Hey,
I’m Raghav. I take care of operations at your favourite oral care brand a.k.a Perfora.
With the weekend around the corner, we started discussing who should pen down the Sunday letter to our subscribers this time. And I volunteered as I wanted to share something personal with you all. Today, I’ll be talking about something that we all are afraid to commit i.e. Mistakes.
THE BET
I am taking a huge bet. Wondering How? Let me tell you.
Either my bosses will be really furious after reading this letter or this might become a channel to express all the goof-ups that I end up doing. I’d prefer the latter :D
THE MISTAKES
Reading others’ mistakes and being able to resonate with it is comforting, as this makes us realize that we are not alone in screwing up things. Am I right?
Yes, I am. So here we go. I have listed some specific incidents during the 90 days I have spent with Perfora (the only brand whose electric toothbrush that I trust these days):-
The BIG Money Error -
This was a huge one. When we were trying to save every penny, a calculation error resulted in a huge loss. We were importing a special ingredient (more on this ingredient, later) and I was doing the entire coordination. While making the final payment, due to a really small miscalculation, we ended up paying an amount twice. It was a great nightmare. The first month, the first task at the job and the first set back was INR 10,000. However, I learned from this incident and moved ahead and you can easily guess how I would have processed the other shipments post this incident.
The NAME Game -
You all know, we are the only brand in India that offers Personalised Electric Toothbrush? Yes, with an option to print your name. So, whenever we get any request for printing a name on the truthbrush, I usually copy all the names from the website and paste them in an excel sheet and then that sheet is sent to a secret agent.
On a certain day, we had very few personalisation requests. Instead of copying the names, I started manually noting them down in the sheet. (Even I don’t know why I digressed from the set process) and I ended up writing down “SHOBHIT” (which means “embellished”, this is what I have heard, and even I have a friend with this name) but it was actually “SHOBIT”. Also, though we now take only 2-3 days to get the toothbrush personalized (hope you notice, we’re getting efficient), earlier it would take around 7-10 days. Now, just imagine -- you wait for 10 odd days, have already paid more than 1200+ for a toothbrush, and you get your toothbrush with an incorrect spelling of yours. That’s a bummer.
I guess this would have been the reaction of Shobit. But then “Customer is God”. I somehow managed to reduce the 10 days dispatch time to 2 days, got the correct name printed, and delivered it to our customer.
Communication is KEY -
If you have ordered from us, you would have received a note from our brand. This is the note which we send to our customers as a token of appreciation for choosing and believing in us. However, due to my negligence, in a few shipments, we skipped adding this note. I sincerely apologize to those customers.
I am looking forward to you ordering our product again and giving us an opportunity to express our gratitude to you.
That’s it. This is all that I wanted to share and to be candid, it feels so, so good to let this off my chest. Also, writing this letter was a much-needed change in my everyday routine of accomplishing six sigma operational excellence.
A few takeaways -
- We all make mistakes in our professional and personal life. It’s important to acknowledge, reflect on why that happened, and move forward.
- Don’t take your screws up too seriously. It’s all a part of the learning process and I’m glad to be working alongside a team that is understanding and forgiving.
Hope you all enjoyed reading it!
I’d love to hear if you could share the mistakes that you might have made in your first job or the subsequent ones. I’d feel a lot better by knowing that I am not alone in this world of making mistakes. Isn’t it? Please do reply, I’m eagerly looking forward to your mails.
Cheers,
Raghav