Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Vofadone... Did I call your name wrong?

I would like to applaud Vodafone people for the rigrous training they give to their customer care representatives.Each time I call them I have a distinct, innovative experience. This time it was to get GPRS activated on my mobile. And the representative was so caring that he talked for full 5 minutes to give me an answer which he could have given in around 10 seconds. I was reminded of that ICICI advertisement in which the bank employee keeps listening to the old lady even after the office isclosed.

But in this case, I didn't even have to spend my energy talking. It was the customer care who was talking. And what a polite talk. Every word was preceeded and followed by the words: "Haanji Sarfraz ji batana chahunga".Ya, my name is Sidharth but hasn't someone great said that "Whats in a Name?"

And of course, Vodafone spends so much money entertaining us with zoozoos and pugs etc that we cannot and should not expect them to have CRM softwares which brings up all the customer details in front of the Customer Care representatives.

Anyways, he told me each and everything he might have learnt in his training course on GPRS. It was of real help to people like me who don't have an iota of idea about what yahoo and google are. He was so damn helpful that even after telling him that I have saved the settings which were smsed to me, heasked me three times if I had recieved the settings.

After having accompanied me through the long and tedious process of recieving and saving the setting, when I was all ready to surf the internet, he politely informed me "Haanji Sarfraaz jee... batana chahunga... aur maafi maangna chahunga ki GPRS seva J&K mein uplabdh nahi hai. Sarfraz ji batana chahunga ki yeh seva kuch hi maheeno mein shuru ki ijayegi. Sarfraz ji yeh batana chahunga ki tab aap yeh seva alag alag sites jaise yahoo, google kholne ke liye istemal kar sakte hain. Sarfraz ji..maafi chahunga ki abhi aap yeh kuch nahi kar payenge".

I calmly pulled my hair off my head.So I asked him what should I do with the settings that I had just saved.But may be he had forgotten some lessons from the GPRS class. C'mon who remembers all that what is taught in class. I myself have slept through many classes and during exams skipped many chapters which I was not comfortable with. And as he started "Sarfraz jii.. batana chahunga", I recognized that it was the same tone, I used to have when during vivas I was asked questions from "that" chapter. I am a very impatient man. And I didn't want to de-motivate the guy by running my patience-less train of thoughts over him so I quietly disconnected the call.