Brand messages in Slumdog

Ok, so Slumdog Millionaire is a marvelous film and deserves its 8 Oscars, but I think that there was a message for brands embedded into the film that I would like to put our attention to.

In one scene the lead character, Jamal, is seen at work in a Mumbai Call Centre (ostensibly for a mobile phone company) and for those who have never been to see a call centre, it was a highly enlightening experience. The main character Jamal, is a Chai-boy (tea-boy) in the call centre, and is seen taking tea into a daily training session where the call centre staff are being instructed in the day’s plot in Eastenders, thus ensuring they are able to converse with average Brits! A rather crude and clichéd scene, but amusing nonetheless.

Then, Jamal is seen helping out a friend by taking over his seat and answering a call. The call as you can imagine does not go well, the customer asks where she has called as she is calling from Kingussie in Scotland and he replies “ah….I am just down the road (he looks around the room for inspiration and spies a poster of Big Ben and Parliament Square)…at Loch Big Ben!”

Well, it’s played for laughs in the film, but there is a very real lesson here that we need to take heed of, our customers can sniff out a lie, and brands should be measuring the impact of the channels on the customer experience. I bet the call that Jamal hangs up on would not have been recorded, in a typical call centre, or highlighted as a negative customer experience for the customer in Kingussie. This focus on customers across cross-channels is essential in difficult economic times, the more customer-focused brands may do better than others!