The amazing customer perceptible quality that Japanese and Korean products display through COA was my subject last week. Outstanding delivery will happen through the COA factor: Curiosity leads to high quality Observation that results in differentiated Action. But can it end with high calibre craftsmanship alone? What?s the first experience when the customer takes that exceptional product home?

In my different consumer service experience research in home d?cor and purchase, I discovered a nightmarish example of installing a flat TV at home. It?s not like old times when you place the TV set and fix an antenna. Now the dealer brings the set, but not everything else. You have to wait for the company representative to bring the fixture to fix the TV set on the wall. Next the DTH service provider with his set-of-box has to come to connect you to different TV channels. Then you have to have your own electrician around also to set up wires for the surround sound speakers, amplifier and connect the DVD with the TV monitor. Guess who has to coordinate among these four sets of service people? You?re right! You have to take a couple of days off from work for this. You?ve just made an exorbitant full payment, yet there?s nobody taking responsibility for installation. The DTH has to match the TV output, which has to match the DVD player and amplifier. And there you are stuck in the house waiting endlessly as nobody keeps the promised time. If you try to be clever, in advance plead with and juggle everyone?s time, fix appointments with them so they arrive together, you can be sure you?ll be outwitted. Two of them will arrive two to three hours late, another may not show up that day. Excuses will vary from traffic jams, motorcycle tyre puncture, rains flooding streets, public transport too crowded to take to too much work, the head office does not care for us, and so on.

The worst is yet to come; that?s shoddy craftsmanship. Each service provider will send two young people who are clever, but seem like trainees with raw behavioural skills. There?s hell to pay from wiring to programming to getting connection. The early comer can barely set up his system, but he?ll not touch the other service man?s area saying, ?That?s not my job.? Then you wonder, ?Should I have paid so much for a world class brand associated with so many service providers with no coordination?? To get good final output of clean installation, you Dear Customer, have to struggle. If you are not demanding, they can leave you a patch-up job.

The consumer electronics retailer should coordinate the way an automobile garage provides service after sales, managing different features from different vendors. TV brands promote hallucinating pictures in the showroom for the customer?s instant buying decision. Yet scant attention is paid to synchronising among servicemen to make your installation hassle-free.

Japanese and Korean companies need to give rigorous training to build up their Indian servicemen?s knowledge. Otherwise customers somehow feel cheated. Apart from better entertainment, as an integral part of design and invention the flat TV has another purpose. It?s sleek, not a boxy equipment taking up space in the room, so the idea is to mount it on the wall like a moving painting. With craftsmanship and price so much higher than the old TV, isn?t it the TV maker?s responsibility to fit it in the customer?s house without messiness? The customer?s tolerance level is too high in India, so such hardware and software companies get away doing what they want. Every customer should revolt at this kind of unreliability. Only then will the industry change and craftsmanship grow. Global brands in India are eliciting consumerism, but they must refine and upgrade customer expectation in service too.

In developed countries, it?s the customer?s unlimited expectation that has obliged industry to be inventive, sharpen craftsmanship, become highly competitive, and deliver on-time and sustain value. If you don?t raise your expectation bar, industry will not raise the craftsmanship of delivery people. Let me narrate a personal experience in craftsmanship. When I was studying graphic design in Paris, Western calligraphy fascinated me. I learnt its grammar and alchemy, right from Gutenburg, under the tutorship of world famous Hungarian typographer Paul Gabor (1930-1992) who?d invented several fonts. He trained me to study not the black fonts but the white space of typography. This white balance harmonises typography letter by letter, word by word, line by line and paragraph by paragraph. Gabor was a tough task master. Only five of us from the original class of 30 survived to learn that the width of words A to Z is not the same, the capital and small letters zigzag in a word. You need passion, desire and learning hunger to sustain with him. After two years he advised me to work in a type print shop where old-style steel letters were used before computers arrived. I worked for free for three hours four days a week for six months and achieved control over craftsmanship in spacing, lining and white balance in calligraphy and typesetting. Since then I could inspire my team in that all the brands we have created in the world have been hand designed. This is a proactive call, clients will never ask for it. But it protects the copyright of their brands so that their authenticity cannot be challenged.

As a Customer, everything is in your hands. Do you, for example, check the homogeneity in the floor tiles of the expensive apartment you?ve bought? Every joint section showcases craftsmanship of design. When customers increase their demand, service will improve and the selling proposition become of tension free quality and aesthetics. But you have to impose your requirement before making payment or you?ll achieve nothing. Don?t get convinced by the showroom salesman?s warm smile. Close the deal but pay after the work is done. Your exigency will alert the manufacturer.

Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top managements. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com