Customer care? Who cares.

Not very long ago a dealer/retailer was the end all and be all of all customer relationship. If the company needed to be contacted good old dealer used to do it for you. Today there are new layers of customer interface. Professional customer care team with digital communication and support system assure unstinted support and commitment of service to you. However your feel good smile slowly evaporates as you start exercising your royal prerogatives as a customer to solve problems.
You start realizing that the young boy /girl who finally respond to your desperate call are anybody but company employees. If your call gets disconnected in between a different person will confront you when you dial again and you have to rattle your entire stories from the beginning. For the company he is an unknown entity but for you the first and last contact point with the company. Want to see the Presidents, Vice President, General Managers or whosoever in the position of power? Sorry they are visible in ads and at seminars. As far as you are concerned all company persons are out of bounds.

As machines and gadget take over from human being you experience birth of an all -pervasive scapegoat called system. If your credit card bills have ghost debits it’s a system error, your ticket booth have longer queues – its system slow down; if your airline cannot tell you the expected arrival and departure time it is only because of system overload. Your call though “very important to us” cannot be forwarded because of the congestion in the network. Never before companies and retailers have such full proof insulation from the demands of consumers.
And mind it all these practices have been implemented not by the local lalals and so called deshi companies; they are being done by MNCs and big corporates with big brand and international presence. Across the globe they are championing the consumer cause. But whatever happens naturally in a foreign land does not even happen as an exception here. Why do same companies behave differently with customers in different countries? Where then is the problem; with the companies or with us- the great Indian consumers? They say good things in life need to be demanded and asked for .How conscious we are about our rights and privileges as consumers and how ready we are to fight for them.
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Here is an excerpt from an aggrieved and persistent consumer trying his best to exercise his right on the customer care people to get an antenna fixed for his walky.
“My letters are piling up as proof of the kind of unprofessionalism being seriously practiced by your organization. For last two weeks technical experts have come and gone agreeing umpteen number of time s that my walky needs an external antenna and in spite of repeated promises no antenna has been fixed till date……… Please don’t send me any computer generated standard reply I had quite a few of them…”
The letter is pointer to not just delay in service but also to the fact that the company probably does not harbor any serious intention that such services are in reality be dispensed with. It does not require great skill to understand that such things happen when consumers are left at the mercy of the servicing people without any supervision. In a country where for every dissatisfied customer you have a fresh one from the enormous pool of new consumers is it a better business position to stop wooing the old grumpy consumer and grab a new one? Otherwise how can one explain the existence of consumer hate sites and blogs against some of the big brands in banking, telephony or airline .The same companies spend millions in advertising to create a positive image every year in the consumer mind!

A majority of Indian consumers are still fairly innocent and take things at face value. We are by nature gullible and compelling cheer leaders of our brands. Like the pug in the commercial we are too happy to help our brands if remotely we sense our brand is trying to be nice to us. We force our sons and dads to open account in our bank, we spend hours to explain to our friends why our cell phones are more efficient than those of others. There are companies who capitalize this trait and gain:
Brand X “assures that their handset is covered under insurance. They even provide a certificate of insurance. But the condition is that if the handset is lost/stolen, you have to lodge an FIR to seek claims. The catch here is that the police station does not lodge FIR for loss of handsets, they only register NC. So you will never get insurance claims on basis of NC.” International Consumer Rights Protection Council
Why are we like that? One reason may be historical .In a country with mostly government owned industries we as customers were programmed to a respond with reverence to companies. We had booked substandard cars and waited for years to take delivery; we begged in the nationalized banks to withdraw our own money. The legacy somehow haunts us even today. If we don’t realize that some of our marketers do. We like to wait in line and stand in queues. We still believe that we have to earn our services. How many in consumer India muster up enough courage to pay their bills in cheques instead of cash? We will sweat, rave and rant under blistering sun for forms and prospectus but will not download them from net. Job done that way is a job fully done. If that’s what makes us happy one cannot blame the big brands if they adopt the Sarkari pattern in customer care. Go to most of the big companies’ service centers you will find customers of all ages are queuing up to deposit their defective sets/gadgets which are still within guarantee period or are waiting patiently for the verdict whether the sets need to be carried to another service centre 20 KM away for some mysterious reasons.
We believe that a system to work on its own will take its own sweet time. There will be delay in admission of patients in hospitals, in lodging FIR in police station; trains will naturally run late, flights will be duly cancelled. Even Bhagwan ki pass derr hain…! That’s why justice delayed by 26 years also calls for celebration here. Want to bypass delay? Don’t fix the system, manage it. Manage through relations, manage through influence, manage through bribe- cash or in kind; pay for your Zaldi. Otherwise after surviving years in the sub zero service we are happy with what is made available to us .Only Sharukh Khan shouts from TV ads “Don’t be snatusht (happy)”. We become grateful for getting things which are rightfully ours. We pay gratitude money and tips to lines men who have repaired our cable, electricity or telephone lines. We start forgiving before forgiveness is solicitated from us.
We have a built in mechanism to manage frustration and dissatisfaction. We call it destiny. If the machine is not working it is bad luck, if the battery inside mobile explodes on our face it is our misfortune. We don’t believe in redress by the mortal people and mortal judges. Uparwala will look into it. Consumer right activists have an uphill task here. They are shouting hoarse to make us exercise our rights:
“Are you being harassed by consumer courts?.....Please inform us if you have experienced / witnessed harassment or corruption…your details will not be disclosed on this website, but you should be ready to cooperate when action against these people is initiated…”.International Consumer right Protection Council


Hmmm……What do you say? Manage the system or fix it?