Life - Learn to Live and Learn from Living

Hello
This time I would be sharing one of the lessons I learnt from our Mother, Nature. As I mentioned in my previous post, Nature includes everything we see, we use, and so on....

So, this lesson; I learnt from the Setwin Bus Conductor....

కాకులు కూడా ఎగురుతాయి కాబూల్ వెళ్తాయా అన్నాడు ఒక సినీ కవి.... కానీ

From that lesson, I learnt that; given an opportunity, Setwin Bus Conductor can go and deliver a lecture to management students at IIMs. Why not, if Lalooji can deliver one. Lets see why I made this statement.......


On a fine Saturday(its a fine day, I learnt something new!!), after seeing off my parents at Secunderabad Railway Station, I was coming back to our house at Lakdikapool. I got to the bus stop and boarded an APSRTC bus, got a nice window seat. But, the bus was in waiting for its time to start and at that time there came a SETWIN Bus.

( for all those who don't know about SETWIN buses - In the Hyderabad-Secunderabad twin cities, we have a self-employment scheme. Under this scheme, unemployed persons will be trained to take various trainings to get into some profession for their livelihood. They can run buses(mini-bus) in specified routes and for buses Govt. will provide loans. The fares will be that of ordinary APSRTC bus. These buses will not have SR or tickets. Their income depends on the passengers they manage to attract)


The bus conductor started calling for passengers, pretending that the bus was about to move. It goes to Mehdipatnam via Lakdikapool. Since time was a concern, I got into this bus. The bus is occupied fully with people like me. I thought the bus is about to move since it is full now. But, still he continued to rush passengers in. He asked the driver to give more acceleration in neutral itself, as if the bus is about to move. He managed to pull passengers with this technique for 5minutes. Meanwhile he used various tactics to attract passengers. A list of some of the techniques I observed..

1. He asked female passengers, going away after observing that the bus is full, to get in and accommodated them in the ladies seat requesting men to vacate it.
2. He accommodated passengers with luggage at the drivers seat.
3. He guided few passengers to board the right route bus.
4. Meanwhile, to keep the passengers committed to his bus, he collected fare from everyone.
   

The funniest part(teasing part for me) of all was; before this bus started, two RTC buses of same route left, with more than half the seats vacant.
So, How can we relate all the above things to our case ...

1. Basic principles for any business are the same : For any business, you should know your customers - whom you are targeting.
2. Anticipate and understand what your customer needs or expecting from you: In the above case, the bus conductor accommodated the women and passengers with luggage. He knows what they need and also knows if he can't provide they will take another bus.
3. Identify the requirement or comfort of the customer which you can offer: Above mentioned two cases will illustrate how the bus conductor succeeded here.
4. Guide him if you cannot cater solution to his problem: This will gain you good-will among your customers. In above case, the bus conductor guided the passenger to board the appropriate bus.
5. We should approach them - instead of expecting them to approach us: No business is there without competition, unless you identify a very new area of business. But, once you start it, you can see how the competition will grow. So, never expect the customer to come to you. In the above case, the bus conductor had been calling and rushing the passengers in, otherwise not even half the bus could be filled.
6. Keep your customers with you - Retention: The method adopted by the bus conductor to retain passengers could not be apt for all businesses :-). But we can keep our customers by delivering something more than they expect. This helps in increasing the trust of customer about your ability. May be something like 1+1 offers we see in market may work for our cases also. Since, in Any business, customers always look for more returns than they pay for :-) :-) .....

This is just one lesson we can learn from Nature.........

There are many more available, only we need to identify......

Identifying the resources available to you is the crucial thing and many of us fail to see the resources and opportunities hidden behind curtains of Nature....... And I think now you agree to my statement - this bus conductor can deliver a lecture to management students!!!!!

Its unfair for you to wait for me to say - Keep Smiling :-) :-). Because, you don't need a reason to smile....

Cheers....

Viswa