In the last three-five years, I have seen corporate houses jumping into the local guy’s business-esp internet services and cable TV services. While some of the players were present longer since 5 yrs, some have recently jumped. In this post, I am just comparing my experiences of dealing with these corporates and local guys.
Most of the people reading this post come from a decent and humble(read middle-class) social and educational background, including me. Since me and you have been availing these services from our local cable operator, we know how frustrating it can be. Also, these local guys are very naive most of the times. Taking advantage of this, multi-crore corporate organizations wooed us with their promises of professional services and standards, better features, utility and technology. Right now, I am using some of these ‘professional’ services as well as ‘local’ services. Overall, I find that the local guy wins in the long-term.
With professional services, they give you a ‘Customer care’ no. Whenever you run into a problem, dial that no., spend 30 seconds dialing 1 for English, 2 for support-related calls, 3 for pre-paid customers, etc. Then they force upon some grade-less instrumental music created by an anonymous local artist as ‘hold-on’ music. During this ‘hold-on’ music, a computerized voice message keeps on telling you that you are very important customer for their business and they appreciate your patience for holding the call. If you are lucky, within the next 2 minutes you may get some so-called ‘customer-care executive’ to receive your call. He will VERY nicely ask for your details and complains, do some basic troubleshooting and finally end the call saying ‘I am forwarding your complaint to the concerned department, please rest assured’. He will hang up with a greeting line such as ‘Have a nice day’ or something else. You wait for two days to see if any ‘concerned department’ calls up and talks with you. So you again call their ‘customer care’ and repeat the whole process of ‘forwarding your complaint’. Even if you be rude on the call and abuse the ‘executive’, it hardly matters because to that executive, every call for him is like a story. Once the call ends, the story is permanently over for him. After much trying, you get lucky one day and a over-worked ‘field engineer’ calls you and finally the problem is solved after much trying.
When availing services from corporates, I was always felt cheated. They promise ‘Excellent customer support‘ but their meaning of ‘excellent’ is not what you think. They dress so neat and sharp, they speak good English(We good so many ‘English Speaking classes), call themselves as ‘executive’—and are in the occupation of looting people, especially educated and straight-forward people like us who think that these ‘marketing guys’ are really working for our good and that they will honor their words in time of problems. Actually, in the time of problems, most of them will not be working with that same company(in cities, people change jobs so fast) or will forward you the customer care no.
The local guy, on the other hands, tells me exactly what to expect from him. I can call his mobile almost any time- even late evening and he will usually solve the problems under one hour. His phone line is never busy and he never lies to me that I am some very important customer. He exactly knows the most common problems people face in that local area and its solutions. If something is not working as promised, or I am being ripped-off–I can loudly say ‘Customer ko chootya banata hai. Paise leta hai aur kaam nahi karta‘ and be sure that it will have an impact. If things don’t improve, I know where his ‘wires’ are. I can cut them any time and return the agony caused by him due to his failing services. Infact somebody actually did this with Pacenet Broadband and Sify Broadband in my area and the service improved thereafter.
From today, I have pledged not be brand-carzy and find ‘local’ alternatives of these ‘brands’. My local TV guy gives me over 300 channels for Rs. 280/- per mo whereas CAS would cost me Rs. 1500 + taxes. Also, DTH providers don’t allow me to create customized channel packages. They want to buy those packages which ‘they’ think are good for me. Actually the strategy behind these inflexible packages is to sell a package that has 50% good channels and 50% crap. This is how the DTH providers actually sell the crap channels by forcibly bundling them with good channels. Also, they make you sign a ‘Terms and conditions’ while subscribing which effectively allows them to add or remove any channel without considering you. It may happen that one fine day they may remove all good channels from your package and replace them with crap.
So make your decision only after being weel-informed. Don’t belive the marketing guyz if they say that shit does not smell.
Posted by Rohan Shenoy