Ways to improve customer satisfaction for the
Real Estate Industry

I bought a flat in Ferrous in Faridabad. I have been interacting with them for the past 2 years and as a customer I have learnt things which I feel they miss and can improve upon. All of them are generic, so should help in improving Customer Satisfaction for anyone belonging to the Real Estate, provided they are willing to do these small things.

1. If a customer has taken a Construction Linked Plan, make an Excel Sheet for the customer with a breakup on how much each installment would be. Provide this Excel Sheet to the customer and if anything changes in the sheet, provide a new one. I do not believe the company does not maintain such a sheet and if they do, then how much would it cost them to send it to the customer. Zero bucks.
   
2. Send them a monthly update (kind of newsletter every 1st day of the month) on how things are progressing. It gives customer satisfaction and costs Zero Bucks. Sometimes even the news that not much progress has been made but we are on track can satisfy customers.
3. Provide a tentative plan to the customer on when the next installement would be due. It helps the customer to organize their finances. Customer is not generally aware how much time it would take to meet the next milestone for the next installment. For ex. How will I know when the first floor is ready and after how much time 4rd floor would be ready?

Taking Interviews - Part II

In my last blog on Taking Interviews, I had written about few parameters that I use to test out different things in the candidate. In an update, I am sharing a few more new learnings I have had in the past few days:

Stupidity Handling Quotient: Anyone and everyone in this world has been stupid at one time or the other. It becomes very important for the person I am interviewing to have a High Stupidity Handling Quotient. To test it, I act stupid. Sometimes I do not need to :) If I am acting stupid, I would be very interested in seeing the reaction of the other person. Is he / she still smiling and offering me the answers or has the lid blown off? For ex. I will ask them "Tell me the port number on which RADIUS packets are received". Of course I do not expect them to remember it, but if they tell me its easy to find it out in RFC, then they can handle stupids like me :)

Listening Skills: I came across this last week while I was doing a telephonic interview with a candidate and it happened twice in 30 minutes. After asking him a question which he did not know, I explained him the answer. In an over enthusiastic tone, he repeated what I had said, with the only difference that what he said was completely opposite to what I had told him. Now I would have given him the benefit of doubt but it happened again within a few minutes. This was enough to press home the fact that he is not listening properly to the conversation.

Can you fine-tune it before tuning it?

Consider the case where you do not know the frequency of a FM station and you need to find out. What would you do?

Step A: Do automatic tuning
Step B: Do fine tuning to get to the exact frequency

This is the most efficient way of doing it.

But what if you Skip Step A and go off to Step B straight away. In that case, you will get the results but GOD knows when.

So can you fine-tune anything even before tuning it?

My guess would be NO. But you guess it. Managers always have a new trick in their bags. He told one of my colleagues that we will fine-tune the design later. My colleagues reaction was: Boss, when did we tune it in the first place?

Taking Interviews

Taking interviews is an experience in itself. Different companies place different requirements for recruiting candidates. We need to check out different things. The question is: How do we check those?

Here is my guide on how to check out different aspects of the prospective candidates:

Stability: Ask the candidate about his future plans. Whether they want to study further or not is enough for fresh candidates. For ex. if they say they would go for MBA after 2 years, then check your requirements whether two year is an enough interval for them to be helpful to the company. Past record can tell about experienced candidates.

Gets stuck: Keep on increasing the standard of the questions till the candidate gets stuck. For ex. Ask them what is 5 * 5. Then ask them what is 7*7. Then 11*11. Keep on increasing this level till they are unable to answer. Lets say they get stuck when you ask them 59*51. Does the candidate give up without thinking? Do they try something logically like 59*51 = 59*(50+1) = 2950 + 59 = 3009? If they do, then they are a Thumbs Up on this one. They got stuck and they managed to get their way out.

Seek Help and Move forward: Grill them on one of your favorites. For ex. take them out for a treasure hunt where each next stage depends on the answer of the previous. Check how many stages they are able to cross themselves! Once they get stuck, do they remain stuck forever or do they ask for your help? If they do, do they do it immediately without thinking. If yes, Thumbs Down. If not, then give them hints. Are they able to understand the hints and work logically forward. If yes, Thumbs Up.

Team Work: Tell them that they have to answer a question on How much is 11*Z. Z is an input that they require from a team member but the team member is a little slow and thats why your dates are getting slipped? How will they solve this problem?

Confidence: Try and test their skills on how sure they are about what they speak. For ex. Ask them how much is 5*5. If they answer 25, ask them Are you Sure? If they say it with confidence, ask them again. If they are again sure, they are one up. Then look out for a question where they are wrong. For ex. Ask them how much is 9*11. If they answer 98, ask them Are you Sure? If they say it with confidence, then they are Thumbs Down on this one. They would be putting bugs here and there without bothering to ask whats right or wrong. If they rethink, then they are a Thumbs Up on this one.

Communication Skills: Ask them to explain something which they are very comfortable but you are not. If you are able to understand, it means the candidate can explain what he knows well to a person who does not know it. Then ask them to explain a thing they do not know and maybe you know. For ex. Ask them to visualize how Alps look like? If they explain it well, they are a Thumbs Up when it comes to explaining both things they know and things they might not.

Treasure Hunting with the Freshers

I have been involved in training freshers joining my company for the past 3 years. For the past two years, I was doing it in my previous company and this year I am doing it in my current organization. One of the most useful things which I have been able to do with the new freshers is helping them get the basics right. It is very important for them to understand how things flow in a project. For ex. how things flow from specification to design to coding to testing. It is almost like a game of Treasure Hunt where the answer to each question provides a clue to the next step. Without completing the first question, you cannot jump to the next one and this is very important for the freshers to understand. If they do not understand the specification, they cannot understand the design and so on.

Now in most cases it happens that the puzzle has already been solved by some experienced guys who have been playing the Treasure Hunt game for quite a few years now. In these cases, it is important for the freshers to understand how the puzzle was solved.

One thing (both theoretically and practically feasible) which I work on with freshers is to help them map the specifications onto the code with the help of design. It consists of the following steps:

1. Start reading the specifications and give a presentation on it to ensure basics are properly understood
2. Read the design document to understand the clues on how to convert specifications to code.
3. Prepare a document which maps the specification line by line to the code.

In doing so, they understand how everything is linked together and help in finding problems in the existing code helping in getting a better product.

Team Management

How to arrange your team? This is one question which drives all top shots in the industry nuts. There is no SINGLE RIGHT answer to this. Well not really. Actually the ONLY SINGLE RIGHT answer to this is the TEAM MATURITY. But it is normally only there in the wish-list of everyone and never ever in execution.

Before we get into the details, let us understand briefly how most product companies are. A product is made up of parts and the same part can be used in different products. So Product and Part form a N x N matrix between themselves. For ex. Salt, sugar and water are three parts and sweet water + salt water are two products.

Now there are two broad ways of management in a product company:

a) Different Product Owner and Part Owner: We have an expert who knows the exact quantity of sugar that should be mixed in exact quantity of water to get the taste which sells. So this EXACT guy becomes our Product Owner for Sweet Water. He is worried only about quantity and does not spend too much thinking about quality. Quality has to be ensured by the guy from whom this EXACT guy borrows sugar and water from. These guys form the QUALITY guys. Now if a customer comes in the saying water is too sweet, the EXACT guy goes to the SWEET QUALITY guy and breaks loose on him. But it could be that water quantity mixed was less. So this EXACT guy was not REALLY EXACT. He pretended to be EXACT.

HOW CAN THE EXACT GUY DELIVER A QUALITY PRODUCT WITHOUT QUALITY PARTS? He can only if the same QUALITY PARTS are being used in some already proved QUALITY PRODUCT.

WHY WILL THE QUALITY GUYS BELIEVE EXACT GUY IS REALLY EXACT? They will only if the EXACT guy proves it time and again.

b) Same Product Owner and Part Owner: Now there is this ONE guy who knows EXACTLY how much sugar and how much water goes to form SWEET WATER which sells. And this ONE guy knows which QUALITY SUGAR and WATER will get him QUALITY SWEET WATER. Well, this is possible. BUT WHERE IS THIS ONE GUY? Nowhere most probably.

And if he is there somewhere, WHY WOULD OTHERS BELIEVE THAT HE IS THE ONE GUY AND THAT THEY ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING? They will if this ONE guy proves time and again that he is THE ONE GUY.

How to win a proxy battle?

Around 4 years back in my old company, there was a huge hue and cry over the caterer who used to provide lunch to our office. The quality to say the least was pathetic. We all wanted it to change and requested the management for the same. The management decided to conduct a poll. The poll question was:

Please send an E-Mail if you want the caterer changed. No E-Mail would be considered that you are happy with the caterer.

As with any rebellion, there are a few leaders and the rest are followers.

In this case, the leaders of the revolution sent the E-Mail but the followers did not follow as it was not too important a cause.

The caterer continued, the stomach-ache continued BUT the hue and cry died. Only the leaders decided to go and eat outside more often than before.

Managing Relations between a customer and your product they own

I have been thinking about the different management ways which the companies use to manage the relations between a customer and one of the companies product owned by them. I have till now come up with three different ways of management which I call:

• Multi Password Way of Management
  
• Password Way of Management
• Token Way of Management
• Cobbler Way of Management

These ways of management are basically different in the way they relate a product owned by the customer to the customer.

To summarize:

If I go to a cobbler and give him a shoe to repair and later someone else goes to collect it, the cobbler uncle would be unable to recognize. He relates the product directly with the customer.

If I go to a parking lot, then they give me a parking ticket. Anyone who has the parking ticket can take the car.

If I go to an ATM, anyone would need my card and PIN-ID to get money from my account.

If I call up the Customer Care of my credit card company, they ask me a few queries to establish my identity.

Do you know of any thing which falls outside these categories? If yes, please do leave a comment.

Multi Password Way of Management

Lets say I call up the customer care of my credit card company. Before interacting with me, the customer care would ask me a few queries to verify my identity like:

• Card Number
• Date of Birth
• Mothers Maiden Name
• House Address
• Mobile Number

After I have given satisfactory answers to these questions, they would consider my identity proved and answer my queries.

You create a many-to-one relation between the customer and the product. If the many is verified by the customer, then he / she has got the access to the product.

This way is used when you need to ensure with a good probability that the product is being associated with the right customer, so instead of having a single token, there are multiple different tokens associated with the product.

Password Way of Management

I need to withdraw money from the ATM using my debit card. I go to the ATM, take out my card, swipe it in the machine, enter my PIN-ID, enter the amount I need to withdraw and I got money. This is the ATM Way of Management. You create a one-to-one relation between the account, the card and the PIN-ID (anyone can withdraw money provided he / she has the card and the PIN-ID). It is normally used for some amount of security is required. It is commonly followed in:

• ATMs
• Internet Banking
• Using Railway / Airport Tickets using Net Banking (where you need an identity proof in addition to the Railway / Airport Ticket)
• Using your credit-card where in addition to your card, your sign is matched with the sign on the card
  

Token Way of Management

If you go to a big retail store, they would request you to keep your baggage in the store house and hand you a token-id. Anyone who gives the token-id back to the store house would get the baggage back (be it you, your wife, your friend or your friendly pick-pocketeer) . For the StoreHouse, the token-id represents everyone associated with the product they are safe-guarding. The StoreHouse creates a one-to-one association with the token-id.

This is commonly followed in:

• Store houses at Retail Stores, Theatres etc.
• Parking lots
• My office where they have given me a card to swipe and the door opens
• You go to a courier company to send a courier and they give you a receipt
• You go to a dry-cleaner and give your clothes. They give you a receipt.
  

Cobbler Way of Management

How does a cobbler manage his business?

Today morning I had gone to give our nearby Cobbler Uncle a footware that had broken. He told me to collect it from him sometime later in the day. In the evening, my wife and I went to the cobbler to collect the footware. We went in a car and my wife got down to collect the footware from the Cobbler Uncle.

The Cobbler will associate the footware he receives with the image of the person delivering the footware to him. Now if another person goes there to collect the footware from him, his association rules break down. When I got down from the car and went in front of him, he remembered the footware that was given to him in the morning.

This is the Cobbler Way of Management. You create a one-to-one association between the product and the customer which has the risk of breaking down in case the customers friend goes. If instead of this, the Cobbler Uncle associates the footware with the address of the house, then even if another person goes to collect the footware, the association will still work. This is the StoreHouse Way of Management.

Narendra yaan Yogendra

Early last year I had bought a flat in Faridabad from a property dealer Narendra. I had booked a flat in Triveni-Ferrous (a combination of two groups who were building a society in Faridabad). I was personally keen on getting a booking in Triveni as it was more famous then (infamous now :)). When Mr. Narendra landed up in my house, he came with booking forms for TFI (Triveni-Ferrous Infrastructure). I wanted him to confirm that the flat would finally be booked in Triveni. He said "Worry not!" Some months later, I came to know that I have been allocated a flat in Ferrous (instead of Triveni). Mr. Narendra told me that Ferrous is equally good. Mr. Narendra had promised me that he would be giving me 4% discount on the booking amount. I was foolish enough to believe him. Some months back, I asked him for the discount. He stopped picking up phones and then one day he asked me to talk to Yogendra. Now this Mr. Yogendra (whom I have never met) and Mr. Narendra (whom I will never forget) have come up with this lovely business philosophy of "Here and There Everywhere but Indirectly Nowhere" which states that "Narendra and Yogendra are two good hidden friends who are enemies in front of the world. If you go here, he will refer you there and vice versa and in the end you will land up nowhere". This is a good business model if you are in it for a short term. It works somewhat like this:

1. Two good friends work up a deal beforehand on how to split the benefits
2. They form a team and come up with a business
3. They get lots of customers and sell them something
4. They suddenly fight one day (over anything doesn't really matter)
5. They create lot of confusion. More confusion the better it is for them in this model.
6. Customers run Here and There Everywhere
7. However they reach Nowhere because narendra yaan yogendra, sab ek hi thali ke chathey bathey hain