State of Customer Service in India

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

Fwd: HNY 2011

Wish you all a Very Happy New Year. Along with the wishes I am enclosing an excellent message from a good friend, read on ....

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: AK Rao
Date: Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Subject: HNY 2011
To:

My dear friend,

do you realize it is already a decade old in this new millennium? let me take this opportunity to wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year. i came across a very nice article on the new year resolutions and thought i would share it with you. who knows perhaps, you would take time to read it or print it and mull over it and transform eventually.

"Set and Forget"

Isn't that the typical approach to New Year Resolutions?

Before we consider a 7-part solution, lets start with the top 7 reasons why New Year Resolutions fail:

1.     Projection

With past failures comes pessimism, learned helplessness and negative expectation of life desires being little more than hopes and dreams without belief or conviction.

2.     Purpose

Having no greater sense of life direction or meaning to help steer daily choices, resolutions exist as 'floating islands' in the sea of life's distractions.

3.     Process

A lack of a system, no solid plan-of-action, leaves resolutions as nothing more than wishful thinking.

4.     Prioritization

Rational priorities are overpowered by conflicting emotional priorities – such as the instant gratification of overeating delicious ice cream vs. the struggle and hardship of eating sprouts and drinking carrot juice.

5.     Procrastination

Lack of discipline, thought and control. i.e. Plain old-fashioned laziness.

6.     People:

Circle of friends that drag us down discourage us from achievement, maintaining the status quo of mediocrity.

7.     Politics

Economic troubles and political uncertainty with forced-backed regulation acts as an invisible hand that drains success and limits the globe's progress as a whole.

But if we can flip these 7 factors right side up we will have cracked the code to…

 

Keeping New Year Resolutions

1.    1. Projection

A positive attitude that:

"I am capable of learning how to achieve each resolution".

Mind-map showing the top 10 New Year resolutions of both 2009 and 2010 according to Franklin Covey research, and the 5 life categories they can be grouped under:

Turn negative expectation and pessimism into positive expectation and optimism.

Create positive expectation for success by building the confidence to succeed via the following 6 factors…

2.    Purpose

·      This list of resolutions is significant milestones to my greater long-term life direction and purpose.

·      Making resolutions is usually one of the most significant things that people do for their lives, their families, their success and their happiness each year.

·      After all, New Year resolutions signify some of the most critical, irritating, depressing addictions or problems in the majority of people's lives.

·      But to help them stick, they must be integrated with a personal overall life values and greater sense of long-term ambition.

·      This helps provide the emotional fuel needed to make behavioral and lifestyle changes.

·      Writing out thoughts can do this and feelings to capture on paper your views and perspectives on yourself and your life. This can take a long time, but you are worth the time it takes.

3.    Process

·      I have a simple yet comprehensive method for creating a clear plan-of-action for each and every New Year resolution

·      Create a way to break each resolution into a series of logical next steps.

·      Here's the general plan for keeping New Year resolutions:

o   Jot down clear, precise statements of my resolutions.

o   Pre-plan the landmarks to achieve each goal destination.

o   Maintain my enthusiasm and dedication.

o   Set up my efforts with memory joggers and simple next steps.

o   Review progress and adjust the plan accordingly.

·      It isn't brain surgery but it's not so effortless either. Otherwise everybody would always accomplish his or her resolutions.

·      The biggest difference between success and failure comes from what most people carry out which is basic Goal Setting vs. creating a genuine plan of action through something I call Processing.

·      W E Demming – a very influential corporate guru, said: "If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing."

·      Setting goals means identifying something you want. Processing means developing a step-by-step method to attain a goal.

·      If you have a specific procedure for how to complete something, naturally you will be a lot more optimistic, and can go ahead and take steps to achieve the resolution.

Consider it:

o   TRY to maintain minimal confidence about doing something, when doing that something is simply a string of straightforward next-step physical actions visibly laid out for you in writing.

o   You'll find yourself having a lighter mental state, better outlook, and not because of any inspiring peak performance fluff, but due to the fact that you'll own a process of achievement and not merely a list of wishful thinking.

4.    Prioritization

·      I prioritize my entire lifestyle so that the New Year resolutions fit in with the rhythms of my daily life.

·      You don't only need a process for each resolution, but all resolutions must fit neatly enough into your overall lifestyle so that your path of least resistance leads you to success.

·      What in your life must be re-designed to fulfill your aspirations?

5.     Procrastination

·      I work to develop sufficient willpower to maintain any effort or discipline I need for achieving each resolution.

·      Let's be real. New year resolutions are possible with this 7-factor approach, but that doesn't mean they're easy.

·      It's hard to give yourself permission to take enough time to choose your resolutions, plan them out, factor them into your lifestyle, and then make efforts to take the first step, and each next step, until they are all done. But it's the only way.

6.    People

·      My circle of friends are developed or replaced by people that can encourage and support me in the direction I wish my life to take this year.

·      You may have heard that your income probably matches the average income of your 5 closest friends?

·      Likewise: If you want to get fit, get healthy, improve your finances, spend more time with family, and so on, then having friends that are traveling the same positive journey as you will help you stick to yours.

7.    Politics

·      Damn be those politicians bankrupting our economy and I will play my part to vote the bastards out so our civilization can pursue it's great technological rise into prosperity and harmony.

·      Empower yourself with knowledge by reading from liberty and reason oriented info sources such as Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, Twelve Visions Party, Wikileaks, etc.

Keeping New Year Resolutions – The Bottom line:

·      If you want the best opportunity of attaining your New Year resolutions in 2011 be sure to go way beyond the easy first step of listing things you would like manage the 7 factors of projection, purpose, process, prioritization, procrastination, people, and politics.

·      Take the time and trouble to define in maximum detail exactly how you want life to be and the step-by-step details of each resolution this year.

regards,

AK Rao
www.onechildonelight.org

RE: Something that answers one of my questions

Hi Kiran,

I just have a line or two to describe my thoughts on the question you posed below…

It's like someone sitting on the top of a tree branch & hurriedly cutting it – without noticing the abyss underneath him/her… we are too moved the constant need to outperform us vis-à-vis the competition, that it hardly matters as to the means employed..  maybe it's like … "Ends justify means".. and hence, the means that we are using now-a-days, may result in "The End"

Something that answers one of my questions

I have gone through this small article in yesterday's ET that kind of gave an answer to my question. Actually when I started asking this question, I knew the answer but I thought if no one is thinking like me, then I could be wrong, so instead of going with opinion and solutions, I took this questions to many learned people. They give a wide range of answers and none of them satisfied me; may be I was looking for them to match the answer I have (my own bias), but then it doesn't matter. Now that someone published in the paper, I decided to make my opinion public by agreeing with this article and appreciating the article.

My Question was and still is: Is the current hunger for growth really necessary? If every corporation (incorporating the desires of individual) drives for more and more and keep learning from their failures and become more and more efficient and complex, what would it lead to? Can our Blue Planet support this hunger, can it sustain the man-made changes or will make it such changes that man cannot sustain? Now to the article:

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DEEP ECONOMY

Bill McKibben


FOR most of human history,the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch You could toss one stone and hope to hit both.But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest.That changes everything.Now,if youve got the stone of your own life,or your own society,gripped in your hand,you have to choose between them.Its More or Better.Given all that we know about topics ranging from the molecular structure of carbon dioxide to the psychology of human satisfaction,we need to move decisively to rebuild our local economies.These may well yield less stuff,but they produce richer relationships;they may grow less quickly,if at all,but they make up for it in durability.
Shifting our focus to local economies will not mean abandoning Adam Smith or doing away with markets.Markets,obviously,work.Building a local economy will mean,however,ceasing to worship markets as infallible and consciously setting limits on their scope.We will need to downplay efficiency and pay attention to other goals.We will have to make the biggest changes to our daily habits in generations and the biggest change,as well,to our worldview,our sense of what constitutes progress.The old realism an endless More is morphing into a dangerous fantasy.In the face of energy shortage,of global warming,and of the vague but growing sense that we are not as alive and connected as we want to be,I think weve started to grope for what might come next.And just in time.


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Let me know what you think about this.

Suggestion to Banks with online banking facility - HDFC, ICICI and others

I have sent the below mail to one of the banks and wanted to reproduce it in a public forum for the benefit of other banks.

Sub: Suggestion regarding cheque transaction management.

With the rise in usage of cash withdrawal from ATMs and payments/fund transfers through Internet Banking, customers (at least the salaried class and those who are well versed with online banking) are using cheques sparingly. But then these customers are the most prone to not doing the diligent part of cheque payments, which is maintaining the required amount till the time the cheque gets cleared.

I have a suggestion to your Bank to add value to its online internet banking service by helping customers overcome such issue and all the associated (Cheque returned for lack of funds, penalties thereof and reputation risk and the inconvenience in correcting the error) problems.

All the bank has to do is add a new service in the online banking service that can be called "cheque management." This service should work like this:

1. Whenever a customer issues a cheque, he/she can login to the online banking account and click on the cheque management service.
2. Fill the details of the cheque issued - name of the party, cheque number, amount to be paid etc.
3. Then click on the block cheque amount. After confirmation the said amount will get blocked from the customer's account and he/she will not be able to withdraw that amount from any means and the blocked amount will be used only for payment of the cheque indicated
4. In case there is any change in the cheque payment transaction, customer should be able to unblock the amount and do the necessary.

This should be only a voluntary, customer request based service and the Bank should not have any liability of any mistakes in amount blocked.

The information fed in the online account can be used to cross verify the cheque presented and can be used to avoid frauds too.

I would be delighted if the merits of this suggestion is discussed and implemented in a suitable manner. In case any further details are required, feel free to call me (your customer care has my number - hehehe)

Thanks and Regards
Kiran Kumar A

What makes an ocean

I always had a pessimistic view about the CSR initiatives of companies. So when I got a mail from our Branding group to send them a list of CSR initiatives taken up in our vertical, I simply wrote a run-of-the-mill mail to other locations to forward me the details of initiatives taken up them. I just got three points, first one is about a medical camp conducted at some village where our project is being implemented - I thought what's so great about it, next point is about a 5000 rs donation to CRY by a group of employees, I felt that these are better than me, may be they didn't do anything themselves but at least they believed someone to do some useful work and the last one was the most interesting - as a part of our project implementation, we would need access to certain place and we pay crop compensation to the farmer whose crop may get damaged in that process, in one such case, the farmer is a old man and had a paralysis stroke, he got the usual crop compensation, which might be better than what he would have made from the crop (owing to the drought conditions), the story actually starts here, the two young engineers who were involved in this activity decided to go the extra mile, they discovered that the farmer wanted to buy a pair of oxen with the untimely money he got but was not in a condition to visit a market, negotiate and buy the ox, so these guys helped the farmer in identifying an excellent pair of oxen and then did all the negotiations and bought the oxen. When I saw the photograph, somewhere in my heart I felt very good, I surely have a soft corner for agriculture and cattle owing to my childhood in a remote village but then who doesn't like agriculture and who wouldn't appreciate the beauty of the pair of oxen in the photograph. Great job friends, small drops of good deeds such as these do create the ocean of positive energy and I am writing this post just to add another drop to that ocean


Kiran Alla

Twist or a turn

My quest has led me to a new route. It could be a twist or a simple turn, not sure at this moment even as I start feeling better. But why write these thoughts on this blog - is it an attempt to project myself, is it to gain acceptance from some known and some unknown readers; I know that these are embedded in my actions and whenever I realize it, I would stop writing my thought junk on the blog but then the second principle that I want to implement is making me write this post.

For quite sometime, since the time I became independent, I have been following the principle that I will do no act that will harm others (at least to the extent my knowledge/wisdom goes) and I will not allow or keep quiet if someone is harming me. This has been the guiding principle for me to channelize my energies and to reconcile my actions at the end of the day. The second principle, about which I have been aware for quite sometime but not been practicing as rigorously as the first one, is that my happiness is not something that is limited just to me, it is linked to so many others and other things that if I just focus on myself, I would just remain independent and will be living in an island and would be going in circles.

Finally after about 12 years of experimentation and intermittent implementation I have decided to adopt the second principle in all my actions. Apart from not doing harm to others and not allowing others to harm me, from now on, I am going to spend time in evolving myself and others around me, with the clarity that only effort is mine while result depends on many other things. I have now decided to fully adopt the principle of "Interdependence" that Stephen R Covey wrote about in his Seven Habits book. Not that I have not practiced it but from now on I will make a conscious effort to make every action a beneficial interdependent action.

I would keep sharing my experiences and would greatly appreciate any inputs, reflections.