Be Serious To Be Honest. Review on Airtel Digital TV

It costs far more to gain a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Perhaps this line is best suited for seminars and presentations and is missing from Airtel Philosophy. My Airtel Digital TV stopped functioning on date 4th August 2010. After preliminary check – I found that it should be reported to customer care. My call was promptly attended by call centre and complaint docket number was provided to me as 3481000. I was promised resolution within 24 hours.

Forget resolution, I received an SMS that your complaint has been resolved. Surprised by this I again called to call centre saying that nobody turned up and how come you are quoting that complaint has been resolved. So new complaint 3495477 was lodged and it was also resolved without attempting to resolve it. Message says – your complaint - Wrong Resolution has been resolved. This continued till 5 days and I have received 6 SMS quoting that complaint has been resolved.

Astonished by this I called the call centre which is managed at Indore and insisted speaking with senior official. One Mr. Nitesh Upadhaya – promised me to look into the issue and promised resolution within 4 hours. Within four hours I received the SMS, your complaint has been resolved.

Now I asked for Name and Contact number of Pune Operations Manager but Airtel Call Centre says they are not authorized to provide numbers of their Pune Managers. Seeing no end to SMS and apathy of Call Centre – I wrote to their available email address and their Great Great Nodal officer named K Rao at Mumbai office. Seeing no response, I called their Nodal Desk and one Swaroop says his nodal officer is busy and tried to assist me by disconnecting the telephone call. When tried to redial the number – this nodal desk either not picked up the call or deliberately disconnected the call.

Back to Square One! I again dialed their Customer Care and insisted providing names of Pune Operations Manager and Appellate Authority. Finally after 20 telephone calls, email reminders, the problem was resolved.

Now the story starts! DTH services are regulated by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI). Service providers like Airtel are expected to follow service and quality standards. Grievance escalation procedure should be three-tier mechanism: Call Centre – Nodal Officer – Appellate Authority Officer. Nodal officer is a responsible person and is expected to behave responsibly. By doing so s/he is not doing any favor to customer. On the contrary by demonstrating ethics and discipline s/he is holding his organization high.

There is no seriousness on the part of Nodal Officer of Airtel Mumbai. People working there don’t provide information and nodal officer himself is busy. This is worst situation I have ever witnessed in any Corporate. Finally, I got in touch with senior officer of Nodal and explained him the callous functioning of Nodal Desk.