Slice of life: ‘Being multilingual earns customer satisfaction’

I own a shop that sells bike spare parts and I opened it in 1999. It was my sister’s husband who taught me how to sell bike spare parts and run a good business. I studied under him until 1987. He told me how to run a respectable business. For that, you need to be honest with the customers and sell them the right kind of products. I had a wish to go to Saudi Arabia. So I went there between 1987 and 1992. It was before I got married. I worked at a petrol pump there. People there have not studied much, so they are a little rough around the edges. I learned to be patient with them. I learnt Arabic before going there. Since I read the Quran, I found it easy. Learning languages is a passion of mine. My friends were all from Kerala and so, I picked up Malayalam quickly. I used to work in Mumbai, way back in the day, so I know Hindi and Marathi, too. Hindi works all over the country, except here. But 50 per cent of my customers communicate in Hindi. When they don’t know Tamil and hear me speak in a familiar tongue, they are immediately relaxed and are happier to do business with me. Customer satisfaction is very important, and something like a language goes a long way for that.