One of my main cribbing points for India is that its customer service orientation, well, sorta sucks. You call any customer care helpline number, and I can guarantee that you'll be ready to tear your hair out within minutes.
In the last few days, I've had two interesting experiences; one which proved this opinion completely wrong, and then one that proved me completely right.
I'm supposed to coordinate all IT requirements for the firm I work in; we recently needed to order two desktops, so I was coordinating with the company we usually buy our machines from. The desktops were delivered last Saturday, and by Thursday, no one had showed up to configure them. When I emailed the contact person in Chennai, he replied someone would be in touch asap, and sure enough, someone called that afternoon. This guy, on hearing that I wanted someone to show up at the soonest, asked me to hang on, and turned to his colleague and said something fairly rude about me. When he came back on the line, I let him know that I had heard what he had said. Forget apologizing, he coolly informed me that all the engineers had visits already scheduled, and we couldn't have one visit us till the next evening. Which was the point when I lost it.
Not only did I give it off to him, but once I got off the phone, I emailed our contact person telling him what had happened. Within minutes, I received a call from him asking about what had happened, and apologizing profusely. Half an hour later, I got a call from a fairly senior guy from the company apologizing again, and assuring me that he would schedule an engineer visit at the soonest, and that he would call me as soon as he could confirm a time for me. Not only did he call me back later (twice, actually), he also had me talk to another senior guy who apologized yet again, and even thanked me for being so patient and hearing them every time. By evening, I had actually been apologized to so many times that I was heartily wishing I had never shot off that email. Plus, I'm pretty sure the guy who had spoken to me so rudely would've been sacked by then, and I was beginning to feel quite guilty about it.
On the other hand, Friday evening I hit the malls in Gurgaon and went to two-three departmental stores. The last one I visited, I paid with my debit card. The guy at the counter swiped my card and returned it to me; however, a minute or two later, he asked for my card again saying that there was some problem and that he needed to swipe it again. As I was giving him my card, I received an SMS notification saying that the bill amount had been debited from my account. When I told him this, he said that wasn't possible because the machine hadn't processed my card, and went ahead and swiped my card a second time. Immediately, I got a second SMS notification that the same amount had been debited again. When I showed this to him, he called his manager who told him this wasn't possible, and he therefore told me that I must be mistaken.
I immediately called my bank's customer care who informed me that yes, the same amount had been debited twice. Fortunately, I was able to block payment on the second transaction.
On telling the guy at the counter what the bank had said, he called his manager down. The manager came down and asked me what had happened. He heard me out with a smirk on his face, and informed me that that wasn't possible because their machines were just fine.
I can understand a machine giving problems, I can understand the guy at the counter making a mistake, and it wasn't a particularly big amount that had got debited. What annoyed me was that I was told, repeatedly, despite me showing them my SMS notifications as well as what the bank customer care officer told me, that I must be mistaken and that they have not charged me twice.
Simply making the sale to a customer very often isn't enough. We have six-seven different products of one particular electronics giant at home; we are planning to replace all of them sooner or later because their customer care is lousy. Almost everyone I know agrees that while the cars of a certain company are excellent, they wouldn't buy those cars because their service centre in Gurgaon is completely inefficient.
When companies talk about increasing sales, there are two ways they can do this, as far as my understanding is. They can either get new customers, or they can get existing customers to buy more of their products. If they want the latter to happen, their customer care needs to be, at the very least, customer friendly!
As a customer, I've seen that most companies in India either don't care about this aspect or aren't able to handle it. The company I dealt with for our desktops did excellent damage control, if not a little over the top. Whether it was because they know my firm has given them quite a bit of business in the past or whether they genuinely want to ensure that their customers are satisfied, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that I would go to them if I need more computers or laptops.
The departmental store which charged me twice and where those idiots refused to even accept that they had charged me twice? Not for a long, long time.
In the last few days, I've had two interesting experiences; one which proved this opinion completely wrong, and then one that proved me completely right.
I'm supposed to coordinate all IT requirements for the firm I work in; we recently needed to order two desktops, so I was coordinating with the company we usually buy our machines from. The desktops were delivered last Saturday, and by Thursday, no one had showed up to configure them. When I emailed the contact person in Chennai, he replied someone would be in touch asap, and sure enough, someone called that afternoon. This guy, on hearing that I wanted someone to show up at the soonest, asked me to hang on, and turned to his colleague and said something fairly rude about me. When he came back on the line, I let him know that I had heard what he had said. Forget apologizing, he coolly informed me that all the engineers had visits already scheduled, and we couldn't have one visit us till the next evening. Which was the point when I lost it.
Not only did I give it off to him, but once I got off the phone, I emailed our contact person telling him what had happened. Within minutes, I received a call from him asking about what had happened, and apologizing profusely. Half an hour later, I got a call from a fairly senior guy from the company apologizing again, and assuring me that he would schedule an engineer visit at the soonest, and that he would call me as soon as he could confirm a time for me. Not only did he call me back later (twice, actually), he also had me talk to another senior guy who apologized yet again, and even thanked me for being so patient and hearing them every time. By evening, I had actually been apologized to so many times that I was heartily wishing I had never shot off that email. Plus, I'm pretty sure the guy who had spoken to me so rudely would've been sacked by then, and I was beginning to feel quite guilty about it.
On the other hand, Friday evening I hit the malls in Gurgaon and went to two-three departmental stores. The last one I visited, I paid with my debit card. The guy at the counter swiped my card and returned it to me; however, a minute or two later, he asked for my card again saying that there was some problem and that he needed to swipe it again. As I was giving him my card, I received an SMS notification saying that the bill amount had been debited from my account. When I told him this, he said that wasn't possible because the machine hadn't processed my card, and went ahead and swiped my card a second time. Immediately, I got a second SMS notification that the same amount had been debited again. When I showed this to him, he called his manager who told him this wasn't possible, and he therefore told me that I must be mistaken.
I immediately called my bank's customer care who informed me that yes, the same amount had been debited twice. Fortunately, I was able to block payment on the second transaction.
On telling the guy at the counter what the bank had said, he called his manager down. The manager came down and asked me what had happened. He heard me out with a smirk on his face, and informed me that that wasn't possible because their machines were just fine.
I can understand a machine giving problems, I can understand the guy at the counter making a mistake, and it wasn't a particularly big amount that had got debited. What annoyed me was that I was told, repeatedly, despite me showing them my SMS notifications as well as what the bank customer care officer told me, that I must be mistaken and that they have not charged me twice.
Simply making the sale to a customer very often isn't enough. We have six-seven different products of one particular electronics giant at home; we are planning to replace all of them sooner or later because their customer care is lousy. Almost everyone I know agrees that while the cars of a certain company are excellent, they wouldn't buy those cars because their service centre in Gurgaon is completely inefficient.
When companies talk about increasing sales, there are two ways they can do this, as far as my understanding is. They can either get new customers, or they can get existing customers to buy more of their products. If they want the latter to happen, their customer care needs to be, at the very least, customer friendly!
As a customer, I've seen that most companies in India either don't care about this aspect or aren't able to handle it. The company I dealt with for our desktops did excellent damage control, if not a little over the top. Whether it was because they know my firm has given them quite a bit of business in the past or whether they genuinely want to ensure that their customers are satisfied, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that I would go to them if I need more computers or laptops.
The departmental store which charged me twice and where those idiots refused to even accept that they had charged me twice? Not for a long, long time.
7 comments:
Yeah... my experiences with customer support aren't that great. Just this summer my CD drive stopped working, I took it back to the shop, and more than a month later they sent it back and told me they needed the laptop to fix it. It took them four weeks to figure that out, never mind the fact that no, they don't actually need the laptop?
Computer support is pretty bad in general in my opinion. My father works in IT support and you'd think that'd be an advantage... but him fixing my stuff takes years too. Maybe it's part of their job description :p
duuuuuuude! you're so good with this sort of thing. I baulk at phonecalls and interacting with people. I just suck at it. It was the worst part of NDTV. fortunately I dealt with teachers for the most part and they are fairly understanding. Also not customer care reps, but you know what I mean.
Aaaaanyway... the rudeness is an India-centric thing. Here people just pretend to be nice which I find infinitely preferable. It takes a certain amount of skill to be nice to someone you loathe. Not something I could do either.
Hello Luvely,
As I read ur experiences with these 'idiots' I could not help laughing. While what I would sincerely like to point out to you is that this very breed of "Customer service providers" is faulty. I mean I think that they are somewhere down the line forced to pass the "being deliberately DUMB" test, and yes, I speak of my experiences from some of the most developed countires in the world. Leave aside the Nordic countries, customer service in most other countries border on the ridiculous, to anything like funny, depending on ur mood. However, I would like to bring to ur particular notice, that Customer service in New york, bears no comparison to these idiots we tend to classify. Here they are wallowing in the glory of their incompetence. May I also add, I talk of Customer service at JP Morgan Chase Bank, the United states immigration service centre among others.
As u know the phonecalls are very dear here. When I waste many eternal minutes trying to make a 10 year old in the body of a 25 something, understand my problem, I am bound to lose my patience with my money. After having asked me to repeat my fuckin question five times, the guy concluded that he did not really have "much idea" about this particular aspect.
Frankly my love, if I were there, I would have kicked his balls if nothing short!
To growing idiocy the world over, India is still showing signs of hope, resourcefulness etc
Happy Diwali to you too...And thanks for dropping in .... I remember, I have to do a small little work you gave me. Will be doing it ASAP :-)
No...I'm trying to guess but probably won't get it right...who is this?
PS- Sorry but didn't know how else I could get in touch with you!
I match you word for word on this one. I spent 15 hours on my flight to the US, sitting at the uncomfortablest (I know that's not a word, but the memory of it has me seething with anger already!) angle of 90 degrees with my cabin baggage on my lap.
Thanks to the wonderful customer service of Continental Airlines. Is there anything else they can assist me with today? I hope not. Have a good flight then. Yeah right I will.
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