The other day we had gone to buy groceries from one of the ‘Fresh’ outlets(of the Heitage group) in Chennai, located in Pallikaranai. We were there by about 8.30 am. Within few minutes of being inside, we started feeling stuffy and looked around to see if the air conditioners were switched on. They were not. Not even the ceiling fans. With the humid and stuffy conditions in Chennai, you would always need some kind of air circulation to shop comfortably. We got in touch with the staff who then switched on the wall mounted fans. While I understand the need to run the operations efficiently, with a focus on cost saving measures, one of the primary reasons why customers shop in a large format retail store is the comfort that it provides while shopping through air conditioning or at least fans.
Moving forward to the next customer experience. Took the internet broadband service of ACT, in Chennai, last week. My Plan – 50 GB at 40 Mbps for ₹. 999 per month. The installation process was done on time and the delivered speed, exactly the same as promised. 40 Mbps. Wow. Felt excited, upgraded and updated the applications on all our devices including laptops, tablets and phones. Within two days of taking the service, speed dropped to 0.5 Mbps. Alarmed at the speedy drop of the internet speed, I called their customer care number, spoke with two of their customer care executives who promised to send an engineer to check. I received a complaint number basis my conversation with the CCEs of ACT. I had also sent an email with the issue of speed drop and the background to the case, and promptly got an email from them assuring me that they would send someone to look into the issue within 24 hours. This was last Friday. Till now no sign of the customer engineer. I had also upgraded my plan from ₹. 999 to ₹. 1099 so that I get an additional 25 GB and the speed gets restored. While the plan was updated and the speed restored immediately post my conversations with CCEs of ACT they are yet to respond to my complaint regarding usage/consumption of 50 GB in just 48 hours. On top of this, I received a SMS from ACT informing me that the complaint has been resolved to my satisfaction. What a way to deal with customers…post receipt of SMS from ACT, I sent another mail to the help desk at ACT informing them that my complaint has not yet been resolved. Still, no response from them. This is my question to ACT – is your customer care centre set up only for your convenience of easy plan upgradation or for solving customer related problems as well?
Many of our friends have faced these kind of situations too, and so I thought I should ask the service providers this question….for whose convenience have you set up your customer care centres, call centres etc..yours or customers’ ? Time to revisit your basics.
