Many a time, we hear about organizations that claim to be “the most customer-centric company on this planet”, “putting the customer first” et cetera et cetera. But, have we analyzed the key components of a truly customer-centric business firm? Now that’s some food for thought, isn’t it?
Right before the lockdown, we explored a collaborative partnership with one of India’s leading multinational IT firms. They reached out to us with a requirement that was quite novel to us that got us thinking long and hard for a satisfactory solution.
The firm - housing nearly 10,000 employees in Bengaluru - had its office premises in a sprawling software technological park campus. Within their office premises was a substantial cafeteria space. The firm had an ongoing partnership with a reputed caterer for their employees’ lunch program. However, due to the monotony of the showcased food options, the traction to the cafeteria was well below the expected numbers. With quite a large space reserved for the cafeteria, the management was deeply concerned about the abysmal utilization of the space and the lack of substantial traction for their lunch program and was passively on the search for capable replacements.
It was then that they reached out to the Tuck Stand team. After a few initial meetings, followed by some extensive discussions with their management and a couple of visits down to the location of their cafeteria, we understood their requirements in detail, confirmed the same with them, and started ideating around possible action points. We initially thought about starting off with a popup at the office premises and deliberated around the variety and quantity of options that would have to be showcased. As we were brainstorming, it was evident that we had to come up with a highly tailored solution that successfully tackled both aspects of their requirement: space utilization and traction.
It was then that we started thinking about on-boarding multiple partners to directly showcase a curated variety of their premium food options to the employees in the office premises. The partners would rotate their presence based on a predetermined, mutually-acceptable schedule. We also agreed that the partners could showcase curated options at special, and affordable price points that were exclusive and specific to the location. This model could potentially solve both concerns put forth by the customer while ensuring there would be no compromises with respect to the variety and diversity of food options that were made available to the employees.
As things progressed, we could also look to showcase a number of alternative options and brands, apart from the general, mainstream ones, to improve the assortment of options that would be provided; it was an everybody-wins scenario. We then quickly conveyed this proposition to our client and requested them to provide us with an expected time frame to get started with this model, apart from requesting their thoughts, feedback, and suggestions regarding this proposal. We also suggested that, by the time these aspects were finalized, we could go ahead and start off with a couple of our pop-ups in the building, once to thrice a week during workdays, to gauge the traction for the options we provide and to understand the building’s choices and preferences, and requested for a time frame around this, too.
The entire plan was put on hold considering the pandemic and the lockdown situation. But considering the approach and the innovation that we brought to the table, the company has not canceled or shelved the project but has been in constant touch with us to ensure that we see this through sooner than later. This association provides an opportunity for us - as well as for our partners - to enter into uncharted territory. This partnership just about perfectly explains our endeavor to go to any extent to provide our customers with services that add value to them, in an effort to ensure that they are happy, satisfied and keep coming back to us for new avenues to explore our relationship.