Have you ever look at how hawkers run their businesses?
It's interesting to watch how these owners work. Usually customers have to queue up and are served one at a time to avoid confusion. What if there is no queue? A customer comes up to the stall, places his order and just stand around waiting, or goes back to his seat to wait or goes off to buy something else before coming back to collect his food. Imagine having to take order, remembering who comes first and who comes next, who orders what, who wants more chilli or doesn't want bean sprout, who asks for more ingredients and so on. At times like this, you often find the helpers writing down the order in their own short form that they can understand or just based on their memory. That's fine if the person has a super good memory. But he still has to remember all the other special requests and match it to the person's face. Even writing down the order, one has to match the order to the person. It's really tough especially during the peak lunch or dinner hours when orders keep streaming in. The other day, I was at a hawker center and saw a stall selling fried carrot cake (a local dish made of radish). There were people queuing to place their orders while others were standing around the stall waiting for their orders. I decided to try it as I thought it should be good, looking at the crowd at the stall. When I told the elderly lady about my order, she took a board and clipped on the board, before placing it on what looks like a queue stand. On closer look, I realized that the board is black on one side and white on the other side. These board are numbered and there are two column to indicate eat-in or take-away on every board. Each board also has different numbers to indicate the pricing ($1, $2, $3 and so on). The lady told me my order number and I went back to my seat and continue with my meal, without having to stand at the stall to wait for my order. I noticed a lot of customers did that as well. When my order was ready, my number was called and I went to take my order. I also noticed that the board also allows her to indicate whether a customer wants chilli or not and more chilli or not. How innovative! There are two kinds of fried carrot cake. One is white which is just fried without adding any black sweet sauce. The black is the one with black sweet sauce. When a customer order black fried carrot cake, she just turn to the black side of the board and use a peg to clip on the board on either the eat-in or take-away column so that the chef knows whether to pack the order or not. The peg is clipped on the price of the order so the chef knows how much to apportion for each order. There's even indication on the board whether to put spring onion or not. And by informing customers of their order number, she is relieved of the need to remember each customer's face. Customer just need to remember their order number and makes sure his order is correct. This reminds me of a very popular rojak (a chinese salad) stall. The owners are an old couple and due to overwhelming number of customers every day, they devised an ordering system similar to this. In addition, they had a electronic signboard that will flash out the order number once it's ready so she does not has to call out the number. In running a business, it is important that you have systems in place to ensure the smooth operation of your company. You can have a system for ordering, system for inventory, training, daily operations, recruitment, cost control, prospecting, marketing, customer retention. Do you have a system that works for you? What would you do if you got an extra dollar change for your purchase?
Will you walk away quickly hoping the business owner does not realize it and call you back? Or will you be honest enough to return the extra change to the owner? For the majority of you, being honest people, will return the money. But there will be just that one person who will keep quiet about it and walk away, gloating silently in his heart of the lucky windfall. The fish monger told my mom the other day that she gave the wrong change to a customer and lost $50. By the time she realized it, the person has vanished. Of course, that's dishonesty. And sometimes greed takes over us. We all want something for nothing. But could there be other reasons that make us behave differently? Will a dishonest person be honest if he knows the other party and is afraid to be find out? Perhaps he pity the other party? Will a honest person be dishonest because the other party is a stranger? Perhaps he feels the other party's price is too expensive and product or service too lousy and not worth it? That means we choose and decide if we want to be honest in a particular situation. Anyway, we always justify our actions with reasons. This afternoon, I was at a hawker center for the first time and ordered two desserts for a total of $3.60. I paid the owner $5.60. The owner asked me how much change she needed to give me back as she didn't calculate. Before I could tell her, she handed $3 back to me. I stood there with one hand holding the desserts and the other hand with the change. Then I started adding up the prices for the two desserts and the exact change she has to return me. That's when I realized she had given me an additional dollar. I called out to her and return the excess change to her. Is she so bad with maths that she couldn't count? Is she too lazy or too busy to count? More importantly, does she trust customers that they will not take advantage of her? From the look of it, it's unlikely that she's new in the business. After working so long as a hawker, I bet she can calculate much faster than a lot of us. If she's lazy, she wouldn't be in the hawker business as it's tough work. What else could be more important than managing her money? And if you are in business, no matter how busy you are, there's no way you will not count your money. It looks like she chose to trust her customers. In the past, I would have just kept the change and walked off without thinking if the owner was paid the correct amount, as I assumed he must had worked out the calculation. But at that time, I just stood there and counted again. I realized that it's not so much as to make sure that she did not shortchange me but rather I want to make sure that she did not pay me extra. She had trusted me and I felt that I cannot disappoint her. "There's only two patients today," the doctor's personal assistant said.
For the past two visits to the clinic, he noticed there were fewer people. He no longer has to wait that long for the lift and the lift is not that packed now. There was no queue at the pharmacy like last time. Even there were fewer patients at the other clinics he passed by. All these in stark contrast to what he used to see. At first, he thought it was because he often reached the clinic towards the end of the day. But he felt it was more than just that. So the man's intuition is right after all. Business at this famous private hospital and the specialist clinics is going down. Even the doctor he seeks treatment from, a well-known specialist, is not spared. When he walked in to the clinic, there were only two patients. And they were seeing another doctor who shares the same clinic as the man's doctor. The personal assistant shared that more patients are going to neighboring countries for their medical treatments as it's getting too expensive here. She also commented that the medical standards overseas are also getting better. She has seen medical reports of the doctor's patients who seek treatments at these places and they are just as good as the ones done locally. "Most of these patients start seeking treatments in these countries through word-of-mouth recommendation from their friends or relatives who have themselves seek treatment there. There's is nothing much a doctor can do if his patients choose to seek treatment elsewhere right," as she shares with the man about the dire situation facing the clinic now. This is a private hospital that caters to the rich people. It has some of the best specialists in this region housed under the same roof. The most advanced medical equipment and technology. Hospital facilities and services that rivals that of the hotels. When it comes to health and money is not an issue, almost everyone will choose the best that they can afford. And if a life is at stake, money no longer becomes an issue even if it is an issue. So what caused business to go down at this doctor's clinic? Is it because he's getting too expensive? Is it because his patients cannot afford his service? Did he stay the same while competitors are catching up and getting better? Or the patients do not see any difference between the doctor and the ones in neighboring countries? If his patients have been seeing him for years, there must be trust and relationship built up over the years. The patients would be very comfortable with the doctor as he knows their medical condition very well. So what could have prompted his patients to seek treatment elsewhere? A word paints a thousand pictures.
Is today your birthday? For most of us, it's another weekday and another start of a new month. If you are in Hong Kong now, you'll probably feel that this Pearl of the Orient is slightly different. Public transport is not so convenient. Some places are out of bound. Maybe you'll notice that there are fewer mainland tourists as well. Not usual especially it's the start of China's golden week in celebration of its 65th National Day. The democracy movement in Hong Kong, Occupy Central, shows no sign of ending and the government cancelled its annual firework celebration at Victoria Harbour. This could be a prolonged protest and hurts Hong Kong's position as a financial hub. But what can the Hong Kong government, or Beijing, can do to resolve it as quickly as possible? Both parties are not going to compromise. Will using force to end the protest may result in a re-enactment of the 1989 Tiananmen incident? It's a delicate situation. Can such situation happens to your business? Can you imagine all your customers boycotting you? Bombarding your Facebook page with nasty comments? Compromising or even apologizing may be the only solution. Closer to home, Singapore government starts charging tolls for vehicles leaving and entering Singapore from today to match those charged by Malaysia imposed from 1st August 2014. This toll charges only applies to the Woodlands Checkpoint and not the second link to Johor Bahru at Tuas. Tolls charges are set to triple across the board for all the different categories of vehicles. When Malaysia started imposing toll hike on all vehicles passing through the Johor Custom two months ago, it was met by protest from Malaysia bus drivers and caused a massive jam at the causeway.
Previously, private cars entering Johor from Singapore pay a one-way charge of RM2.90 ($1.13), irrespective of whether they are locally or foreign-registered. With the new charges, cars will pay RM16.50 for a round trip, taxis will be charged RM8.20, while buses pay RM13.30 for the same. Unlike in Hong Kong, the protest died quickly and everything is back to normal. After all, there's nothing much you can do. When the government imposes new regulations or rules, you have to accept it, no matter how unreasonable or illogical it may be. You either pay the toll charges or forget about crossing the causeway. And if you have to cross the causeway, you have to cross the causeway unless you are prepared to take a longer route to travel the second linkway. If you have businesses in both countries, it is more important to keep your operations running smoothly than to stage any protest. By the way, you need a permit to stage a protest in Singapore. At most, you can appeal to the authorities, hold talks with them, lobby for the tolls to be removed or lowered. But in the meantime, you just have to pay to keep your business going. And this is going to increase your costs of business. For some, they may be able to absorb the additional costs. For most, the increase in costs will be passed on to the consumers. There was an interesting comment by someone on social media that there's no cause for concern about the exorbitant increase in toll charges. This is how he rationalised. "Let's say a lorry can load a tonne (1000kg) of vegetables, each kilogram will increase by $0.0262 based on toll charges of $26.20 for heaving commercial vehicles." To rationalise it this way is a fallacy. Businesses do not calculate how much they want to increase their prices in such a simple way. A hawker centre was renovated recently and stall rent increased from $1000 to $1400. If we were to use the above analogy, the logical way to calculate how much to charge in order to cover the increment is to take the additional $400 and divide it by the number of units sold. For example, if a noodle stall sells an average of 100 bowls of noodle every day and opens for 5 days a week (22 days a month) and is charging $2.50 per bowl, then the owner only needs to increase the price of a bowl of noodle by $0.1818 in order to cover the $400 rental increment. However, as consumers, we know that noodles are often priced at $2.50, $3, $3.50 and so on. We do not see prices like $2.60, $2.70, $2.90. So the next price the owner will charge is $3. And this is in fact what happens on the ground. A cake shop increases the price of its egg tart from $8 to $9 for a box of eight. It may looks reasonable as each tart costs only 12.5 cents more and a box only increased by $1. But that is a 12.5% increment. In order to survive and make a decent profit, companies often have no choice but to pass on the costs to consumers. This is only reasonable. But they often fall into the fallacy of justifying their price increase, even if the reasons are valid. Singtel explained their subscription prices increment because of investment in newer technology for faster services. Another company raised its prices because they are increasing the salary of their staff. When the Malaysia and Singapore governments imposed the toll charges, we do not have any choice. If you are in a monopoly, consumers may not have a choice. If you are in an industry with few players and everyone increases their prices, consumers may not have a choice. But a lot of businesses are not so lucky. Customers now have more choices than they want. They are not going to buy your reasons. Even if you are the monopoly, customers still have a choice, unless you are providing an essential service like electricity. And the choice is to find a substitute or alternative, or not to use your product or service at all. Talking about choices, the Singapore government announced new guidelines restricting advertisements on unhealthy food aimed at children aged 12 and below starting 1st Jan 2015. Here you do not have a choice. So how will it affects you? If you are selling healthy food all along, this may not affect you much as it's a continuation of what you are doing all along. But a company that does not meet the requirement will have a lot of work to do. You change your food content or you stop advertising to the kids. Now this is just one part of the equation. Obesity is an issue that is the result of many factors. Restricting advertisement with certain guidelines may be useful. But is it helpful? Some people think that healthy kids must be fat. Others think that fat kids are prosperous. Some unscrupulous business owners might be thinking how to beat the rules. I attended a seminar the other day and a lady was asking the speaker if she could bend the rule on claiming government's funding. A lot of business owners literally take thinking-out-of-the-box out of context. There are many ways to beat the rules, systems and your competitors. Don't beat the rules. Change the rules. |
AuthorOutrageous Marketing Archives
May 2020
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