How do you explain the importance of a customer?

It was the summer of 1995 in Noida, an eastern suburb of Delhi, India at the headquarters of Hindustan Computer Ltd, one of the original Indian technology companies.

I was among a group of young, starry-eyed college graduates in their first week of working life, attentively listening to Mr Ajay Chowdhary, the company's CEO.

He started by explaining the company's history, its humble beginnings, culture, performance, target, and ambitions. He made the session interactive by asking factual questions, and clearly, there was competition among us to look good in front of the CEO. This continued for around 30 minutes.

As rookies, we were overawed, but somehow, he made us feel that we belonged and deserved it. And then, he asked a rather odd question!

"Can you tell me who bought your shirt?"

He went around the table and sought responses from all of us. There were a variety of reactions, from parents to siblings to relatives to ourselves.

He paused, smiled, and said, you are all wrong!!

There was a moment of stunned silence followed by a hushed chatter. We could not fathom that there could be any other response to such a simple question. And then he said.

"Your customer bought the shirt"!

I have always been grateful to Mr. Ajay Chowdhary for teaching us a valuable lesson in our first job year. Over the years, I have shared this anecdote with various teams, hoping it would help them as it did for me.

Teaching customer centricity is easy - make it real!

It is not a coincidence that HCL technology is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that is doing well.