The bad policies of Cafe Coffee Day

Dear readers,

It so happens that there exists a CCD in the campus of IIT Kharagpur and I have been regularly visiting there since April 2010. Over a period of one year I have observed their customer policies and realised that CCD still banks on cookie cutter management strategies that fail to engage the majority of the crowds over here. For a coffee shop / brand, this is the perfect breeding ground for loyal customers who will graduate and spend their time (and money) on the more expensive retail outlets outside the confinements of this campus. This is not the case.

An important thing to understand is that CCD doesn't operate as a franchise. Instead the outlets are company owned, company operated businesses on leased / rented grounds. This also means that the management and customer relationship decisions are fairly universal and are at the very least under the same larger umbrella of policies.

1. Pushing of unnecessary food items - While this is effective for first time customers, people who have been regular at any food joint have usually very specific demands. For examples if you take object X from the  menu for a continuous span of days, they'll blatantly tell it on your face that the stock of X is over. This is to push you into buying object Y or Z. You may argue if such a statement is genuine or not. Let me cite a specific thing to strengthen my case.
Sometimes we used to ask when will object X be in stock. One of the employees says, Wednesday. Sure enough, you get it on Wednesday. On Thursday the same employee says that the object X is no more in stock. On Friday some other employee comes along and gives X. Stock of CCD, IIT Kharagpur usually arrives fortnightly. Hence an object cannot magically disappear or reappear in this fashion. Such instances have occurred multiple times in the last one year.

2. Loud unnecessary music - This prohibits conversation. Period. CCD (or at least the one in the campus) is not a place where you can have a decent conversation without increasing the average decibel of your vocal throw. This is exactly opposite to their motto "a lot can happen over coffee". The choice of songs is questionable.

3. CCD has a tie up with 9XM (some stupid channel) - Either the top management has thought that such brainless programming will be the new taste of the youth or the fellows at 9XM thinks that they are hip and cool. Well they are also dumb. You can judge it yourself by staring at that channel for an hour. But I doubt if your instantaneous intelligence level after an hour long exposure to 9XM will allow to to judge anything.

4. They push the customers away - This scenario occurs in two cases. The first is when there is a huge rush. Instead of customer satisfaction, they focus more on serving as many people as possible. Hence, a decent length conversation is virtually impossible. This can still be excused as they are trying to do business. However the worse is when there is a change in shift. They have a sales entry log or something. A person P at the counter registers some order and say the customer places more order after the person P's shift is over. They ask you to clear the bills stating unless this is done, person Q cannot take in the newer order. This usually happens during afternoon times.


Regards.


Disclaimer : This is a third party observation and the report is based on my sole judgement. If you have any objections, please contact me. This is not a legal grievance. As such this is not a defamation of a person living or dead. I have been granted the right by the Constitution of India to express my opinion on a corporate entity.