Why not have a business class in telecom customer care?

Almost every day I hear sob stories from my colleagues, friends, family and readers about how their phones aren't working or how their operator has overcharged them for services they haven't even used.

While the nature of complaints differ, sadly, all of them have one thing in common – “Calling customer care doesn't help. They don't understand the problem.” As someone covering the telecom sector, I have brought some genuine complaints to the notice of various telecom companies. And voila, problems which could not be resolved by customer care for weeks and months get resolved within a matter of hours.

But why is it that the operator is able to resolve customers' problems when a special request is made, while regular complaints remain unnoticed?

I asked a source working in a telecom company how he is able to resolve ‘priority' user issues in a jiffy. He said he flags all ‘priority' complaints as important and urgent which then get dealt with instantly by dedicated teams. This privilege, I am told, is given on request to big politicians, high ranking bureaucrats and a few journalists. But why restrict this to a chosen few, why not deal with all consumers problems with the same promptness and willingness?

The problem is that telecom companies in India work on thin margins and therefore, can allocate only limited resources in a bid to manage costs. There are over 900 million telephone connections in the country but operators get only about Rs 50-100 from nearly 85 per cent of these connections. It's the remaining 15 per cent which really bring in the big bucks. As a result, customer care operations of most companies are struggling to put enough resources together to meet the demands of the huge subscriber base. Airtel, for example, has 180 million mobile subscribers but only 7,500 customer care agents manning call centres across the country.

Therefore, it is no surprise that 16.8 per cent of all complaints registered by the National Consumer Helpline, set up by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs in 2010-11, were related to telecom services. In comparison, complaints related to sectors such as banking, insurance and automobiles were less than 5 per cent of the total. This fiscal has not been any better. The Department of Telecom has already received 41,341 consumer complaints against telecom operators in the seven months to October 31. The actual scale is much larger because the majority of complaints are not registered with any Government agencies.

One way out of this mess is to look at how other services industries such as aviation and hotels deal with their customers. When you book a flight ticket or a hotel room you are given the option to decide what type of service you want. For instance, flight seats are allocated according to class. Those paying higher fares for executive class or business class get the best facilities, in terms of access to lounge areas at airports, special check-in counters, bigger comfortable seats and an unlimited supply of drinks. Those who opt for economy class seats board the flight knowing that there will be lesser leg room. Similarly, when you check into a five-star hotel, you have the option of picking a luxury suite which comes with king size bed, personal Jacuzzi and with the best view or you can settle for an ordinary no frills room.

Telecom operators could take a leaf out of the airline and hotel industry page and should also categorise their consumers depending on usage. A high paying customer, who spends more than Rs 1,000 a month, should be entitled to a higher grade customer service. I am not suggesting that those who pay Rs 50 should be given a shoddy treatment. After all, the customer who stays in an ordinary suite is still given basic services by the hotel. But by offering graded customer care two things will happen. Firstly, it will help operators retain the high paying subscribers. Secondly, acustomer will be empowered to choose for himself the kind of service he wants and hence it will act as an incentive to the low paying subscriber to start using more to upgrade himself to the next level. Technology is already available which can enable telecom companies to set up such a system; it is only a question of when.

The real story behind MNP numbers

Recently, the TRAI shot off a notice to cellular operators including Airtel for failing to implement mobile number portability properly. The action against the operators was initiated because the regulator's investigation revealed that number portability was not taking off due to bottlenecks created by the operators thus blocking users from shifting over to rival players. A look at the reported numbers seems to indicate that the TRAI has got it right. A year since the service was first launched, only 23 million porting requests have been reported. Of these, only about 19 million requests have actually been carried out while the remaining 4 million requests have been rejected by the operator on various grounds, some of which are highly questionable. Considering that there were 881 million wireless subscribers as on October 31, the total reported porting request is just fewer than 3 per cent of the total user base. This seems to be far short of the TRAI's own estimates of 10 per cent in the first year. Hence many have already written off MNP.But numbers that are not in the public domain reveal a different story. Data tracked by MNP operators reveal that nearly 60 per cent of the porting requests made by subscribers never get reported, and hence do not reflect in the system. This is because the moment a subscriber sends in a request for the unique porting code, the operator begins taking steps to retain him by offering freebies, extra talk time and reduced call rates. Once the subscriber agrees, the operator does not forward his request to the MNP registry and therefore this does not get reported. So, in reality, there are 34.5 million more consumers than reported, who sent in their request for porting. This means that if the actual number of subscribers who want to change their telecom operator are accounted for, the total porting request will be about 6.5 per cent of the subscriber base, much closer to the TRAI estimate.

While the TRAI should investigate how to reflect the complete picture in reported numbers, this highlights another important point beyond the statistics. Apart from giving the consumers more choice, one of the other key objectives of introducing MNP was to get operators to be more competitive and offer better services to customers. If 60 per cent of subscribers who thought about shifting to another operator ended up changing their decision because their service provider took proactive steps to retain them, then one could say MNP has actually succeeded.