Quality Control In Airtel Customer Service Is Dead

A few days back I had to call up the Airtel customer service to get the GPRS settings for my phone. And that unfortunate call made me realize that the quality control for Airtel customer service is either sleeping or has been dead for years.

The Customer Service reps were not only rude, they were outright arrogant! During the course of the call when I pointed out a simple fault on their part, instead of apologizing one of the reps started to shout at me over the phone. When I asked for his supervisor, he refused and when I insisted he simply disconnected the call. I called back and got through another rep, only to be told that his supervisor is busy on another call and would not be able to receive calls till next morning! Quite a long call he must be on, huh! Then when I asked for the name of his supervisor, the rep told me that they are not allowed to divulge the name of their supervisors, which made me wonder whether I have called the Airtel customer service or the Pentagon!

Later thought when I threatened of complaining the supervisor did call me, of course with a fake US accent. He gave me a canned response that "this was an isolated incident" and that "it would be taken care off". When I said that I was not satisfied they way he was treating the problem and would like to speak to his supervisor, he said that he does not have a supervisor! So the supervisors of the customer service reps reports directly to the Board of Director!

Later when I emailed my complaint to the Nodal Officer, he too replied with a canned response that "this is an isolated incident" and "it would be taken care off". And in his reply, the Nodal Office signed off as "Nodal Officer", I guess even he is not allowed to divulge his name, even though I knew his name and had addressed him with the same on my first mail.

Now let me tell you a bitter truth, this is not an isolated incident. It cannot be, 3 reps including 1 supervisor has the audacity to say over a live recorded call that they are not allowed to give out the names of their supervisors cannot be an isolated incident. And I am sure, if you call up the Airtel customer service tomorrow you would be treated the same way. Because they don't have a Quality Control, and they know that even if they screw up on a call it would not cost their job. I would not be surprised if they ask you to go to the Deuce. And the fact is that neither the Customer Service nor the Nodal Office is bothered about their customers. They all pretend to be doing their work, when half the time they don't even know what they are supposed to do.

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For the uninitiated, Airtel comes to you from Bharti Airtel Limited, India’s largest integrated and the first private telecom services provider. So much in the name of Customer Service from a telecom giant. And sorry about using too many exclamatory signs on this post, but I simply couldn't help being exclaimed.