Makemytrip Mademyday !

As I always book air tickets well in advance, for our September trip I had booked in Dec 2014 :). Was feeling super thrilled that I managed to get a good price. That feeling though got dented a little when the airlines started making schedule changes almost every month since. Finally on April 6th, they ended up making yet another change that ensured our connecting flight left before our incoming flight landed … 

I waited for a couple of months to see if they made further changes so that I could change the flights one final time. Since they didn’t make any further changes, I called up Makemytrip through whom I had booked the tickets, a week back. The regular run around started – the first guy I spoke to was Dinesh who told me the airlines’ office was closed so they would submit a request and let me know the next day. I felt happy when we received an email promptly the next day telling us that Makemytrip needed yet another day as they couldn’t reach the concerned airlines. 

Then two days later we got an email saying the airlines has agreed to changing the schedule and that Makemytrip tried calling me but couldn’t get through. So I called them and got a guy called Sahil on the line, who put me on a silent hold and walked away :):) how cute is that. Then I called back and the person who picked up the phone tried first to convince me that the schedule was fine … And he hadn’t read the call notes. Yes, I was fuming by this time. The worst was I got yet another email that night telling me Makemytrip had tried calling me and I was unreachable. Now, we thought we will simply change our destination if this is not getting resolved … But I didn’t want to give up as easily. I called up on Saturday and managed to get Sandeep on the line who tried telling me that he will escalate to his internal team who works with this particular airlines and they will get back to me – I really got mad. So in essence, this is what he was saying – if the airlines’ make schedule changes, then you are at the mercy of the team at Makemytrip  who works with that particular airlines to give you a callback, the regular team at 1800-102-8747 cannot connect you to that team and there is no specific phone number in these cases. 

I was ready to start a Twitter war or reach out to Mr. Deep Kalra on my trusted escalation platform Linkedin … But decided to give Makemytrip one more chance to redeem itself and called them again. Call it luck or chance, Gaurav picked up the phone and dealt with all my sarcasm and irritation brilliantly. He took responsibility, offered to callback after speaking to the airlines, kept up his promise of calling back in 30 minutes and offered his extension number and full name so that I could get back in touch with him. It has taken two more days to resolve the issue, but Gaurav Tiwari gets 200/100 for providing outstanding customer service – I am thrilled. The best compliment that I can give him is, he made Makemytrip look like the Amex call centre which for me is the gold standard for customer service. 

He didn’t keep up his promise of calling me back today but I did get a call from another colleague of his with the resolution, so no complaints. 

Thank you Gaurav Tiwari and am certainly going to find Mr. Deep Kalra and pass on my appreciation. You made my day and our trip !!