The customer’s answer was limited by our question

The owner had described the problem as accurately as our form allowed. In 2019 the booking flow I approved asked for a repair category before anyone had inspected the bicycle. A selected review of thirty requests marked as punctures found eighteen tube-related cases and twelve other causes. I had made a person choose a diagnosis in order to ask for help. The correction began by changing the question rather than blaming owners for choosing the wrong answer.

I grew up in Guwahati and completed a Bachelor of Design at the fictional Selnavri Design College in May 1998. The following month I joined Pevralni Service Design as an assistant in a seven-person research group. We watched customers explain practical problems and observed how service staff translated those descriptions into work. I learned that the language of an inconvenience and the language of a technical diagnosis could be different without either person being careless.

In April 2005 I became a service designer leading ten colleagues within ₹1.2 crore annual practice expense. Client projects taught me to follow a screen into the conversation it caused at a counter. A neat category could save an office a few seconds while requiring a customer to claim knowledge they did not have. Senior client owners retained technical and operating decisions. Our contribution was to make the exchange understandable enough that the right person could make the next judgement.

I joined Nervashi Cycle Care in April 2012 as product manager, with fourteen colleagues and ₹2.3 crore annual function expense. A recurring workshop product offered continuing responsibility for what happened after release. I worked with Imran’s service colleagues to understand how booking language affected the first conversation with an owner. The product could help describe a request and arrange an assessment, but it could not inspect the bicycle or decide the repair from a menu choice.

The head-of-product appointment followed in April 2017, bringing eighteen colleagues and ₹3.5 crore annual expense. Two years later I approved the repair-category flow that contradicted the distinction I already understood. We spent ₹28 lakh over seven weeks replacing the implied diagnosis with a symptom-led request and an explicit assessment stage. The selected eighteen and twelve cases were not a failure rate for bicycles or a measure of owner competence. They showed why our product question needed to change.

I became CPO in April 2022. Twenty-two colleagues now work through three leads within ₹4.6 crore annual expense, including ₹1.4 crore discovery and product programmes. Kavita Dervanli retains enterprise authority and Imran Nelpashi leads workshop-service partnerships. Engineering and qualified workshop owners retain their own decisions. Product leadership requires me to explain which promise a booking makes, rather than assume that every condition the workshop must resolve can be hidden behind a reassuring confirmation.

In 2023 a selected account of twenty-four visits showed ten completed within thirty minutes and fourteen requiring longer. A ₹41 lakh, ten-week programme separated the arrival window from the completion estimate supplied after assessment. In 2025 we spent ₹36 lakh over nine weeks distinguishing appointment capacity from parts readiness. Of twenty selected replacement-part requests with available times, thirteen had the specified part reserved and seven still required sourcing. We made the difference visible without declaring the latter appointments impossible or promising a sourcing date we did not control.

I have no personal equity and no statutory seat. A first outside contribution would require additional governance preparation and an assessment of the company concerned. I would bring the habit of examining what a customer reasonably understands from a product before the service has begun. I also ask researchers to return to the workshop after a screen changes. A clearer form is useful only if the owner and service colleague can act on the distinction it introduces. That follow-through keeps product judgement connected to the practical exchange rather than treating a successful demonstration as the end of the work.

I ask product managers to write down the promise they would explain to a workshop colleague without showing the screen. If that explanation depends on a qualification absent from the confirmation, the product still needs work. This practice helps us find decisions disguised as wording changes and gives service colleagues a concrete basis for disagreement before release, when the expectation is still ours to change.

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