Important: A service provider is as good as the people who provide that service and help consumers experience that moment of truth.
Let me share a small secret about myself: I love being pampered. My family does that, my colleagues, friends et al love to pamper me. Well I just got lucky. But then I have been spoilt and now expect everybody to be nice, supportive and kind as my near and dear ones, including service providers :) AIRTEL egged me to scale my expectations and I will explain how.
I recently rejoined the AIRTEL family in October 05 by taking a mobile number for my personal use. This meant that I would only make personal calls to family from this number only. This is important because when I travel I prefer to use this resource to communicate with family members. I had an AIRTEL connection earlier which I had to surrender as I received an official phone from another service provider.
The initial ride was bumpy - it took 3 working days to activate my phone and the executive was not availble to respond to calls etc. They had taken a deposit amount to activate STD and that was done after persistent follow up. Things got streamlined after nearly a week. Then came another problem - refund of deposit. I had deposited INR 400 to activate STD and then was informed that this deposit was not required as there was a corporate tie up with AIRTEL. I landed at their outlet on our premises to take the refund and much to my horror I was informed that this would take a few weeks of paper work etc. I was appalled and started looking out for ways to get my money back. I literally stumbled on their website - https://airtelworld.com and registered my number there. After logging into my space on the website I found out about the feature where you can log your complaints and requests on the site. I decided to take a chance and logged this complaint. I was impressed by the workflow and the details it asked me to furnish. At the close of the activity it gave an SLA (Service Level Agreement) of the time and date by which this would get resolved. I got a call within 2 hours of logging this complaint and was informed about how the money would be reimbursed to me. This matter was resolved then.
A few days later I travelled to Chennai and realised that roaming is not functional :( I decided to test the strength of the WEB interface and logged another request about the non funtining of the roaming facility. The workflow asked me to furnish alternate number where I could be reached and true to that within half an hour I got a call and the issue fixed before the turn of the hour. Morever the lady who called me left her contact number and even offered to inform anybody if I had a message to pass on..
In summary: I have necer called their helpdesk @ 121. I have logged all requests included possible loss of sim card ( I found it later :)) etc on the web and got a response well within the stipulated time.
We are all humans and errors / mistakes do occur. Customer delight is when the service provider - organization or human being, goes that extra inch to help things stabilize and assure the consumer that they are working with them to resolve issues.
AIRTEL has set a new standard in such a volatile industry!! Kudos to the team...