Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Happy to Make Your Life Miserable

The ‘Happy to Help’ campaign is all about customer service, right?


Let me say this loud & clear - Vodafone SUCKS!!!

Ever since Hutch was taken over by Vodafone, their services have gone to the dogs. I have had numerous interactions with Vodafone customer care executives where I have literally felt my blood pressure exploding through the roof. Today I had one such interaction.

I moved to another city so I have a new corporate connection. Now my understanding was that if you have a corporate connection and wish to get international calling facility activated, you don’t need to pay a security deposit. This was the case with my previous account – I had international calling facility without having paid anything.

I called Vodafone customer care today to get international calling activated on my new connection & the executive told me that I had to pay a deposit of Rs. 1000. We haggled for about ten minutes over this, I repeatedly asked him to confirm, screamed at him & just when I was about to bang the phone on him, he said that if I wait for 3 more DAYS I could have the facility activated without having to pay a deposit…because apparently, you can do so after 3 months of owning a connection!!!

Any halfway-intelligent person would have shared this information earlier on in the conversation. Only a dimwit would wait for the customer to get totally pissed off & start screaming at him before he shares this information!!!!!

Vodafone seriously needs to look at the IQ of the people it hires for it’s customer care centers, especially since they’re trying to differentiate themselves from other mobile service providers on the basis of their customer care. DU-UH!!!

How could the marketing minds at Vodafone have missed such a basic principle??!!!

They also need to improve the communication skills of their customer care executives. Their understanding of the English language is NIL & God only knows what they speak!!

A customer does not interact with the marketing, brand or the C-level executives of a company. They might be geniuses for all we care. Customer service executives are the point of contact (for any company that has a customer service center), so if your customer service sucks, YOU suck!!

Here’s another example of Vodafone absurdity…They gave me a credit limit of Rs 500 with my new account. Just because I had switched circles. Not withstanding that I have had a Vodafone account for the past 4 years with a credit limit of Rs 10,000!!!

I mean, who the hell comes up with such retarded policies??!!!

Dear Vodafone, since you seem to have a bunch of imbeciles working for you, let me help you out with this one…you don’t need a Harvard or Yale b-school graduate to tell you that keeping a customer happy is essential to sustaining your business. The supposedly brilliant IIM/ISB graduates you hire should suffice!!

You're welcome...and HAPPY TO HELP!!!

5 comments:

Moonshine said...

I face these problems with ICICI.. and everytime without fail!!!!! Its extremely extremely frustrating.. the frustration levels build up at the first instant itself as it is very difficult to reach a customer care exec thru ICICI IVR!! Very very painful..

Scarlett said...

Yeah, ICICI is the other company that sucks in terms of customer care. But ICICI branch executives are immensely helpful. It's such a contrast to their call center executives.

Serendipity said...

why do i feel like u feel nearly half the world is full of dimwits - clients, hr, call center employees...gosh!

Scarlett said...

Not half. 99%!!! :-)

Kalyan Karmakar said...

re ICICI I really unburden my heart on years of frustration when i meet them on work.
I can't suffer cretins who take orders in restaurants over the phone or the morons at the Mariott recently who were trying to pass of a blueberry cheesecake as a chocolate cake as the placard said so.
Nothing beats people who call up during siesta hours asking whether I won a credit card. I keep my phone on silent at such times