Micromax, the India born mobile handset company, which has captured 20% share of Indian market within 4 short years, is certainly a shining example of an ultra successful Indian electronics firm. Competing against biggies such as Nokia, Samsung and Apple, Micromax has skillfully carved a separate niche for its own market.
But, they are ignoring a very important aspect of being ultra successful: Customers.
The most important pillar of building a brand, either online or offline is their customer’s testimonial, their praise or complaints; their recommendations and ideas. After sale service is actually the last string of the chain which connects the customers with the brand. If the customer is not happy after buying your product, then there is big trouble.
Their customers are fuming with anger and dissatisfaction, and they are quite vocal as well.
Yesterday one Redditor shared one interesting image he clicked when he went to a mobile retailer to buy a Micromax handset.
Translated to English, this announcement states that “Customers should purchase Micromax mobile under their own personal responsibility as we will not provide any service.”
Certainly a bold statement, considering that such rules may actually deter the new customer from buying any handset from their shop!
But the retailer is taking the risk, because he may have experienced some really bad service in the past. A small businessman or retailer never risks his own profit under any circumstances. But here, the reverse is actually happening.
I shared that on my Facebook profile, and these are the comments it received:
He is a blogger and tech enthusiast himself, who is followed by thousands of geeks all over the world
She is a Writer, who writes about technology and her audience love gadgets and operating systems
She is a media professional who knows in and outs of the business
He is a professional blogger, who is passionate about technology and writes a lot on this subject.
He is a digital entrepreneur and industry veteran, who is termed as an influencer of the business. And his points are pretty valid.
He is an entrepreneur, who knows which mobile is actually worth the money. He is in the market.
She is Digital Marketing consultant and prominent creative person. She understands the pulse of the technology.
These comments are coming in from technologists, entrepreneurs, creative professionals, writers and bloggers. Those who influence the market, and those who carry impartial, true views about high end products.
I navigated the web and entered some common search terms in Google such as:
- “Micromax complaints”
- “Micromax customer care sucks” *
- “Micromax after sale service complains”
Etc. * Some of these keywords were auto-suggested by Google
The results actually baffled me. There were thousands of complains, all appearing on the front page. They even haven’t bothered to remove them from the first 2 pages of Google search results.
Consumercomplaints.in had this one:
Consumercourt.in had this one:
This post on Micromax service center on ConsumerLaw.in had more than 180 comments.
There were blogs, stories, more complaints and more fuming. I even read one complaint on the reputed HR related forum CiteHR.com.
Such feedback against an Indian company which is going to start operations in Russia and plans to cross $1 billion sales in 2014 is really alarming.
Yes, I do believe that marketing is important and having a Hollywood star as Brand Ambassador certainly helps in branding, but what after that?
Micromax certainly needs a lot of self-analysis and drastic changes. You can’t ignore customers for long.
In this age of connected economy, fuelled by the World Wide Web, a competitor is just one click away. If your brand is falling short on even one factor, your audience will deviate as quickly as a cat on a hot tin roof.
More and more people are being connected socially, and more and more transparent the whole business world is becoming. But some companies just fail to realize this fact.
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