The concept of customer service or customer experience was alien to Indians until liberalization in the early ‘90s. Till then the brand was the boss, the product was the king. We had to wait in line to get your telephone line, line up for hours to buy a train ticket, and even had to wait for years to get the privilege of buying a Bajaj scooter or a Fiat car. In short, whatever was delivered, you accepted without any complaints, irrespective of how good or bad the experience or the level of satisfaction was.

Today, brands do not have that luxury anymore. They don’t just have to ensure that their product meets their customers’ discerning expectations, but they have to be mindful of a million little things each time they interface with the customer—before, during and even after selling the product or service.

Complicated, isn’t it? Therefore, more often than not, despite best efforts, customer service teams are inundated with complaints, millions of dollars spent on marketing efforts may even lead to little impact on sales or, the deeply researched loyalty program is unable to retain customers and, the list goes on. The moot question therefore is, why do all these customer-directed programs end up failing or falling short? Is it lack of budgets or poor understanding of customer expectations or plain apathy? The answer may typically lie in between where our delivery of customer experience could be limited by how ‘developed’ or refined our customer-first mindset is.

This book presents 13 elements, approaches or principles that comprise the customer-first mindset – CFM. The book advocates adopting or putting some or all of these principles in practice at different times, while tackling or handling varied situations so as to become a “way of working” or imbibing a core value.  

We recognize that there are instances from the biggest to the smallest companies, where aspects to customer experience go amiss despite large budgets or imbibing industry best practices but if the mindset is right, solutions follow and customers reward the effort with their business. Through the medium of 13 relatable stories drawn from post covid scenarios largely from Indian businesses, this book highlights lapses in customer experience efforts and suggests options on how these issues could be tackled and thus corelates the customer first principles.

Readers will appreciate how different elements like stakeholders and not just technology alone can play a critical role to make the customer experience journey seamless and, are therefore instrumental in achieving the ultimate goals of profit and loyalty.