question hour. Bridging the gap

Bridging the gap

Does the rural market offer a market for e-commerce as well?

Tiruchi

Ramapathy, 69.1 per cent of the population of India resides in rural markets. The potential there is humongous.

In reality, the relevance and fit of the e-commerce model of business is best attuned to rural markets. The thought is a simple one. Rural folk have the money and the desire to buy, but are physically distant from markets. Those who are distanced from the allure of brands and services crave them. E-commerce bridges the gap and delivers. The model needs to be tweaked a bit, though.

Six years ago I did experimental checks with assisted e-commerce. Out here you have iPad-toting salespersons visiting village homes and showing the allure of the e-store. It works beautifully. As of today, even physical retailers are using this model efficiently in rural markets. Implementation of this model is, however, a sheer labour of love, of a mammoth scale.

When a brand makes a mistake, how must it apologise? Or must it at all?

Chennai

Ravi, short and crisp question. Long and laborious answer:

When you make a mistake, stand up and own it. My nine mantras:

When you have made a mistake, be the first to own up to the mistake. Own the mistake, even if there is a call within the organisation to shift the blame. You are the brand. Own liability. Stop taking recourse to legalese. You are talking to your customers, and not to the prosecutor in court. Use consumer-friendly language in your apology, not law-friendly language.

Act humble and talk peer-to-peer language rather than the marketer on top language. Never mind how long you have been in India, don’t tell people you have been here for a hundred years and can therefore do no wrong.

Be very quick in your apology. This is the day of nano-second social media. Your apology needs to be quicker than the time-format social media is used to. You will in any case apologise. Might as well do it fast, than slow.

An apology must be both wide and deep. Follow up your brand apology with a detailed exploration of fault points. Your apology needs to be like an onion. For those who only want a skin-deep exploration of what went wrong, you need to have a skin-deep version. And for those who want to actually explore the depths of what happened, you need to publish a white paper that says it all in depth. Apologies must have a B2C avatar which talks to your customer and a B2B avatar that talks to media and civil society and enforcement agencies at large.

Allow a complete transparency process to fall into place in your apology format. Let consumers be able to peek literally into your shop floor. Brands and their corporate owners are often considered opaque and hiding. Turn that argument turtle when a crisis breaks out and an apology is due. You don't deserve the cloak of secrecy any more.

An apology must be voluntary and not forced. Tell the whole world that you are apologising on your own and not under consumer or regulator duress.

Show sincerity in the face that finally apologises. Stop reading out typed text. Reach out from the depths of your heart and apologise. And get the head honcho to apologise. Not your PR head, for sure. Sincerity works wonders.

Go that extra distance in your apology. If a folded-hands apology will do, go that extra bit and get on your knees. Let it be a sublime apology, for sure, and not a ridiculous one.

Apologise not only to your direct customers, but their customers’ customer as well. Maybe even to your non-customers.

Uff! That was long.