noreply@customerservice.com

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” Mahatma Gandhi

All companies boast of customer support. They have dedicated lines, toll free numbers, website links and email ids to help customers at the time of product dissatisfaction, service, complaints and feedback. With more people preferring the email and web way of raising their complaints,  most of the companies have options to help the customers the eway.

I raised a complaint regarding bad service and rude staff behaivior at a Spencer store in Bangalore. I wrote my feedback down on the book they have kept at the store, on page 37( this is important read on..). After a week I visited the store again and out of curiosity opened the book only to find that page 37 is missing. All the other pages with customer feedback was there except page 37. I talked to one of the staff and asked them on the missing page for which she replied “I did not tear it”.

Me “I didn’t say you tore it off, was just asking on where the page is. Now I am sure someone tore it off”

She “I did not tear it”

Me “Can I see your manager?”

Out came the same person who was rude to me the week before that and introduced as the manager of the store. I asked the same question.

Manager “It was there”

Me “Where is it?. I am sure none of the customers are going to tear it off “

Manager “I did not tear it, why are you blaming me”

Me “I want to talk to your Manager”

On this, the manager called the store ‘general manager’ who said he will take appropriate action on it.

I sent an email to the email id given on the spencer site. The last line read “I hope you acknowledge and respect my comments and not just send this email to thrash just like what happened to Page 37″

And they did. They sent it to thrash.

I sent a similar feedback to GK Vale customer care on how their store ruined the photoframe order that I gave. No reply.

I think many of these email ids should have warnings posted on their site as “Warning : Please do not sent emails to this id as it would go to an unmonitored mailbox.”

But some companies are prompt in replying to customer emails like Tata Indicom and Vodafone. Tata Indicom also has a forum where we can post our concerns and it would be addressed in 2 working days.

From all this I learned one thing, the snail mail still helps. All complaints send as snail mail would be read and acknowledged (read most of them). May be the customer service is been bombarded with customer emails that some of the emails are missed out. I think the customer support also consider snail mail as documentary evidence and take it more seriously than the emails. So next time you want to write a complaint out, write a snail mail.

The Lift

The lift has many usages. The first thing that comes to our mind would be the lift as in elevator.

I would talk about something else, the uncommon thing in India, ‘requesting for a lift (ride)”. The busstop is around a kilometer and half from my apartment, with no auto stand in sight (and because I have vowed not to take an auto because of all the bad experiences I had with those folks.) gives me two options. Either to walk all the way or to request for a ride.

In India we stop a bus by extending our hands out and waving in a wild gesture or stand in front of it hoping that the driver would stop.  Since we don’ t have the concept of holding your hand out with fingers closed and thumb extended or the ‘hitchhiker’s thumb all I would do is to shout “bus stop” when the biker would slow down and nod his head (the ‘NO’ nod) and ride off !

But there are a few who would stop and give me a ride to the bus stop.

The wiki has a lot of insight on hitchhiking.

Hitchhiking is a historically common practice worldwide, and hence there are very few places in the world where laws exist to restrict it. However, a minority of countries have laws that restrict hitchhiking at certain locations. In the United States, for example, some local governments have laws to outlaw hitchhiking, with safety being the primary concern – Wikipedia

Have you tried the hitchhiker’s thumb in India?

Seat Belt

The law mandates that the two passengers who occupy the front seats has to wear a seat belt. Well its only a law, which is seldom enforced. I have seen many of the young in flashy cars wearing it. But the older generation never wear it. I guess it because they are not used to the seat belts in their time and consider it to be an irritant.

Seat belt has its on woes. Once I went home and took my dad’s 800 out. As a reflex I put on the seat belt everytime I enter a vehicle, or atleast my hands search for it. I put on the seat belt. After coming back I realized that I have a Slanting ‘L’ mark on my shirt. The seat belt was never used and dust was accumulating on it.  After that I gave the law a skip while using his old 800.

My office mandates that all employees and cab drivers wear seat belts when they exit from the building. The security folks make sure that all are strapped in. The minute the cab drive out of the building premises, the cab driver removes the seat belt in a easy fast motion. “Difficult hai” he said to me once. I stayed strapped in.

The cab driver at my wife’s company wouldn’t even bother to buckle. He will just pull the belt over his chest and drive with one hand. Once the car moves out of the building he just let go of the belt !

I recently had an argument with a relative of mine on using helmets and seat belts. His argument was that helmets and seat belts are an irritant. He went to the extent of saying that there is no use of getting a preserved head if the rest of your body got thrashed in an accident.

I guess there is no point in enforcing these laws. It should be what the people should be taking as precautions.

Consider this scenario, an Indian check the gas connection, check if the fan/bulbs are running, check if the iron is ON before locking his house. And then he pulls the ‘Godrej’ lock twice to see if it was locked right. Then he ride on his bike without a helmet. We cover all gadgets in cover/plastic. (check this post out) to protect it.

I guess we take many precautions to take care of our belongings than ourselves!

*Update : The relative I talked about is an advocate.