Consumers - Kings or Idiots?

The year was 1990. I was just a few years into a marketing career. The place was Coimbatore in South India, where I was working as a Sales Officer for the oil giant, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited. Remember, this was before the ubiquitous Internet and e-mail. I had to depend on snail mail to correspond with the office and people around the world. I went to one of the main post offices in Coimbatore, in R S Puram, to post some letters. Instead of the familiar single red letter box, I was confronted with five boxes in different colours - one for overseas letters, one for letters to other states of India, one for letters within the state, one for greeting cards and one for local posts. There was a written request to put the letters in the appropriate box to ensure speedy delivery. As a young professional, I was thrilled at the innovation and painstakingly did as was required.

Next day, I visited an old relative of mine who was a retired post master and told him excitedly about this innovation, thinking that he will be interested as he had worked 35 years in the postal department. He dismissed the idea with a curt remark, "What is so great about it? Now you are doing the job of sorting which was hitherto being done by the postal department". It dawned on me, a rookie management professional, how I have been now asked to take additional workload for no additional benefit. Postal department has quietly shifted a major part of their job to the customer.

Since then, I have noticed with concern the increasing number of instances where the burden of work has been quietly shifted to the customer.

In earlier days, petrol delivery boys took the key from you, opened the petrol tank, filled the petrol, collected the money and gave you the receipt. Now!!! in the name of self service WE have to do all these. More work for the hapless customer.

We were welcomed with open hands in the banks. With the advent of ATM, the work pertaining to withdrawal of cash has fallen on us. Now WE have to check the balance, insert the card, punch in numbers, take the card and cash out, wait for the receipt and to boot, the bank charges us extra for this. Some of the banks in Kuwait positively discourages us to do personal banking by charging 1KD for any transactions done in person up to 300KD. Now we have ATM machines accepting cheques. What next?

Another classic case is the way we purchase provisions for the house. Again, we used to make a list, hand it over to the Mom and Pop shop where we buy regularly and we can either wait or attend to other work till he packs all the items as per the list and loads it in the car. All we had to do was to make the payment. Today? WE go to a supermarket, WE walk around picking things, WE go to the counter, WE make the payment, WE push the trolley, WE load it to our car,and WE pay extra.

Consumers the kings!! or Consumers the idiots!!.......you judge for yourself