Happy to Help
During our management trainee induction program, all of us were asked to comment on our company ads. We didn’t give them a good rating. We were later asked which companies’ ads we like. The answer was unanimous – Vodafone, where a puppy always follows its master and is happy to offer help in all possible ways. That’s the beauty of an ad. They help imprint a brand’s image in the minds of the customer. It’s a passport that will make a customer reach the door of the company. However, loyalty of the customer hinges on factors like the first experience and the customer service he continues to get.
After coming to Delhi, I thought that I would continue my Bombay number thinking that I wouldn’t be connected with people that much and hence wouldn’t be using my phone to a great extend. Getting settled in a city brings with it, its own set of challenges and I had mine too. My phone bills were surging and I had to tighten my purse strings. I decided to take a new connection and this time for a change, Vodafone. Rather than heading straight towards a gallery, I found a dealer on the way and gave him all the required documents thinking that he would be my lucky mascot who would get my sim activated in a day’s time.
Things always don’t happen as you want them too. Thanks to the terrorists, service providers have become finicky. Along with address proof and identity proof, to get a connection, one would need to give a landline number and a couple of mobile numbers as reference. Forget my case, but how on earth can someone expect a migrant laborer from UP to furnish such details? All this has done nothing but just increased the average time for sim activation. A visit to the Vodafone office becomes a part of your daily agenda. You get there and you will get assurance from the executive that your sim will get activated in half an hour, a duration you wouldn’t want to sit in the gallery and sulk. Instead, you trust the executive and head towards home. You wait for 4 hrs, 12 hrs, 24 hrs but nothing happens. You call up customer care and you would have a ball of a time conversing with Vijender Singh, Santosh or Beena and listening to “Shudh Hindi”. You get pooped providing the same details every time. I realize that the next visit to the Vodafone gallery is due.
Quite contrary to what I normally do, I decide to give the executive a piece of my mind. But once I reach the gallery, I am my normal self and I ask why the sim hasn’t got activated. I get the same response; “Sir, this will ready in 15 min. If you want, you may go home”. This time I decide to stay back till I get activation done. I go and get myself seated in the plush sofa and take a good view of the office. Suddenly, a lady storms into the office and slams the door behind her back. She heads straight towards an executive and asks a question which to me appears as old as the hills; “Why hasn’t my sim got activated?” But she was quite different from me. She had applied for a connection for her son about six days back and still she hadn’t got it. In fact she was a Vodafone customer whose monthly bills are a meaty Rs.15000. Forget the differential treatment that she ought to have got. In my mind, I thought that I was lucky to get a connection in 2 days. She slammed the executive and all attempts made by the executive to mollify the lady were in vain. Oh! How beautifully she spoke. I was all merry listening to the lady giving her incisive comments on the customer service. I loved her chutzpah. She was doing something which many customers like me couldn’t do. She was the voice of the customer who trusted the executive; got betrayed and had a strong sense of indignation and a feeling of being cheated and she literally mortified them and reinforced to people like me that customer is still the king.
I do appreciate the fact that there is a need for service providers to be more vigilant especially in the wake of our country being under the radar of terrorist attacks but the trade off cannot be customer service. Processes no doubt need to be robust so that atrocities like these don’t happen but at the same time service providers need to beef up their resources and ensure maximum customer satisfaction. Possible solutions are many. Either you increase the staff to do the additional processing or make the processes leaner so that the customer doesn’t have to wait for long. The most important thing is not to give false hopes of the sim getting activated in x hours but to be more realistic and sticking to the deadline given.
It takes a couple of days to start a business in Singapore and it takes more than that for a sim to get activated in India…
After coming to Delhi, I thought that I would continue my Bombay number thinking that I wouldn’t be connected with people that much and hence wouldn’t be using my phone to a great extend. Getting settled in a city brings with it, its own set of challenges and I had mine too. My phone bills were surging and I had to tighten my purse strings. I decided to take a new connection and this time for a change, Vodafone. Rather than heading straight towards a gallery, I found a dealer on the way and gave him all the required documents thinking that he would be my lucky mascot who would get my sim activated in a day’s time.
Things always don’t happen as you want them too. Thanks to the terrorists, service providers have become finicky. Along with address proof and identity proof, to get a connection, one would need to give a landline number and a couple of mobile numbers as reference. Forget my case, but how on earth can someone expect a migrant laborer from UP to furnish such details? All this has done nothing but just increased the average time for sim activation. A visit to the Vodafone office becomes a part of your daily agenda. You get there and you will get assurance from the executive that your sim will get activated in half an hour, a duration you wouldn’t want to sit in the gallery and sulk. Instead, you trust the executive and head towards home. You wait for 4 hrs, 12 hrs, 24 hrs but nothing happens. You call up customer care and you would have a ball of a time conversing with Vijender Singh, Santosh or Beena and listening to “Shudh Hindi”. You get pooped providing the same details every time. I realize that the next visit to the Vodafone gallery is due.
Quite contrary to what I normally do, I decide to give the executive a piece of my mind. But once I reach the gallery, I am my normal self and I ask why the sim hasn’t got activated. I get the same response; “Sir, this will ready in 15 min. If you want, you may go home”. This time I decide to stay back till I get activation done. I go and get myself seated in the plush sofa and take a good view of the office. Suddenly, a lady storms into the office and slams the door behind her back. She heads straight towards an executive and asks a question which to me appears as old as the hills; “Why hasn’t my sim got activated?” But she was quite different from me. She had applied for a connection for her son about six days back and still she hadn’t got it. In fact she was a Vodafone customer whose monthly bills are a meaty Rs.15000. Forget the differential treatment that she ought to have got. In my mind, I thought that I was lucky to get a connection in 2 days. She slammed the executive and all attempts made by the executive to mollify the lady were in vain. Oh! How beautifully she spoke. I was all merry listening to the lady giving her incisive comments on the customer service. I loved her chutzpah. She was doing something which many customers like me couldn’t do. She was the voice of the customer who trusted the executive; got betrayed and had a strong sense of indignation and a feeling of being cheated and she literally mortified them and reinforced to people like me that customer is still the king.
I do appreciate the fact that there is a need for service providers to be more vigilant especially in the wake of our country being under the radar of terrorist attacks but the trade off cannot be customer service. Processes no doubt need to be robust so that atrocities like these don’t happen but at the same time service providers need to beef up their resources and ensure maximum customer satisfaction. Possible solutions are many. Either you increase the staff to do the additional processing or make the processes leaner so that the customer doesn’t have to wait for long. The most important thing is not to give false hopes of the sim getting activated in x hours but to be more realistic and sticking to the deadline given.
It takes a couple of days to start a business in Singapore and it takes more than that for a sim to get activated in India…
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