(UPDATE: Sanjay Swamy has posted that they have fixed this problem)
This is first in series of posts where I will share some of my (unfortunately, mostly negative) experiences with brands, with a purpose to highlight my learnings in designing services and managing customer experience. Will welcome contributions and experiences from others as well.
This one has to do with Airtel and there newly launched slew of mobile payment services (yes, the nice tv campaigns) through mChek. One of the services they have is that a postpaid subscriber can topup another prepaid account using credit card through the cell phone. My mom still uses a prepaid account, and I decided this was a convenient way for me to top her account up – so I paid Rs 250 (the signup and payment process was a bit clunky, but this post is not about that), promptly got a receipt for Rs 250, and then on my mom’s cell, got a message that her account had been topped up for Rs 50! I thought the software had missed a leading “2” somewhere 🙂
I called Airtel customer service, and they promised to have a call back to me in 24 hours. I didnt get one for over 48 hours when I called them back. I was promised a call back in 1 hour, and again didnt hear back for over 2 hours. I called back – unfortunately, no one there seemed to have a clue what had happened. The supervisor suggested different options – I could wait for my credit card bill, and may be it was charged only Rs 50. Or perhaps call the prepaid customer service line (its a treasure hunt trying to find the operator option there). Or may be take my sms receipt for Rs 250 to an Airtel outlet and show it to them (with no idea of what they would do once they see it). Almost saying, “Just get the monkey off my back!”. He promised he will have his supervisor call back, and by now I knew what that meant.
So I figured I had to resort calling up friends in Airtel and mChek. What I heard back is this – for Rs 250 payment, the talktime is only Rs 50 – Airtel deducts Rs 195 (including tax) out of Rs 250 as service charge! 80% service charge and no mentioned of that on the web site!? Sanjay from mChek clarified that if I had recharged for Rs 100/255/300/500, there would have been no service charge – what was this? A game of roulette? And tomorrow, these zero service charge promotion price points may change with no intimation to customers. Will there be an invisible service charge tomorrow for other payment services – you’ll never know until you pay and figure it out!
Here are my learnings:
- Don’t rip customers off – it never pays.
- Establish trust – will I use this service again? or will I see every Airtel promotion and think of what the catch is? My friend at Airtel told me this is the same service charge that is applicable offline. But the point is – when I go to the retailer, I can have a conversation regarding this. Here, I can’t.
- Be transparent – why was there no intimation of service charge either on the website or during the transaction?
- Train customer service – these guys had no clue as to how to handle calls relating to mChek. The people who designed the service knew instantaneously. The fact that they never lived up to their call back commitments made things worse.
- Control damage – my friend at concerned organization asked me to hold off writing this post for a day. I did. No communication.
Actually, another learning – I landed up waiting for three days instead of one. It helped – instead of a vicious customer complaint, it helped me think of what I can learn from this experience, and the lessons certainly have been worth more than Rs 200! Feedback welcome.
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Great post. The brands that don’t cater to customer service should be highlighted as you’ve done. As a relative newbie in India, my only frustration of life here is the lack of service (corporate and civic), and not traffic, pollution, etc.
Airtel’s promises to call back in 24/48 hours are the norm for me. So much so, I’ve recenly begun to switch away from my Airtel number because the service is so bad. Portability would’ve made it easier, but alas, not there yet.
On the part about being transparent on web transactions, i’ve noticed the lack of transparency in online travel transactions as well. I stopped booking using Yatra (or other travel websites in India) because of a time when I was charged a Rs. 120 odd “Travel Insurance Fee” – which was an OPT OUT, instead of an OPT-IN, which in my view should be the case. As always, I clicked through the entire transaction, and didn’t see the fine print (who reads the terms on a website anyway?), and ended up with the charge on the final receipt. Yatra was nice enough to refund the amount after a 5 minute call (hats off to them at least tending to the situation), but it took long enough for me to convince the customer service agent to turn me off. I love Yatra’s service by the way – just don’t book using them anymore because of this and other hotel booking experiences but mostly because it’s a pain if anything changes in travel plans (mine change often).
The need for consumer orientation is immense. Think its about time that some of these larger organizations have teams that are responsible for “customer experience”.
Till such time, the brand / product managers need to clearly map the customer journey for their new product introductions and ensure that such dissonance does not arise.
Airtel would be investing millions each month on a recurring basis, on upgraded SIMs. Believe they can do the mathematics!
This apart, would be very keen on hearing your views on the Mchek consumer proposition and the application per se. It truly is a landmark in the mobile payments space in India ( to my mind at least)
Hi Alok,
This is exactly the same problem I faced with Airtel online recharge through the citibank website. This is not an issue with mChek per se but Airtel.
They have a special recharge of Rs. 250 which reduces your per-call rates for 3 months. And they automatically redirect any recharges for this amount to that special recharge.
I would term it as a fraud since they are forcing me to buy something which I had not initially paid for.
I took up the matter with Airtel Nodal office but they said that they were “helpless”. Any ideas on what to do next? I would like to take this up very seriously at the highest levels.
-Mohit Garg
m o h i t g a r g @ g m a i l
Even though it’s a fairly small monetary amount (as per the standards of most audience here), it may still be quite worthwhile to raise the issue with the Nodal-Office of AirTel, and if no satisfactory resolution is had, then with the Appelate Authority at AirTel. If even that doesn’t work, escalate it further to TRAI through their Greivance cell.
AirTel’s growth has morphed from a controlled organic growth, where infrastructure grows with the subscriber based, into a cancerous growth, or atleat growth that is clearly not reflected in enhancement to the infrastructure.
The AirTel Mobile services that we know today is no where close to what it was say 3-4 years ago, even though back then it used to be only the better-of-the-lot. Today I can no longer call it the better-of-the-lot, and as other readers, have very little good to speak of it. Thanks to their “tower” consolidate overdrive, I’ve gone from 5-bars worth of signal-strength to 0-1 bar.
One other thing that I notice in Airtel is that, I get frequent complaints from people who tell me that they calling me and get a “This Number does not exist” notification. Usually folks send me a panic mail, or in some cases an angry mail as to why I changed my number without notification. I am shocked and angry by then. But if they try again, it usually works.
Am told that it might be that, operators have to report their network reliability stats to TRAI and instead of a network busy or failed attempt, they’d rather file it under a mis-dialled category to keep their network quality numbers up.
Their customer service sucks. Have complaint to them five times about how i cant seem to send national SMS, and no fix yet.
I am just waiting for number portability. Am gonna bid goodbye to these suckers after that. Then the battle of finding the lesser of evils will continue.