Is Customer Care an Oxymoron?

In an age when general incompetence and sub-zero IQ levels are a given when dealing with customer service, Airtel still manages to surprise and frustrate you with its sheer magnitude of ineptitude. Earlier, after the customary failure of the customer service person to comprehend what you’re saying, you could still speak to a supervisor-type and manage to get perhaps a fraction of the message across – now this is denied as well, probably because the people who were earlier at the bottom rung have now been elevated to the supervisor level.

While you’d probably need to be even more foolishly optimistic than the person who decided that lifeboats with less than half the capacity of the Titanic was more than adequate - to expect any improvement on that front, there is still a way to get back at such corporations. A couple of years ago, I had sent a mail along these lines to Airtel – perhaps if enough people can re-send this mail to Airtel, they might just be conned into believing that there is sufficient demand for this service.

 

Dear Airtel

I was wondering if your esteemed organisation can provide IVR (Interactive Voice Response) facility to individuals as well, the way most corporations use it these days for their customer service. This would greatly help me deal with all the calls I receive in a far more efficient manner. Just the way I’m delighted whenever I call you up and you make me wait for 20 minutes listening to soothing instrumental music all the time reminding me how important my call is to you – I would like it if I could extend you the same courtesy.

Whenever anyone calls me, they should get to hear a pre-recorded voice welcoming them “You have reached the phone of Argha Sarkar. Press 1 if this is an official call, or press 2 if this is a personal call.” When someone dials 1, another pre-recorded voice should tell them:

• Press 1 if you wish to sell a credit card to Argha
• Press 2 if you wish to sell a loan to Argha
• Press 3 if you wish for Argha to invest in your delightful investment opportunity
• Press 4 if you would like to help take charge of Argha’s career
• Press 5 if you wish for Argha to join your club
• Press 6 if you wish to offer Argha a job
• If you wish to sell any real estate to Argha Sarkar, you have sadly overestimated his wealth and may disconnect. Thank you for calling Argha anyway, and do check again in a decade’s time.
• If this is Airtel wishing to inform Argha about their delightful new rate plan or ring tone, for the sake of general peace and quiet we recommend you disconnect the phone NOW.

And when someone presses any of the numbers, an automated voice should inform them “You are currently caller number...‘Seven’ (said in a different voice)...(back to old voice)kindly be on hold. Argha Sarkar values your call and he shall be with you as soon as he feels like it.” And then there should be at least ten minutes of soothing instrumental music. At which point I answer the phone and behave like a typical customer service chap:

Me: Good morning, this is Argha Sarkar. How may I help you?

Other Guy: Good morning Sir. Yadda yadda yadda...zero-annual fee credit card...yadda yadda yadda...exclusively for you...yadda yadda...Standard Chartered.

Me: A zero-annual fee credit card, huh? I’m sorry, but I do not deal with Citibank any longer.

Other Guy: But Sir, this is Standard Chartered!

Me: I’m sorry, but I do not deal with Citibank. It says so in the system, although I could be mistaken because our system is down right now.

Other Guy: Sir, you do not understand. I’m from Standard Chartered – it is Citibank that you do not deal with.

Me: I’m sorry, but Barack Obama has been elected the president of the US. I cannot buy your credit card.

Other Guy: But Sir, how does that matter? You’re not making any sense.

Me: I’m sorry, but it says so in the system. Barack Obama has been elected president of the US.

Other Guy: So what do I do now?

Me: You could sell me another card you wish, something which is not Citibank, because I do not deal with Citibank.

Other Guy: Isn’t there anyway you can help me out?

Me: Sure. Could you kindly be on hold while I check my systems?

Here I should be able to put the person on hold - he/she could do with another ten minutes of soothing instrumental music (with a reminder every two minutes of how I value their business) – until I get back to them – “No.” Just to make this process more frustrating, I would also appreciate it if it’s possible for you to randomly disconnect the call whenever any caller seems to be making some headway, so that he would have to call and go through this entire process again.

Do let me know if such a service is possible for you to provide. I would greatly appreciate your prompt response on the same, and hope for a positive outcome.

Thanks and regards

Argha Sarkar 

India Has Arrived...yet again!

While I did not check the news channels after Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar victory, I can well imagine what the scene would’ve been like – non-stop Oscar coverage, repeating the same clips hundreds of times and general celebration over India’s arrival on the international scene. Particularly on the Aaj Tak/Headlines Today type of channels – this is probably what it would’ve been like:

Headlines Today Chap: Good evening, folks, and Jai Ho! On this historic night for India, we have with us in the studio some of the key members that helped shaped this proud moment – Anil Kapoor’s breakfast nutritionist, his third cousin, his cow and his goat. Yes, ladies and gentlemen – we will bring you an exclusive insider’s peek on what exactly Anil Kapoor had for breakfast on the biggest day of his life. We will then speak to his third cousin, who has known Anil Kapoor from close quarters and will tell us exactly what this means for Anil and the country. And representing the animal kingdom, we have Anil Kapoor’s cow and goat.

Other Headlines Today Chap: Thank you, Headlines Today Chap. We begin with Anil Kapoor’s breakfast nutritionist. Our viewers would be very interested to know what exactly was your breakfast advice to Anil on this historic day? Lately, a lot of concern has been raised over carbohydrates during breakfast – how did you help Anil tackle this problem? Also, reports have emerged suspecting that Anil has not exactly been going easy on the caffeine, given the kind of overzealous enthusiasm showed by him on previous awards nights. What was your advice on that front?

Expectedly, this is being hailed as India’s arrival on the international scene. The funny thing is, for how long will India keep arriving on the international scene? Any time any Indian does anything of note, the press tends to herald India’s arrival on the international stage – I can remember India having arrived for the following:

• Continuous success of the cricket team and the fact that it has developed consistency as well as a killer instinct – a sure sign of a new India confidently arriving on the world stage.
• Chandrayaan moon mission - a true statement of India’s arrival on the universal scene.
• Indo-US nuclear deal – evidence that India is now a ‘strategic’ player on the global political stage.
• Super-cool GDP growth rates – a sign of a new India arriving on the global economic stage.
• Bollywood movies doing well abroad, Shilpa Shetty and the whole Big Brother business, SRK and Salman wax statues in Madame Tussaud’s – all pointing to the fact that Bollywood has well and truly arrived at the global stage.
• Abhinav Bindra winning gold at the Olympics.
• Indian or Indian-origin authors winning a Booker prize pretty much every alternate year.
• Sunita Williams and Kalpana Chawla.
• Tata acquiring Corus
• Tata acquiring Jaguar-Land Rover
• Chaps like LN Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, etc making it to global rich-lists.

There are probably many more such examples that I would’ve missed out on, but you get the idea - – you’d think India should’ve arrived on the international stage a long time back by now! It’s almost starting to become one of the constants in life – the sun always rises in the East, Israel and Palestine are always fighting, Akshay Kumar always makes mindless comedies and India always arrives on the international scene!

The Gifting Conundrum

Every now and then, life presents us with certain conundrums – why is Paris Hilton famous, is a zebra black with white stripes or the other way round, and how exactly are condoms tested. I mean, seriously – if, as a condom manufacturer, you want to test out a new condom how exactly do you go about it? Here are some possibilities, although I really have no clue if they are true:

1. Hire people to hang around in your labs and have sex all day, and give you feedback on the condom’s performance. I doubt if this actually happens, though. Otherwise I’m sure it would rival “Travel Show Host” as one of the most-sought-after dream jobs.
2. Have a network of pimps to whom you can periodically hand out condoms and ask them to get the same tested through their contacts.
3. Have a bunch of people as ready research respondents whom you can hand out the condoms to whenever needed. In such a case, what would happen in case said respondent is out of a partner at that point? Would the manufacturer arrange for that too, or would they find another respondent?  

But I digress – this really isn’t about the condoms – the bigger question that I’ve been grappling with is – who is it easier to buy a gift for, a guy or a girl? Somehow, girls always end up complaining how hard it is to decide on a gift for a guy – and guys complain about how difficult it is to buy a gift for a girl. As a guy, it all seems straightforward to me:

There really aren’t too many things that you can gift a guy – a shirt, an aftershave lotion or a book. This is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. How can you possibly go wrong when the choice is limited to these three?

But with women, it is so much more complicated. There are clothes, there’s jewellery, perfumes, books, a holiday, a spa voucher, cosmetics...the list is endless. And it is almost impossible to choose certain things for women – like clothes, for instance. I dare not pick up clothes for any woman I know, because I really have no clue whether it’ll fit well or not – simply knowing the waist size or shoulder size is never enough, there is this whole question of the right fitting. Even with perfumes, you could go disastrously wrong and gift something which she says is nice and subsequently never uses it. Same with jewellery – I mean, I wouldn’t be able to recognize bad jewellery even if it hit me in the face (which is what I think will be the outcome if I ever did gift jewellery to anyone). I live in perpetual fear of the day I might have to buy an engagement ring – what if I make the wrong choice and the woman is stuck with a ring she doesn’t like for a lifetime? I have seen women have hour-long discussions on what a good ring should look like, whereas if someone asked me what my views on the aesthetics of rings were, I’d be as uncomfortable as a Jihadist who’s been asked to extol the merits of Western culture. Clearly, because there is so much choice, there are so many pitfalls too.

This point is best illustrated when you look at a guy’s bathroom and a girl’s. In a guy’s bathroom, all you’ll see is a bar of soap and a shampoo. And when you walk into a woman’s bathroom, what do you see?

1. 2-3 kinds of soap bars – a regular one, an organic/home-made one and so on.
2. At least 2-3 shower gels, with names like Aloe Vera Skin Solution Aromatic Body Wash, Tropical Sundance Shower Gel with Almond-Lemon Extract, Organic Herbal Natural Super-Indulgent Bathing Gel with granules of Peruvian Turmeric, etc.
3. 3-4 different kinds of shampoos, with descriptors like “For partially damaged yet not truly beyond hope of repair hair”, “hair fall reduction for medium-length coarse hair”, etc.
4. Matching conditioners for the shampoos mentioned in the previous point
5. A body scrub
6. A face wash
7. A face scrub
8. A toner
9. Moisturiser
10. Lotion
11. Morning cream
12. Night cream
13. Evening cream
14. Early-afternoon cream
15. 2-3 Problem-solving products such as anti-acne cream, anti-blackhead ointment, etc.

 

Now you tell me – who is it easier to gift for? Imagine a similar complexity extended to all other aspects of gifting – when you’re buying clothes for a guy, a shirt would do. For a girl, you have to choose between tops, trousers, stoles, scarves, Indian, western, etc. Perhaps the only safe bet here would be flowers!

On the other hand, though, this logic can also work in the opposite direction. For instance, if the guy is a techie-gadget-freak types, how do you decide if the “New PlayStation Portable P-5000 with optional death ray blast” is better or would you rather go for the “Handheld 2^nd Generation X-Box 360 with 10” OLED display, multi-touch interface and in-built coffee-brewing technology”?

Like I mentioned, a conundrum indeed!

 

The Rewards of Loyalty

I think Kingfisher Airlines is really overestimating me. Just because I’m a King Club member, they keep sending me all these mails about promos/tie-ups with fancy resorts and 5-Star hotels and stuff. And they say things like “Bringing you the best in luxury because nothing else can complement your king-size lifestyle” and stuff like that, as if I’m some major snooty, extravagantly rich fellow who carries the GDP of a small African nation in his back pocket. I feel like telling them that poor me is just a simple chap who was able to join King Club because I get to fly KF sometimes on office trips – and that on a regular basis KF is unaffordable for me. Only on the odd occasion when I stumble upon a KF ticket priced almost at par with a low cost airline do I end up buying KF.

And yea, also that I was hoping that they would have some nifty rewards point scheme wherein one fine day I would suddenly get a mail from them saying “Dear King Club Member No 12879654321, We are delighted to inform you that you have flown 6,506,756,773 miles on KF. This entitles you to a FREE RETURN TICKET to French Riviera with complimentary stay at some Ritz-type hotel that complements your lifestyle.” Right now, it seems that for all I’ve flown, I haven’t even accumulated a quarter of a one-way ticket from Bangalore to Belgaum :-(

It is the same thing with all the loyalty club schemes that I’ve joined. As a loyal customer of Shopper’s Stop, Westside, Landmark and half the other retail chains in India, I keep hoping for a mail one fine day saying that I’m finally entitled to Rs 10k worth of free shopping at their stores, as a thank you gesture for my continued patronage. Instead, all I get are mails asking me to utilise my Rs 171 worth of rewards by the end of the month, failing which it would lapse. It’s like telling me “Thanks for all that shopping. Here’s a free handkerchief for you!” I’m not kidding; I’ve known people who’ve spent half their salaries buying flight tickets through their credit cards, only to get a “Kabhi Alvidaa Na Kehna” CD as reward from a grateful Citibank!

And just when you think it’s all a hopeless cause and are ready to chuck away that membership, along comes the upgrade scheme. “Of course you’ll get f**k-all as reward with the card you have. That’s because all the cool rewards go to the guy with the Gold membership. Shop for Rs 5000 and you can upgrade for FREE to a Gold membership – this is when you’ll start winning all the cool rewards.” And when you upgrade, you just keep getting all these offers that make you feel all the more worthless, like you don’t deserve to be there.

Exclusive offer for Gold Card members!!!

Get Diamond Set worth Rs 30,000 FREE*

* On purchase worth Rs 3,50,000 and above.

Again, the implicit message being “Oh, you’re the Gold guy, anyway. Rs 3,50,000 worth of shopping is very much a  part of your day-to-day lifestyle.”

My theory is that there is some strange kind of multiplier effect in place when your data is shared, wherein your imaginary wealth magnifies each time your data is passed along across companies. Shopper’s Stop: “Oh, he’s a bronze-card member of Westside. Let’s give him a Silver Card”

Lifestyle: “Oh, he’s a Silver Card member of Shopper’s Stop. Let’s give him a Gold Card.”

Small-time property developer: “Oh, he’s a Gold card member at Lifestyle. He’d be just the person to sell a 500sq. ft plot of land to, some 50 kms from Bangalore.”

On an imaginary level, you start moving up the value chain from a “Young adult who’s just started earning – COULD BE RISKY, SELL WITH CAUTION” to “Filthy rich chap with a hobby of collecting exotic African artefacts and paintings – GOLD MINE POTENTIAL, SELL SELL SELL”. This goes on until one fine day you get a call from some hot-shot builder asking if you’re interested in some prime real-estate at the rock-bottom price of Rs 70 lakhs! At which point you just politely tell them that you would of course be interested, but the problem is you absolutely don’t have the money. Being an optimist, I’m hoping this would lead to an opposite multiplier effect until even the local paan-shop guy would refuse to grant me membership.

Reimbursement by the Billions

There are some things in life that are never easy – entering into unarmed combat with a grizzly bear, liking a politician in Karnataka and getting your expenses reimbursed from any corporate-type company that has half a process in place. Having been in one such company myself, and having known many friends who are in such companies, I have realised that the stories are always the same. We only reimburse on the 10^th of every month, the bills seem ‘inconsistent’, necessary approvals are missing, it is still in process, the stars aren’t aligned properly – getting your money back from the company has always been a tension-ridden affair.

So one can well imagine how much more complicated things could get when we take this process of reimbursement to the international stage, at the level of national governments. Recently, it appeared in the newspaper that the US had withheld $55 million claimed by Pakistan as ‘war on terror’ expenses. Apparently the US auditors felt that something didn’t quite add up. I suppose the expense statement would’ve raised a few eyebrows:

·    Training expenses of 10 LeT terrorists for Mumbai attack: $10 million ·         Training of 10 soldiers for fighting Taliban forces in FATA: $ 10 million ·      50 kgs RDX to JuD for Jehad in Kashmir: $15 million ·        100 Rocket launchers used against Al-Qaeda in those hilly tribal areas: $15 million

 

If this makes you think “Aha. They’ve got some smart auditors there, awake to their task. Thank goodness they didn’t go with PWC!” – think again. It seems that the Bush administration had provided Obama’s advisers with a war on terror report which was essentially something along the lines of “Yeah, things are generally going well. Afghanistan hammered, Iraq hammered...oh, and by the way, there was wastage of $10 billion by Pakistan on its war on terror expenses”. I’m guessing this is what the scene would’ve been like:

Musharraf: Hey, George – we’re buddies, right?

Bush: We sure are, Mush.

Musharraf: Just what I wanted to hear, George. By the way, there’s this piece of paper that I would like you to sign, George. Just some incidental war on terror expenses, nothing major really.

Bush looks at the paper:

Bazookas, grenades, AK-47s and that sort of stuff:           $5 billion Miscellaneous:                                                                                   $5 billion Total:                                                                                                     $10 billion

 Bush: Looks good to me. There you are.

(Signs on paper)

All said and done, one cannot deny that the US government has been rather generous, even if sometimes accidentally so. And this is not the first such case. A few months back, there was this news item that the US “accidentally” shipped four NUCLEAR WARHEADS to Taiwan!!! It seems it was intended for some other destination, but ended up in Taiwan by mistake. Needless to say, China was not thrilled about this one bit – but how the hell do you manage to accidentally ship nuclear warheads to the wrong destination??? It’s one thing for a courier company to bungle up your address and give your neighbour your letter – but this??? Imagine the scene:

Taiwanese General: Hmmm, a delivery for me, eh? What do we have here?

Nuclear Warhead Delivery Guy: Four nuclear warheads from Uncle Sam, sir.

Taiwanese General: I was expecting the F-16s, actually...are you sure you’ve got the address right?

Nuclear Warhead Delivery Guy: Look here now, if you expect me to haul these nuclear warheads all the way back to my head office...

Taiwanese General:  What the hell. I can’t send you back now after all the effort you made in hauling that all the way here. I’ll take it. I guess our army would figure out some use for these.

Nuclear Warhead Delivery Guy: You’ll have to sign here...(flips page)...here...(flips page)...here...(flips page)...and here.