An early childhood lesson we learn is to welcome our guests warmly and give them more preference over self. There are many stories around this in our curriculum and children story books.

This is a common cultural norm in South East Asia - although India does it better - which is my admittedly biased opinion as an Indian. 🇮🇳 🤟🏻

An obvious case study to look at is the hotel industry. Mid-budget Indian hotels have a friendlier staff than luxury properties abroad. This is true for restaurants too.

We can broaden this sense of hospitality to define all customers as guests of a company and should be treated as much.

Many find this boring and exhausting. It’s considered less exciting than customer acquisition or fundraising - which gets far more attention & limelight from media. Acquisition can be scaled rapidly with fundraise leading to more acquisitions - an echo chamber of sorts.

Personally, I find both acquisition & retention equally exciting. I also believe that retention is harder than acquisition and genuine customer service is an effective retention strategy.

In reality, though, this is mostly ignored and reflects in the way companies choose to invest in this area.

At smaller startups, customer support is practically non-existent and is an after thought. In bigger startup’s, resources are spent in building confusing, circular chatbot that look friendly but is designed to make customers give up in frustration (while boosting their KPIs internally).

It’s become a normal thing that such businesses only resolve queries unless escalated to social media.

On the other spectrum are companies that have great customer experience in their DNA. After achieving “too big to fail” status they still don’t stop.

Indian startups should embrace this hospitable side of our culture. This is a strength that can’t be matched by most silicon valley companies.

An hospitable approach is a win-win for both businesses and its customers.