Working for the elites

How did you come about working for Rancon Motorbikes Limited? Did you find Rancon or did Rancon find you?

Rancon Motorbikes found me through NSU. I was an intern and later a trainee in Nestle before I came to Rancon. Before Nestle, when I was in NSU, I got a call from Rangs Group, under which is Rancon Motorbikes Limited. They knocked NSU for CVs and screened out some candidates. As it turned out, I was the only one they chose from there. They called me up and asked for an interview. While I was looking for a job, I did not want to leave Nestle. I was a bit confused, but found out that it would be a very good opportunity. Rancon is a growing company and it's just reached one year this September in Bangladesh. So I felt that there would be a lot for me to do at this company, a chance to prove myself and showcase myself.

What kind of work have you been doing?

My direct team looks after all the marketing activities, starting from promotional materials, activations, campaigns, press ads, billboards and so on. We haven't moved on to TVCs yet, but there's a blend of marketing activities in our department and I look after the majority of them. My line manager is the head of, but I have been assigned to do a lot of the multipurpose work.

Interestingly, what I do is look after below the line activities. So I design marketing plans, come up with ideas, give presentations and get approvals from the top management. I do the planning and execute the activations as well. This is my core responsibility.

The second responsibility I have, and this was a very challenging task that was given to me on the first day of my job, is to take care of the customer care centre. I have no idea why they had given me this job, but I didn't turn them down. The customer care centre started only a week before I joined and there was no process head. Everybody is very senior to me, but they made me the process head of customer care. There are three people assigned to the customer care department at the moment. My task is to train them on how to speak to customers and what kind of insights to draw from customers. I implemented a system where whoever calls gets a follow-up and is encouraged to buy our bikes. So far on average I have been successful in converting 27 percent of the customers into sales whereas my target was initially 5 percent.

My third task is to look after our social media presence. I do the graphics, content and campaign designs. Recently we a held a photo competition, a selfie campaign with your Suzuki bike. You'll be surprised to know that the winner actually ended up with 21,000 likes.

Number four. Since our HR assistant manager left, I look after some HR activities as well, like recruitment and selection.

Someone who's interested in entering an entry level position at Rancon, what kind of work would they be doing? What would their role be in Rancon?

We do have a lot of untapped opportunities at the company. We currently have 42 dealers all around Bangladesh and there is a huge market for us out there. We need to find dealers and we need to find core customers. We are still yet to define our broad customer base. For example, we're assuming North Bengal would be a very good market for us. But obviously we need people to actually visit the place, as well as find dealers and customers for our bikes. So if someone enters Rancon they will definitely have to work to discover our entire potential. This applies for marketing as well. Maybe there's something that we have not done yet but should be doing.

Could you expand on the elite nature of Suzuki?

By elite nature, we basically mean that what we do has to be better than any other company. Suzuki is a worldwide company so it's famous everywhere. And three things is associated with Suzuki throughout the world are trust, reliance and the stylish nature of the bikes. Suzuki has brands like Hayabusa and DS XR that are really famous throughout the world. We want that to be portrayed in Bangladesh. At the same time we want people to know that owning a Suzuki is a matter of pride. This is something we want to reflect through our marketing activity. And it is also something that all our employees must keep in mind.

What do you think is the demand for young business grads in the automobiles sector, considering that it's a new one?

We're looking more towards sales people. There are a lot of untapped opportunities that need to be undertaken by sales persons. We need people in marketing as well. Rancon has motivated me a lot by relying on me. The company truly appreciates new ideas. Fresh grads from business schools are being groomed with these new and unique ideas of contemporary marketing activities. So this is something we're really looking for from university grads.

When I got out of university, I wanted to do something substantial. I had a lot of ideas and I wanted my ideas to be implemented. Every fresh grad has the same feeling – I have an idea, I want to make it happen. They'll get very good opportunities if they come to Rancon.

What is the most memorable thing you've done since joining Rancon?

Something that comes straight to mind is one very challenging task I had to do. The globally used tagline of Suzuki is 'Way of Life'. But in Bangladesh, Suzuki operates under its subsidiary Rancon Motorbikes. As far as marketing campaigns are concerned we don't need to take prior approval from upstairs. We have the independence to do whatever we want. Before I joined, some 7 or 8 months earlier, the company hadn't considered using the tagline in any of our marketing materials, not even in press ads. This was because Uttara Motors are also distributors of Suzuki, Suzuki cars to be precise, and higher ups didn't want to cause confusion among the customers. I was told the same thing after I joined. However, I decided to conduct university activations and B2B fests and found out that people basically associated Suzuki with the Indian Maruti Suzuki. There was already a kind of brand distortion, which was quite scary because Suzuki is a Japanese company, using Japanese technology. So I took these complaints and presented them in front of my bosses. After a long debate, I ended up justifying why we should use the original tagline. If customers don't associate my brand with the real thing, we won't be differentiating ourselves. This was in August. Today, we no longer receive these complaints.

The thing is, we work for the customers, we don't work for ourselves, so if we cannot deliver value to them there's no point of us existing. That is exactly what I told my CEO. We don't work for ourselves, we don't even work for our parent group Rangs. We work for the customers. We earn revenue, we get salaries – but if our customers are not happy, if we cannot portray the elite class nature of Suzuki, then we are not doing our brand justice.

The interviewer is the Sub-editor of the career publication of The Daily Star and a junior at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka