An Open Letter to Bharti Airtel!!
An Open letter to Mr. Sunil Mittal, the Chairman of Bharti Airtel & Mr. Manoj Kohli, the CEO of Bharti Airtel.
Dear Mr. Mittal and Mr. Kohli,
Is the word STUPID printed over my forehead?
The above statement precisely sets the tone of my current post and probably may highlight how much pissed off I am at the service of the guys at Airtel.
The phrase customer satisfaction is overused in the context of the Indian consumers. I wonder whether you are aware of the ground reality. Yeah, fine, I know the Airtel Network Coverage is far better than others, but seriously, does that mean if others are pathetic and you are being plain mediocre, it qualifies you to claim that you are customer satisfactions is high up in the charts??? Well, the answer is a big NO.
Why I am Pissed Off??
- I experience cross-talk. How does it matter?? Well imagine you are in a call with your international client, who is very pricky about the confidentiality of his project. And in the middle of the call, he suddenly hears some strange voice blabbering away some strange stuff. How am I to justify that, that my corporate connection is of Airtel, and that we encourage cross-talk? I loose business for my company.
- Airtel claims there customers can enable a service by simply sending an SMS. Nice. I tried to use it. But alas, when not getting the service, I tried to talk to their Customer Care Executives (CCEs), after about 5-6 calls in which I had waited for more than 15-20 minutes, I finally got my complaint number. That was about 1 and half months back. I am still to get the service !! Nice…brilliant… I love them !!
- So what do you do then, you call there complaint number, and try to log a complaint, that the previous complaints are not getting solved. And what do you get in return, well….sorry, you cannot log a complaint!!
- So you give up, and enroll for a more expensive service, which provides lot of things that you actually don’t want. But you still take it, because it provides that one service, which you actually want and you end up paying double the amount. (Nice way ..to increase revenue on their part, no wonder there numbers keep on rising.) But then, your expensive joy is not long lasting, out of nowwhere, I am unable to use the service, even though you are billed for it. After repeated attempts to get in touch with their various CCEs (at one point, the their ARC officer asked me to come to there office, as if I have all the time in the world), you find out that in there records, the service is not enabled. Further probing results in you finding that your number has been active for past few days only. Wait a minute, you ask yourself, what was the number you were using for the past 4.5 years??? And wait, what happened to the extra amount of money you paid in the last month’s bill expecting it to be carried forward??
Seriously, is this what we call great customer service??
Mr. Sunil Mittal, thank you for your great customer service and I will wait for the Government to pass the Number Portability Bill.
And yes, I have ommitted my hours of talks with your CCEs, you can always refer them. I know, you have records of those for atleast 6 months.
I believe, Bharti Airtel has done a good job, in setting an example how exploit and mistreat their customers. In my vicinity of people, the quality of the service provided has gone down way below than 0.
This too, when they have launched the campaign “The Impatient Ones”, atleast giving us the glimpse that they understand we want fast solutions. But I guess, execution is not the mandate of the current situations.
PS: If you are wondering I am isolated case, NO. My colleagues are equally (if not more) frustrated than me. For they have been denied the basic facility of calling or receiving calls. And yes, they are equally fumed!!
By the way, we happen to be corporate users, I wonder how much pain would the normal customer would have to go through.
regards,
An Airtel Customer
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