It’s time for vacation and we decided to visit Thailand for a relaxed vacation topped with shopping benefits. We started the trip with Family.. 7 members on the tour and the trip took off well, though after a 5 hours delayed flight which spoiled our leaving-for-a-tour excitement. The taxi driver that dropped us from home to airport was a real service person. On his four wheels he ensured his customers were entertained by his talks, from the words mixed with tobacco, and his intriguing attitude of knowing everything about his customers on board. When asked by me for putting on radio, an excuse to keep him shut as I was not at all interested in a talk with a stranger at that time, he declared his radio doesn’t work, but provided an instant solution to connect our phone by USB to his system and listen to songs we like, pleasing tactic for customers. When my husband declined to not connect his phone with his system reasoning draining battery of phone,he was very quick on responding with a charger he had and said “Sir, charger bhi hai mere paas, aap to bas gaane suno aur relax karo” (Sir, I also have a charger, you listen your favourite songs and relax).I chuckled.

He taught me a lesson of customer centricity. He taught me that serving your customer in a right way leaves an unforgettable impression on them. And it’s an art of delivering such service to your customer when service is a growing and highly competitive market. It is not a product that your customer keeps with you and remembers but your timely service which is highly perishable. Enthusiasm and interest in this field makes the person’s service memorable, undoubtedly. Be it a restaurant waiter, teacher, tour guide or as in my story a taxi driver.

I would like to summarise the moral of the story with lines I came through recently – “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth ” by Muhammad Ali