title, refer to flipkart’s customers as India’s assholes. I, as an Indian, take immense offence by this statement. But I shall handle this argument later in my article.

Let’s get to the root of the problem. Flipkart promised us, the customers, big offers, discounts and more.

Did we ask for it? No.

Flipkart fails to deliver what they had promised.

Do we have the right to be mad? Yes (In BOLD, Italics and Underline).  

Do we have the right to vent our anger on social media? Yes.

Why you ask?

Jeff Bezos’s answer: "You know, if you make an customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us."

You ask us “How many of you (read the customer) have a computer science degree? How many of us even know what a server is?”

I never knew customers needed a degree in a particular engineering discipline to buy a product of their choice. And, if I knew how a server works and the know-how of the business, I would be flipkart’s competition, not its customer.

You also ask us “Do you know how difficult is to set up a company with 6000 people which is constantly expanding?”

No we don’t. And we don’t need to know it either.

Customer are not obliged to buy from companies who have so and so number of employees and who are expanding constantly, customers buy from companies which delivers good value at affordable prices. Period. 

Bottom-line: Flipkart was the one who promised us goods deals, they are the ones who should be having a computer degree (they = the technical team of flipkart), they are the ones who need to get their servers right. Not the customers.

No offence flipkart, I am just trying to get some sense into a moron here.

You say, flipkart is fighting a tough battle against the biggies like Amazon. Point taken and we appreciate it. But I fail to see how this is an excuse to make mistakes. 

Every company has its own challenges, so do you suggest that customers stop complaining about all the companies which have challenges? 

***

Thanks for confirming that you don’t work for flipkart, because if you were, it would have been such a disgrace to the company. A company which values its customers can not have an employee who calls its customers assholes. 

You ask Indians to stop trying to get a freebee just once. This brings me back to the title of your article.

How dare you use the term “India’s assholes”!!!  

I will try not to be emotional while addressing how wrong this term is.

Let’s be logical; any human being is tempted by low prices. It’s not a quality exclusive to Indians. It’s a human tendency for god sake. Ever heard of “elasticity of demand”? If only you had paid more attention in your economics class!

Giving discounts is just a medium to increase sales. That is the main intentions of having sales promotions in the first place. And the last time I checked, sales promotions happen in every country.

So if you call us assholes just because we (Indians) are attracted by heavy discounts. You, Sir, cannot be more wrong.

You ask us to imagine if Dominos comes up with a campaign “Ten Minutes Nahi to Free”. Yes, we all will jump over the offer. Because that is exactly what Dominos wants us to do. They just have to make sure they stand by their promise.

This is not the first time a company’s promotional offer has back-fired, we have seen a very recent example in Air India. We all know what happened when they were selling the tickets for a price as less as INR 100. Their servers went kaput. 

Considering this as an example or benchmark, Flipkart should have done its forecasts a little more meticulously. 
 
There is only one rule in today’s world: “If you can’t take the heat, don’t tickle the dragon

You say that in battle of flipkart and amazon, you are rooting for the home team. I, on the other hand, am rooting for the better team. And the better company is always the company which values customer complaints and takes it as a constructive feedback, an inspiration to perform better in the days to come. 

I wish all the best to flipkart for their future endeavors.

yours sincerely,
a customer of flipkart

***
an art, by
Shashank