I sat in the bus, dreamy eyed. I was looking forward to the meeting with my love. I was making plans about how we would spend our time together and how romance would bloom making me feel happy. Hardly did I know that I would be moved by the plight of my co-passenger…
The bus was about to move and my dreams soared high. A person in early fifties boarded the bus and looked around… he had a seat reserved beside me. Even I felt comfortable that he would be occupying the seat beside me and wouldn’t be a bother. If that seat would have been occupied by a young man, he would have tried to impress me (now that I know that I am attractive and beautiful) and I it would be a distraction in the dreams I wanted to dream…
The journey was about three and half hours and I was glad when the bus started to move – it was bringing me closer to my love. I closed my eyes and started dreaming and planning what I would say to him (my love) and how I would meet and greet him, etc.
Hardly half an hour may have passed of the journey when a bump on the road shook everyone and I opened my eyes to look at what had made that happen. Then my glance fell on the man who was sitting beside me. He had tears in his eyes and looked sad as well tense. I thought he would feel that I am rude if I asked him why he had tears in his eyes, but it made me uncomfortable seeing a man much older to me sitting quietly, tears rolling down his cheeks.
So I looked away from him out of the window. I had a window seat. I tried getting back to my dreams of meeting my love but I couldn’t keep the thoughts of an elderly gentleman sitting by my side shedding tears. He was almost the age of my father. Can a daughter keep her thoughts on her love when she knows that someone like her father is shedding tears and is distressed?
I tried all bringing all my motivation of meeting my love to the fore and forget about the elderly gentleman crying silently beside me. But, it was difficult. I tried concentrating on my dreams for some more time, but, I couldn’t stop thinking about the elderly gentleman sitting beside me. I looked at him and found that the tears were still rolling down his cheeks. I couldn’t stop myself and put my hand gently on his hand and he looked at me sadly still the tears rolling down his cheeks.
“I know I might sound a bit rude. You are almost the same age as my father and I cannot see someone like you shedding tears this way. If you are comfortable, may I know the reason? By relating me your troubles, you may feel better. I don’t know if I would be able to help you, but speaking out your troubles may make you feel better…” I suggested in a gentle tone.
“You seem to be a good girl and a fantastic daughter to your father.” He looked at me wiping off his tears, “But, you are too young to understand what life can do to you when you least expect it and definitely at a wrong time…”
I remembered a quatrain by PD, my love. He is an author and a poet and few of his lines are exclusive to life…
I seem to disagree with the quote,
When heartbroken – poetry is found…
I looked at world around,
“Life” can inflict a deeper wound,
That could be more profound…
I braced myself to hear what the fatherly gentleman had to say about his sorrow…
“The world has changed drastically.” He began telling me about what he had faced or was facing, “You are the new generation and you have grown up with this changing world. You are yet to begin your journey called life. I guess you are yet unmarried or about to get married to someone…”
“How did you know that?”
“You have expressive eyes and I could see the dreams in your eyes. They had the exact same expressions I see on my daughter when she thinks about her wedding. She is about your age and is supposed to get married. Her wedding is scheduled on next six months.”
“Oh! That’s nice to know.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He looked at me and then at the handbag I had with me, “That’s a nice trendy bag you got… Did you buy that at a mall or did you order it online?”
“I ordered it online.” I was pleased that my handbag did catch the attention of people.
“Did you get what you had expected and anticipated?”
“Not really. The aesthetics looked too good in the photograph when I ordered it – but, when I received the bag, I was a bit disappointed.”
“I guess you bought it from Amazon. Did you rate and review the product?”
“No. I didn’t bother to do it. Do you think it’s important?”
“No. I thought I didn’t mean to ask you this… just came to my mind.”
He looked sad again. The bus stopped at the Food Mall and I was getting cramped up and also wanted to go to the washroom. When I mentioned this, he politely got up from his seat and then decided that even he wanted to go to the washroom. After visiting the washroom, I looked around and found a tea stall. He was standing there thinking if he wanted to sip a cup of tea. I approached the stall and bought two cups, one for me and one for him. He thankfully took the cup from me as I approached him with the cups and I could see some relief as he sipped on his cup of tea. Once done with the break, we occupied our seats and the bus started its onward journey… He still hadn’t said anything as to why he was sad enough to shed tears.
“What do you do, I mean where do you work?” I asked him to start the conversation again.
“I used to work with a car showroom.” He looked at me his expression wry with worry. “Do you know how the world has changed?” he looked at me expectantly that I would have some answer which I didn’t…
He continued, “I believe, you bought the handbag after going through the ratings and reviews of the product – right?”
I nodded affirmative not understanding why he still wanted to discuss my handbag.
“When we started, organizations like Amazon were not present in the market. There was no online shopping at all. We used to go to the shop, maybe various shops, to buy the things we wanted. Now, for your generation, it is simple and at a finger touch. If you want to buy something, you rarely go out to shops and prefer to buy it online. For buying the product you want to – you will go to the extent of reading about the product reviews and how people have rated the product. You think a product with a good rating and review has to be good. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. You can say that. If I have to buy some gift for my boyfriend, he stays in a distant city, it is easy for me to go online and select a product and then buy it and get it delivered to his home. I simply have to call him and tell him or forward the link of the product to him telling his that I have ordered it for him…”
“The product may be good or bad – you will buy it if the ratings are good. Will you buy something if the ratings are bad?”
“No. Most probably I won’t.”
“Exactly, this rating and review system has made life of many people miserable.”
“I don’t understand.” I said thinking that he was from the old school of thought and didn’t approve of modern day technology.
“Don’t look at me thinking that I am old fashioned. I have adapted myself to this new order of the world. But, people are misusing this system.”
“How can you say that?” I was a bit interested in what he was now saying.
“Look, you are my competition and you have a wonderful product, more durable than the one I have – will you get more ratings and reviews than me?”
“I probably would.”
“What if I invest some of my money to buy your product for my staff and start down-rating your product on the Amazon website? Will your rating not suffer and even if you have a wonderful product – your rating will be below the rating of my product and I will prosper.”
“Seems feasible, but, do you think people will go to this extent?”
“Not really. But there are people who do that and sell their product. They will invest in competition product to rate it down and invest in people who would up-rate the product and give good reviews for exchange of money. They can do this for as low as Rs.200/-“
“For Rs.200/-?”
“Yes. It’s the way they earn their pocket money. By putting one review if they earn Rs.200/-… think of it, if they rate and review 100 products in a month, how much will they earn?”
“Oh! Wow! Seems like a big business.”
“So the ratings you see on the web may not be accurate. I am not saying all resort to such things. But many people do… Now let’s talk about the people who don’t resort to such means and play it fair… you must be using various services, you must be being asked to rate the services, how do you rate them? Especially the services that cater to you like cabs, online food delivery, etc…”
“I normally skip it or sometimes click wherever my finger lands. I don’t care much about it.”
“That’s exactly where the problem is my child.”
I looked at him getting a bit discontented with my answer and looked at him for a possible explanation.
“If you get the prompt for a rating on an app, normally, they would ask you to rate the person or the service on a scale of one to 5 am I right?”
“Yes.”
“This is known as Customer Satisfaction Index (CSAT for short). This is categorised as your satisfaction level for the service…
1 – Absolutely Unsatisfied
2 – Poor
3 – Satisfactory / Good
4 – Very Good
5 – Absolutely Delighted
Now this goes in the person’s record and is flashed everywhere. Have you checked the Cab driver or the person delivering you online food order has a rating next to his name?”
“No. I really haven’t checked this out. I didn’t even know that such thing exists. I just hail a cab or order the food and when it’s delivered, I am more into me than looking for ratings. Sometimes, when I am angry for disrespect or audacity shown by the person, I make it a point to give lowest possible rating.”
“Next time either be sure to rate the person to the best score or do not rate at all. By giving the lower score, you may be playing with his career or even his life.”
“How can you say that?”
“Let me explain, I told you I worked with a car showroom. The points at which we are rated are called NPS (Net Promoter Score) – this rating is based on a scale of One to Ten. Naturally, if you like the service; what will you rate the service?”
“If you say Very Good is 4 then I will rate your service if I like it at 8.”
“Why 8?”
“The scale has doubled so I think the rating has to be double, right?”
“That’s where you are wrong. In NPS, anything that’s 9 or 10 is acceptable. Anything below this mark is considered to be a fault and it acts negatively against you.”
“I didn’t get it.”
“This system is normally used by car dealers, car showrooms, mobile operators, banks, financial institutions and many corporates are now going for this system. The question is not if you are satisfied… the question is on a scale of 1 to 10, what is the chance that you will recommend the service to others.”
I looked at him blankly not understanding the seriousness of this NPS system.
“The calculations are a bit different than that of CSAT – in CSAT the average of your ratings are taken, but in case of NPS, lower scores are negated from your score affecting you much more. So if for rating in CSAT you have given 5, 3, 4, 5, 3… the score will be the average of 4 which is ‘Very Good’. But in NPS if you score 10, 6, 8, 10, 6… your score gets affected in a huge way – your count goes down to 0%. It is not calculated on average. You are expected to be on a score which is above 90% and this hits the people in the organization heavily. We had this scoring system of CSAT and we were doing pretty well. This scoring of NPS was introduced and our score went down to 5% for silly reasons. E.g. the cars for one corporate were brought in for servicing by one driver and the admin guy of that office. They were happy and still are happy with the service we provided. But, it happened once, the scheduled delivery of a serviced car got delayed by couple of hours, simply because their finance department failed to make the payment on time. The guy simply marked us down for late delivery when the issue was at his end – his finance department. Since the car was delivered late he had to hear it out from his superiors and he vented it out on our score. In another case, the parent company failed to supply part that was required for one of the customer’s car – but the brunt of his dissatisfaction had to be borne by us…”
“That’s bad. Couldn’t he have asked you before he reacted?”
“No – he cannot. These scores are always a recorded by a Third Party Surveyor. They don’t know us or the customer or our relations with the customer or the level of service provided by us. They call the customers randomly. They don’t call each and every customer. If let’s say I have your name on the list, you may or may not get the third party survey. So we don’t know who will be called for the survey. Every, corporate has a customer care or customer service desk. Some of them even have grievance desk. All a person can do is call them and speak out his grievance than venting it out in the Third Party Survey. Then there are few people who do not understand this rating system – like you said double of 4 is 8 and that affects the score. There are people who are still in the mind-set that a score of 70% or 80% is like earning a distinction and 90% and above is a Merit rating. They balk at giving the high scores even if they are delighted.”
“Why? What happens if you get a low score in the Third Party Survey?”
“It’s always a motto of every organisation, if you have a delightful experience with us – please say that to the world. But, if you are facing some issue, tell it to me because the world will not resolve the issue. It is we the organisation who will be resolving it for you…” he looked at me and gave a sad smile, “When the score of NPS goes down, the management normally takes it to their ego and starts firing the people who in their view have been the reason for the lower score. This is because the Third Party Surveys are flashed to the world and they may act negatively towards the business of that organisation. So, it’s better that few people get fired than losing the whole business.”
“That’s really bad – I mean if people have worked honestly and for some reason which is not in their hands, something gets faltered, the person may lose his job because some smart guy thought that 70% are good marks.” I observed trying to grasp at the new knowledge which was flowing in form of this person.
“Because of this low score, I was fired from my job yesterday. Though the customers say that I was absolutely brilliant in my work and always helpful but the NPS score says otherwise for no fault of mine. When I reached out to address the grievance for the low scores, I was stunned by the reasons given by them… One of them said that he was not given the next date of servicing when it was clearly mention on the bill of his current servicing. The other one said that the counter girl was busy doing some work and ignored him and didn’t smile at him when he had walked in the showroom and he thought it wasn’t a good customer service. Another one said that the invoice we print is with a small font which he cannot read without his glasses. These people could have simply contacted our Customer Service desk and got all the information they wanted. But they chose to speak out to a Third Party (who is not concerned about their dissatisfaction and is only interested in recording the score that customer gives) and not us… the result is, few people along with me have lost our jobs.”
“That’s sad and totally inconsiderate of the people who decided to appear for the survey.”
“Look at the plight, I am almost 55 years old, I am looking forward to my daughter’s wedding in six months and now I am out of my job. I don’t think anyone would hire me because of my age. The person at billing desk had welcomed a baby in his house a day before he was fired. He was about 35 years old. Will he get another job? If he does get another job, he may have to compromise a lot on his salary and other things. How will he support his family and the education of his children? Further, he may think the new born baby is unlucky for him and may hate the baby for life… similar is the story of everyone who lost their jobs because of such occurrences.”
“OMG. I didn’t know such things and feelings happen.”
“I hope my child… you will be more appreciative of what goes behind your simple way of putting scores for the services you experience. I can understand repeated misbehaviour, but this isn’t fair to people like us. Please be aware of the scores you give out and if you have any grievance, please first speak to their customer service or grievance cell before marking the service down.”
“I will definitely think about this when anyone asks me to score any person or service. Thank you for the input and I hope it turns out well for you sooner than you expect.”
The bus had reached the destination and I tried to give him solace before we walked off in different directions on lookout for my love who was supposed to receive me at the bus stand.
What is your say on this? – Let me know…
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- Shongitahttps://storiesandme.com/author/piya/
- Shongitahttps://storiesandme.com/author/piya/
