From what I have noticed in recent times, customer service, in particular, for telecom and DTH, reaching a customer service executive is becoming almost impossible. Instead writing an email to the respective id is bringing better results.
This is a reasonably good development for those who have access to email but it is highly restrictive to those who have limited access to email and highly discriminative to the illiterate.
Cost reduction efforts are great but this is an area service providers need to keep in mind. Explaining a service issue itself was a great challenge and now if one has to articulate, imagine the difficulty. If the issue is hot brought out properly, there is a good chance of getting a standard reply defeating the whole purpose.
I can't even imagine taking someone's help to write such mail in case I'm illiterate and lack of writing email in native language makes it further difficult.
Hope someone is reading and taking note of this feedback
Showing posts with label Airtel Customer Service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Airtel Customer Service. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wassup? An Update
I don't know about others but I can say one thing about life after ISB, it becomes slow. At ISB so many things keep happening and you hardly can catch up with half of them but outside things move so slowly that you have to keep pushing them hard.
After watching Barack Obama and Michelle Obama talk in the convention and comparing that with the speech of Chiranjeevi, who launched a new party in Andhra Pradesh called "Praja Rajyam," I started writing a post with the title "What are we proud about, as a Nation?" but then stopped midway due to laziness. The question still remains, while Mr. and Mrs. Obama tried to inspire by talking about the values of America, American dream etc etc, Chiranjeevi could hardly inspire, instead he chose to use the cine background and inspire people. He still made an attempt to relate to people. But in India politics are all about community, caste, regionalism and criticism of the opponent but nothing what we stand as a nation and what we want to achieve as a nation. I think I'll leave it here and ask you guys to leave your comments.
On the other hand, I managed to trigger two interesting and won a small corporate battle.
As a part of our ELP we did a project and I made one innovative suggestion. Recently I came across a source that could make that idea a reality. Immediately I got in touch with the entrepreneur and linked him up with the corporate. I am helping this guy with the proposal and I'm sure it is gonna work. There is a lot of thrill in seeing one's idea take shape into reality.
Second, I got in touch with the CEO of an interesting company and started discussing about how his services could be launched in India and what could be the potential. This too is exciting as I could see how local knowledge combined with global expertise can do wonders.
Finally I won a battle with Airtel as a customer. Now I am waiting for a call from an alum with Airtel to decide whether I should turn this into a war and see how a corporate would react to an attack from a customer equipped with a B-school degree. I have already won the battle and I have the required ammunition to take them head on but I am thinking what's-in-it-for-me. However if you are an Airtel Post-paid customer I can share the details privately so that you too can benefit from what I did. Hope that raises curiosity, leave your contact details or write to me if you want a response.
There is an early morning meeting tomorrow, so I must take leave know. Bbye and good night.
After watching Barack Obama and Michelle Obama talk in the convention and comparing that with the speech of Chiranjeevi, who launched a new party in Andhra Pradesh called "Praja Rajyam," I started writing a post with the title "What are we proud about, as a Nation?" but then stopped midway due to laziness. The question still remains, while Mr. and Mrs. Obama tried to inspire by talking about the values of America, American dream etc etc, Chiranjeevi could hardly inspire, instead he chose to use the cine background and inspire people. He still made an attempt to relate to people. But in India politics are all about community, caste, regionalism and criticism of the opponent but nothing what we stand as a nation and what we want to achieve as a nation. I think I'll leave it here and ask you guys to leave your comments.
On the other hand, I managed to trigger two interesting and won a small corporate battle.
As a part of our ELP we did a project and I made one innovative suggestion. Recently I came across a source that could make that idea a reality. Immediately I got in touch with the entrepreneur and linked him up with the corporate. I am helping this guy with the proposal and I'm sure it is gonna work. There is a lot of thrill in seeing one's idea take shape into reality.
Second, I got in touch with the CEO of an interesting company and started discussing about how his services could be launched in India and what could be the potential. This too is exciting as I could see how local knowledge combined with global expertise can do wonders.
Finally I won a battle with Airtel as a customer. Now I am waiting for a call from an alum with Airtel to decide whether I should turn this into a war and see how a corporate would react to an attack from a customer equipped with a B-school degree. I have already won the battle and I have the required ammunition to take them head on but I am thinking what's-in-it-for-me. However if you are an Airtel Post-paid customer I can share the details privately so that you too can benefit from what I did. Hope that raises curiosity, leave your contact details or write to me if you want a response.
There is an early morning meeting tomorrow, so I must take leave know. Bbye and good night.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Zidd Karo, Duniya Badlo
Last time I visited PVR, one ad caught my attention and the title of this post is the punchline of that ad. The ad essentially asks people to push the system in the right direction. If you haven't seen it, here's the video for you:
I tried pushing ICICI and I found that they are far more responsive than the so-called customer savvy telecom players including Airtel and Vodafone. These telecom players must learn something from ICICI's process. May be ICICI's officers are not as trained as the CSE's of Airtel/Vodafone but they follow the process very nicely. Last time when I wrote a post about ICICI network problems, someone from the bank noticed it and requested me to make an official complaint. While the complaint was not against the people, I got a call today from the branch in question and an assurance to take care of any issues if I have any in the future. I had another issue with ICICI last week and I was surprised at the responsiveness of ICICI customer care. I got a call within 24 hours and a resolution in another 12 hours.
On the other hand Airtel has asked for seven working days to revert back to me and that too the response appeared to be an automated response. Surely ICICI is working hard and kudos to the ICICI team.
The issue that I have raised in front of Airtel is not a small one. If all goes in the way I think, it is going to create a bang. Wait for the update on that.
Meanwhile after Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra including their capitals getting flooded, looks like its time for the national capital to get flooded. Fols from Delhi had earlier warned me that I will not be able experience as many rains as in the south here but surprisingly there have been lot of rains and today's rain was really heavy. Since the drain system is not used to these kind of downpours, there is water logging at many places. I don't know if I am the only one facing trouble to drive car as the visibility becomes quite poor in rains but I am little worried about the upcoming winter. But I hope it will not be as worse as people have been telling me.
Finally Happy Independence day.
I tried pushing ICICI and I found that they are far more responsive than the so-called customer savvy telecom players including Airtel and Vodafone. These telecom players must learn something from ICICI's process. May be ICICI's officers are not as trained as the CSE's of Airtel/Vodafone but they follow the process very nicely. Last time when I wrote a post about ICICI network problems, someone from the bank noticed it and requested me to make an official complaint. While the complaint was not against the people, I got a call today from the branch in question and an assurance to take care of any issues if I have any in the future. I had another issue with ICICI last week and I was surprised at the responsiveness of ICICI customer care. I got a call within 24 hours and a resolution in another 12 hours.
On the other hand Airtel has asked for seven working days to revert back to me and that too the response appeared to be an automated response. Surely ICICI is working hard and kudos to the ICICI team.
The issue that I have raised in front of Airtel is not a small one. If all goes in the way I think, it is going to create a bang. Wait for the update on that.
Meanwhile after Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra including their capitals getting flooded, looks like its time for the national capital to get flooded. Fols from Delhi had earlier warned me that I will not be able experience as many rains as in the south here but surprisingly there have been lot of rains and today's rain was really heavy. Since the drain system is not used to these kind of downpours, there is water logging at many places. I don't know if I am the only one facing trouble to drive car as the visibility becomes quite poor in rains but I am little worried about the upcoming winter. But I hope it will not be as worse as people have been telling me.
Finally Happy Independence day.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Customer Service in India
I am fully aware that by writing this post, I may not only be making the readers aware about the experiences that I have gone through but the generalizations I am going to make may hurt the image of India as the Customer Service back office for the globe.
The sector that I am talking to about is the much touted and highly successful mobile telephony in India, where customer service is all about unfulfilled promises.
The first sore experience is with Vodafone, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh (earlier Hutch) and then now with Airtel Delhi.
In the case of Vodafone, the service failure started in Delhi but even the AP circle didn't handle it well. At the end I had to terminate the connection without paying the bill in protest but they have taken no action till now. In fact I wanted to publish the full mail transcript in the blog but didn't to clutter the blog with nuisance of Vodafone, which claims "Happy to Help" after spending crores of rupees but does "nothing to really help the customer." Vodafone's tagline should be "Happy to Harass" instead of "Happy to Help."
Let's come to the Airtel scene. The quality of service has been good till it came to billing. I must say that the welcome call and the series of service SMSs were all very good. But when it came to billing, things have started going wrong. My efforts to get an answer for my query resulted in nothing. Instead I ended up spending an hour to make Airtel guys understand the problem. During they process they have made wrong claims multiple times and made false promises again and again. In a single day I have encountered as many as three service failures. Finally I gave up and decided to pursue it through mail. I hope they try to learn something from this.
I will post my interactions with Vodafone shortly as they seem to be thinking "Silence and No-reply as the best Customer Service actions."
The sector that I am talking to about is the much touted and highly successful mobile telephony in India, where customer service is all about unfulfilled promises.
The first sore experience is with Vodafone, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh (earlier Hutch) and then now with Airtel Delhi.
In the case of Vodafone, the service failure started in Delhi but even the AP circle didn't handle it well. At the end I had to terminate the connection without paying the bill in protest but they have taken no action till now. In fact I wanted to publish the full mail transcript in the blog but didn't to clutter the blog with nuisance of Vodafone, which claims "Happy to Help" after spending crores of rupees but does "nothing to really help the customer." Vodafone's tagline should be "Happy to Harass" instead of "Happy to Help."
Let's come to the Airtel scene. The quality of service has been good till it came to billing. I must say that the welcome call and the series of service SMSs were all very good. But when it came to billing, things have started going wrong. My efforts to get an answer for my query resulted in nothing. Instead I ended up spending an hour to make Airtel guys understand the problem. During they process they have made wrong claims multiple times and made false promises again and again. In a single day I have encountered as many as three service failures. Finally I gave up and decided to pursue it through mail. I hope they try to learn something from this.
I will post my interactions with Vodafone shortly as they seem to be thinking "Silence and No-reply as the best Customer Service actions."
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