Muthukumar Rajamani : Interaction Designer/Manager, Bangalore

Well, Happy Republic Day folks. A 3 day loong weekend, means many things to many people. While most of my friends got outta Bangalore, I decided to stay put this time.

My wife's office is (unfortunately?) just a stone's throw from Bangalore Central. We couldn't resist the temptation when we saw that familiar logo with a 2 legged smiley+ "Happiness Sale" header and that alluring "Upto 50% Off " blurb. We ended-up shopping for a whopping 5 hours!

Here are some of my observations of bugs that screw-up the shopping user experience in many retail outlets like Bangalore Central, Lifestyle, Forum, Garuda Mall, Shopper's Stop, Food World, Fab Mall, Big Bazaar etc.,

• Car Parking : Luckily, i had a secret Plan B, so i wasn't part of this racket.
  • Que : You'd notice a security guard holding a placard containing a message like this " Go left if you wanna shop in Bangalore Central". He stood half a mile before the mall in a dust contaminated road . To his left was a looong and very slooww-moving que of cars filled up wannabe and yet so- very-patient-shoppers, burning their precious fuel & time.
  • Valet Parking : This aint a bad idea. I really a head-spinning frustrating experience while trying to find parking in the 18 tiered spiral-parking-lot of Garuda Mall. Not to mention the traffic jam there.
  • 50 bucker Redeemable Parking Ticket :
    What a brilliant idea! You can redeem 50 bucks against your purchase at the Billing Counter. Especially to a watch an inefficient and poorly trained staff fumble with billing.

• Navigation
  Incorrectly placed and absence-of- well written labels indicating the location of a product genre, can really screw-up your time.
  • In Garuda Mall, i had a terrible experience trying to locate a lift which would directly take me to the 9th floor. I landed-up on a lift which went only till 6th floor. It seemed that there was no direct "connecting lift" from 6th floor. I was asked to go down to 5th floor to catch a "connecting lift" to 9th floor. May be, its just me!
  • In Food World it was relatively easier to locate a specific product. The product genres are labeled alrightee and noticeably placed. They do have helpfull staff.
  • If you are a regular, then you'd know where to go.
• Trial Rooms
  • Scalability is a big issue while shopping on weekends, holidays and festival seasons.
    "Die-Hard" shoppers just don't give up and wait patiently in the never ending que. They are allowed to take only 3 garments at a time to try-on. They spend on an average 10-20 minutes in the Trial-Room and their poor "partners in crime" also wait near the que to offer their opinion. They also run and fetch the next size which would fit 'em. Some times, people don't que up and play dirty.
  • Flexible Trial-Room Design: The no of trial rooms could be increased. They can be designed to "collapse" like a "convertible" when not required or modified into some other useful form. They could also include some space for shoppers to keep their wallets, handbags, shopping bags in order to comfortably try.
• Shopping Bags/Carts: Great idea if there's enough space to lug these around.
• Billing :
  • The case of the missing tags. The gentle man at billing counter abruptly stopped the billing process and ran 2 floors above to pick another product and used its tag to determine the price. The 5 minute-delay annoyed the fellow shoppers in que. Additional resources could parallely process other bills.
  • Its also annoying to see these guys fumble while bar-coding or while trying to fix an incorrect entry or while taking way too much time to complete billing
• Alterations:
  Pay first, get the bill and then collect the altered clothing. This means that I have to go through the rig morale of using the Trial Room, going through the tedious Billin Process, wait for the alteration and then again using the Trial Room! Phew!
• Exchanges: Comeback another day within the stipulated period go through the same experience enlisted above.
• Collecting Gifts : Way too many re-directions for more adventure
• Air-Conditioning : This very important. I've almost blacked-out in certain malls, owing the short supply of oxygen. And some places feel like Kashmir while other places feel like our good ol' Chennai!
• Ambience : Lighting, Air-Conditioning, window displays, internal wall posters and larger-than-life branded visual communication are great-to-have, but not at the expense of basics.
• Noise : The Mall Jockey should know when to shut his gob and play soothing music.
• Staff Efficiency
  • Not all the staff members are well trained as to how to handle customers queries, how to expedite the billing processes. They also need to understand the product nature that they are responsible for and need to be trained really well. A floor manager should also monitor and roll his sleeves up to fix issues.
• Scalability and Management :
  An ideal shopping experience plan needs to be defined. A Process flow map needs to be laid out. Defects need to be logged and prevented. Scalability is one of the key issues. But people still buy.....

• There are other issues involved, like signing-up for First Citizen's club, Loyalty points and so on and so forth which i might address later.

• It'd also be helpful to make seating arrangements for people to relax. While Cafe Day is available at Bangalore Central, seats could be provided near Trial Rooms.

The Malls in Bangalore gotta a long way to go baby. They are here but haven't yet arrived.