complaint - lousy customer care + credit card application mishandling

I want to register a complaint with the lousy manner in which Kotak customer care handles customer queries.

I am being forced to directly address the nodal office with this grievance because the customer care number and the relationship manager I am supposed to deal with are both being very unhelpful and totally irresponsible towards executing their duties.

a. I applied for a credit card in end Nov ’08. This was based on a call from the Kotak sales Pune office telling me - As Tech Mahindra employee my application is preapproved and that I ONLY have to sign the form and give my PAN card copy. I did this the next day and I got 3 different calls verifying my details
- I was told in my last verification call that within 20 odd days, I should receive my card.

b. It was 2 months past when I called Kotak with the status of the card application.

c. I was told that the card application got rejected. I raised an issue on this because I did not get any information that it has been rejected.
- I also brought up the point that I needed to know WHY I was told that I would receive the card positively (by 2 sources – one, the Pune sales office guy, second the verifying lady) that I would receive the card positively.
- I was told that my issue will be looked into and I was given the reference number - 1-88928648 (on 3^rd Feb). I was asked to call within 4-5 days to check the status.

d. I also called up again on 5^th to get a better clarity on this issue when the individual I spoke to gave me more information that I should have received a written note indicating the ‘reason’ for card rejection from the back-office, as the call center people are not equipped to know this info. I was told that on the basis of this note/reason, I could request to re-start my application process.
- This person who told me this did not give me any reference number but he mentioned that against my form number G000596136, he has put in a complaint about the reason why I was not sent the notification. I was told that I would receive a letter soon.

e. Today when I got on the call with this person from the call center, he told that ANOTHER application has been raised against my form number.
without my knowledge, I found it very interesting that for a rejected application another application was raised.
But this person never answered my query about the first request – why I didn’t receive any response/written note of rejection.
- I again asked the reason why the first application status resolution itself is taking so much time.
- I specifically wanted to know how long it would take to get the previous query answered but he bluntly said as a customer I am not supposed to know this information, and abruptly cut the phone.
- It could not be very coincidental that the phone got accidentally disconnected by his side just at this point in the conversation.

f. Then I spoke to Kotak’s credit card div. representative at Tech Mahindra.
I asked for the number of someone who can help me in this matter, someone senior, and not a DST person.
This individual turned out to be more irresponsible than the rest, he plainly mentioned that he doesn’t know why the application got rejected, he didn’t know who all were there in the Kotak credit cards division and he didn’t know whether he worked for Kotak directly or through an agency. He was plainly being difficult to speak with.

g. I can go on and on but I will spare myself the pain of trying to explain how pathetic the customer ‘care’ dept. is because of not just the above but several other instances when there was no ‘customer’ oriented behavior.
I would like to speak to someone who can look into the matter of irregularities in the credit card application process and resolve my issues.

Telecom SNAFUs

Just as a child needs guidance from parents, our country needs a lot more guidance from it's parents, it's own citizens who have seen the pros and cons of the governance and practices worldwide.

But unfortunately, that is not the case these days. Citizens are all up in arms blaming the government, and the governance, for it's malfunction, rather than looking unto themselves as to how they could see better options being put in place - (maybe by selecting a better government??)

Thus my thoughts here are related to some small steps, by which things can be improved upon, rather than leaving them unattended, at the least, uncorrected.

Connecting with people is the key for a growing economy - participation, collaboration, cooperation at every level defines growth.
The telecom revolution like the agriculture revolution has taken the country over and connected it like never before.
It has helped in terms of competition and choices for people.

The customer is getting probably a good value for money with the rates reducing from the once upon a time exorbitant(compared to today's ) rates.

But the basic tenets of communication are not getting reflected in the practices of the service providers. These seem to be getting overridden with the increasing volumes in business.

Let me explain one observation of mine which is related dirctly to the quality of customer service (at contact centers) and indirectly, with the profile of employees

Employees of a company represent it's profile in more ways than one. They are it's policy messengers, brand carriers and shapers, and status symbols.

- when I was serving in the Tata group, Orange- later Hutch - now Vodafone was a client of our project group.

In those early times, mobile phone companies carried an elite tag/brand;
employees usually joining these companies at the call center were from the upper middle and upper social class of the society who wanted to work for the in-thing of the market.

So you would find finely attired and mannered men and women, sophisticated, with crisp accents, working the fronts at the contact centers, taking calls; representing a workforce that actually demonstrated som level of maturity at their individual levels and hence towards their jobs and thus the customers
- at least being courteous and patient and resolving issues efficiently, esp. talking to senior citizens.

Today, see the contrast.

The call center or the contact center culture represents a very different picture now.
The culture of these employees has changed drastically. Most of them are the locals, who have probably had a vernacular education but have been able to qualify for these jobs.

They are from a background where English is probably not their language of education nor they are not aware of the nuances of the language to the extent that their job might need. Nor do they seem self-driven to present themselves sophisticatedly, in terms of carrying themselves or their mannerisms.
These are a cross section of people coming from the burgeoning middle and lower middle class - a section that is now eyeing their exposure to the world through the growing retail industry, and is trying to change their ways and means by taking up these jobs at the call centers (one of the examples I want to illustrate).

Also notice that these people are from a social engineering level that somehow manages to get their work done - what in the literal terminology is called 'Jugaad'

These folks either do not understand, feel the need or pay attention, towards a very important aspect - the quality of life, and correspondingly, quality of services, to the extent needed.
They work to improve their quality of material life - by showing high levels of consumerism(instant gratification, instead of delayed gratification by working on their individual personality, education and presentation).

This is a case in most contact centers and this has changed over the last 4 years or so.

I have interacted with the call center folks across companies - Reliance, HSBC, Vodafone, Citibank, Airtel, SBI and have seen a very high change(drop) in their quality of support.
--
Reliance - Most difficult to get your problem across to, everyone switches to an artificial, unauthentically trained Hindi conversation mode after a minute of English chat, which seems very mechanical and totally feels like hitting a brick wall

HSBC - The quality of the executives answering the calls has dropped drastically, the English is poor, the Hindi, not so much upto the mark

Citibank - this is one SP which still has some quality maintained in their contact center service in terms of their responses to English queries

Airtel - customer support in the Madhya Pradesh area is VERY pathetic
--

The high level issues I see clearly in this drop of service levels are more people than process defined:

1. Reducing levels of manpower quality joining the forces - leading to a crunch in quality of service

2. Individuals who are less motivated by the vision of the company they work for, who contribute LESS to the company they work for, but want their self-interests (materialistic) progressed faster

3. People who take their job as a 'job to do' than take 'ownership' of the work with keen interest in improving its quality

4. reducing levels of education quality leading to all the above

a Catch 22 situation

In terms of impacts of all this you see poor quality of service. following are a few situations you would see happening

a. you are required to hold longer on the phone nowadays;

b. the phone will get disconnected when you are giving or taking the most important piece of information from the executive;

c. the executive interprets your query in his own terms and repeats the concern from a totally random poin of view in a tone that leaves you exasperated

d. the IVR places you 'on a hold' saying "your call is important to us" or asking you to "call back" because "your call is important to us" (AirTel for instance)

e. the IVR and contact center functionality has in fact widened the gap between you and the service providers' decision makers by introducing the block headed (sorry!!) contact center individuals

f. You are required to enter your card numbers/PIN in the system and yet asked to repeat the same when speaking to the executives, leaving you wondering who might be actually using that info you just punched in

g. You end up hearing - the systems are under maintenance' when you need the most critical information, and this situation repeats itself at least 2-3 times with that service provider

h. you feel you are stuck with this SP for your life and need someone to resolve your issues RIGHT NOW

bottom line - the telecom service providers are NOT doing any good job or giving any MAJOR benefit in the long run, but squeezing the Indian 'mango junta' (aam junta) of all their juice to fill their own coffers.

Presence of any effective regulatory and grievance redressal body is lacking
The procedures for issue redressal are too complicated and not widely known to people to be able to have faith in the system.
So what does the common man do but bear this brunt of oligopolistic mal-practices.