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I commute to office by train. It takes around 2 hours to reach Tambaram (where my Office is) from Ambattur (where I reside). I usually kill the time with a book or listening to my Portable mp3 player.
One night, when I was returning from office, I was listening to a guy near me. He was very much disgusted with his mobile phone service provider. He was trying to reach someone for a very long time but he could not. He was frustrated to hear the automated voice response from the service provider end. He wanted to share his anger with someone and there I was. It seems that he has been trying to reach one of his clients for more than an hour and he got the same Voice response from the other end. He was speaking in Tamil and told me that he was frustrated even more to hear the message in English. I offered my help and tried reaching the number from my mobile. To my surprise, I found that the number he was trying to reach was temporarily out of service. Poor guy he is, I explained this to him. He responded stating in Tamil, Sir! I thought the lady was screaming all along that the network was busy. Poor guy he is!
This made me to think about the cellular providers who use the IVR system to frustrate the customers.
The guy does not understand English. After all, he wants to make some calls and run his business. Is there any option for him to choose his preferred language? If there is one, is he educated about it?
If this is what customer service levels are, how will an illiterate Indian survive in the world of IVR which blurt out only in English?
Insane management!
i thought most of them has messages both in english and local
language… do u know who is his service provider?
I dont know about mobile, but I am used to Internet purchases and companies that run do not respect my language. Call Sify customer care, automated system talks to you either in English or Hindi. Irony is after I get through the automated system the call is routed to a guy sitting in chennai. I asked him if can he speak tamil and we both were comfortable discussing about the real problem in the friendly manner. Infact I asked him about his Tamil, because that is language I am hugely comfortable swearing — a must when you need to call the customer support.
Hey Blj!
You are comfortable with a language because that it is easy for swearing!
Pretty weird man! First of all, please be educated that customer service is one of the toughest jobs and it is run by humans. Show courtesy on people for helping you and don’t swear or curse at them. You wil be better off to understand if you have worked in such an environment. I would have accepted if you have used tamil for better communication. But, to humiliate a human being at the other end of the phone,please don’t degrade your language and yourself. This I am telling you after nearly 2 years of hardship in service industry.
I am not telling this to you in derogatory sense. It’s just to make you know how it will hurt when a person shouts at you on phone for the inefficiency of the company management.
Well, it is not an argument I am leading to. As a normal customer if something is in trouble we usually look for support and I did the same thing.
I had problem with the service that I paid for. I was unable to fix it. I called up the customer service. I am sure I handled the call with my most polite manner. He took a note of it and gave me a number which is completely meaning less to me. Anyway, I waited and nothing happened for 2 days. Again I called and got hold of the same guy and he said someone is busy working on it. Again I called and this time I got the same guy, he knew I am steaming because it is more than a week since my purchase. So he put the call to his supervisor. Now a new ear to talk to and I explained the problem. He admitted the problem and took him another 2 days to solve it. Though he fixed it, it still is a problem for the customers who want to use their service in an odd way like I did.
As a customer the service is what important to me. Do you think I do not handle customer queries in my day job? I have had experiences of attending the customer calls. In our small team of 2 we manage everything a business need. We handle from customer support to management pretty well. I would say we are 90% efficient on performing our duties. Oddly in that 10% we do miss deadlines; send wrong items to our customers, sometimes right items to the wrong customer. These 10% come back to us, about 1% of them are not satisfied with our service and we refund what they paid. The policy we have is to make customer happy by whatever means. We try to help them when they are struck, if we are not able to find a solution immediately, we take it personally as our itch that needs to be scratched. We get back to them and not the other way. If it takes time to fix, we update them the progress.
It has always been a mystery to me, if I can manage well for such a small team, why the big companies fail in handling a customer.
I do not agree of your argument why a customer always has to pick the support staff for their bad mood. It is not that is a customer is desperate to shout at them It is because the support staffs are the ones that they face. Even if a CEO gives his direct number in contact us page, he/she will also be sworn at for a bad service. You cannot say I am the director of the company and I do not want to take abuse.
At the end of the day, all it matters to a customer is the service that works. They do not care who answers the phone or who replies to their email. If you would like your customer to treat you the customer support staff as humanely as possible then blame it on your product development, director or whoever is responsible for that in your company. Remember you are there for the customer not the other way. Customer is the king. They rule and we serve.
I am comfortable in Tamil for many things not just swearing. I can learn, write, show emotions, feel, love, discuss and many more comfortably than other languages. English is an alien language; I have mastered politeness to an extent. But it takes time for me to Love/Hate a thing or person in it. Even I had to appreciate for a customer service – I would try to use Tamil. I had a feeling to express to the other person who is a Tamil and I do not see a problem in Tamil as the medium. It does not matter what feeling it is.
Customer Service remember it is not an oxymoron when you draft the company policy.
I’m an aritel customer and i hear messages in both English and Marathi when i call someone and he is temp out of order or reach. Do u know who is his service provider?
karthik its only in tamil nadu, providers made IVR in English. I made a
call from Munnar to one of my college friend who is working now in
kerala(balaji — Its sreek devi). She was unreachable and the IVR was in
local language (actually i was frustrated since i dont know the
language). The only few provider uses local language in TN.
You guys talk about usablity, now how user friendly is IVR? I mean, I dont know what it means. I certainly can ask google.
Got it. We can set the language we want the IVR to talk to us in the airtel prepaid menu. just call the customer care number and u can follow the instructions to change the language.
oh I see. Let me try and see. thanks for keeping me posted.