Building the right team, obsession with customer delight and its impact on the successful launch of KUSHAQ

Vantage points give you both perspective and direction. And, after successfully launching the ?KODA KUSHAQ, I find myself occupying one. I can see clearly both the route we’ve taken to get this far and, considering the tremendous response to the ?KODA KUSHAQ, the road ahead.

We have many things to be proud of in our over 3 year journey with the India 2.0 project, but prime among them is the way we have prepared the business to grow significantly. None of this would have been possible without the passion of our various teams, from developing and manufacturing the car, to Sales and Marketing and the final journey to the customer. At all times the results have echoed the drive and energy exhibited by ?KODA AUTO’s leadership team.

My innings in India with ?KODA AUTO has seen me fill up several open positions in our leadership team. As senior executives across the world would agree, the hunt for the right candidate is often a tedious one, but it is the best investment we as leaders can make. Keep separating the wheat from the chaff until you’ve found the right men and women for the job.

Once you’ve done that, let them get on with it. You’ve hired experts, so don’t micro-manage them.

They will seek you out when they need your guidance. Set KPI’s, create the right atmosphere, give them the resources they need and they will be achieved.

My other learnings, too, concern people, especially the importance of listening to them. I arrived in India about two and a half years ago with a clear goal of turning around the brand’s image on customer satisfaction. The first thing I did was listen to customers and I accessed a lot of feedback first-hand via interaction at dealerships and also social media. Let me tell you, you don’t need to commission a survey or even speak to your team to keep your ear to the ground. Just walk into a dealership or log onto social media and spend some time browsing posts, blogs, and discussion forums. Listening to your customers can give you a more accurate assessment of where your business is headed than your balance sheet. Your customers are your best Internal Audit department. I take feedback regarding individual dealers seriously, after a while you get to know who is looking after customer and who is not, without the need of survey. Surveys can always be manipulated too.

At ?KODA AUTO, we’ve been working on delighting the customer instead of merely keeping him or her satisfied. It’s a huge ask in India where customers have high expectations, but we are approaching it the right way: delighting one customer at a time. That’s what I took away from my interaction with a tailor who stitched me a suit recently. On noticing that one of my shoelaces had started fraying, he gave me a new set. That gesture utterly delighted me, and even today, I often think about how I can delight my own customers in a similar way. It doesn’t necessarily have to cost money, but even if it does, we would consider that as an investment. Think about the impact delighting a customer has on your referral and repeat customers, probably better money spent this way than marketing. A satisfied customer tells his partner and anyone who asks him but a delighted customer can be your best ambassador.

The goal is to give them something they don’t expect, something they will talk about with their family, or when they are among friends.

Even as I prepare to dive headlong into what will be an exciting and enriching period professionally, I have not neglected my personal goals. Many of these little triumphs have been achieved through sport — it is a story of early morning jogs turning into participation in several marathons and even an Ironman triathlon.

There are several parallels to be drawn between sporting achievement and business performance. I’d like to add here that it’s as much about endurance as it is about resolve and drive. A healthy body, after all, leads to a healthy mind, and ensures that we are able go the distance — both professionally and personally. As I’m writing this, I think it can be the topic for my next article :)

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