How Flipkart can stop wasting money on ‘cute stuff’, and instead delight buyers.

Make no mistake. The kids featured in the Flipkart TV commercial look cute in their adult avatars. They act superbly well to make us go awwww. The brand message they convey stays long enough for us to remember that Flipkart is a great place to shop at. That’s until we have conversations like the one I had with a friend. He narrated to me the harrowing time he had trying to get the online retailer to replace an 18000 bucks faulty phone that was delivered. He couldn’t get through to customer care easily and when he did, he was at the mercy of service personnel who just didn’t seem to care. Call escalations didn’t seem to work. Finally what paid off were a few tweets directed right at the man on the top.

Now I’ve got a question for you. Who do you think influences me enough to form an opinion about shopping at Flipkart? The cute kids on TV, or my friend’s disturbing story?

It’s time brands figured the world of communiques has altered dramatically in the digital age. Access to ‘credible’ buyer feedback about a brand is at people’s fingertips. So when people get into the purchase consideration mode, they’ll chuck all that cutesy ‘non-credible’ information they get via advertising out of their heads, and form opinions listening to either upsetting buyer stories or delightful ones.

My advice to Flipkart? Save your advertising money. Plough the moolah into improving customer service. Sure, we’ll miss the kids, but what’s that compared to a dreadful time at the hands of customer service?