Well the word Satyam is synonymous with the fraud that has made India look down in shame. New clients refrained from even considering Satyam as a possible service provider. A few existing customers showed displeasure with Satyam. Just when it looked like this giant IT firm was about to sink and add to the loss of jobs due to recession which is already prevalent, recovery steps came in with Tech Mahindra acquiring this IT giant in a bid that was eyed by many.
But Satyam needs to introspect as they have more issues to take care off else they may lose out on existing customers. This may sound a little stereotype and judgemental but I say this on the pretext of my personal experience with one of Satyam’s SBU’s as a customer.
I’ve been on the internet from 1999 which makes it 10 years. At the beginning Dial-up was the in-thing to use the internet, with the only other option the ISDN was way too expensive. I started off with Satyam as my Internet Service Provider (ISP) and stayed with the Satyam Dial-up which soon came to be called ‘Sify’. I was a loyal customer when I decided to shift from Dial-up to Broadband in 2007 and even then opted for Sify as my ISP.
From a marketers perspective I would have been a customer that they should have given special privileges in order to reward my loyalty. Any sane marketer would have at least taken complaints and suggestions from such customers seriously and done a good follow-up.
Sify on the other hand was far from this. As a customer I spend a good amount on phone calls to the local sify technical incharge and the sify customercare giving constant complaints of faulty connection. I was not able to access the internet for about 10-15days every month. The worst had not yet come.
In April 2009, on one rainy night there was a power surge through the sify LAN cable which burnt my motherboard and resulted in what could be called a ‘mini-diwali’ with a cracker sound from my CPU (Approx incurred loss is INR 8000)
That was it! It had gone too far this time. I called the customer care and mailed them about this daily for 10 consecutive days with no reply from their side. In India acting on such issues legally would have demanded shelling out more money and a positive result if any would come really soon in about 10years time.
So I finally decided to switch my ISP and opted for Airtel Broadband which is widely acclaimed as the best in the country with respect to Internet connectivity and customer service. I requested for an Airtel connection and within 30mins I had a sales manager come home and take a written application. The following day a technical team came home and in less than 24 hours I was connected to Airtel Broadband.
I’ve been using this connection for some time now and my observations:
I’ve been on the internet from 1999 which makes it 10 years. At the beginning Dial-up was the in-thing to use the internet, with the only other option the ISDN was way too expensive. I started off with Satyam as my Internet Service Provider (ISP) and stayed with the Satyam Dial-up which soon came to be called ‘Sify’. I was a loyal customer when I decided to shift from Dial-up to Broadband in 2007 and even then opted for Sify as my ISP.
From a marketers perspective I would have been a customer that they should have given special privileges in order to reward my loyalty. Any sane marketer would have at least taken complaints and suggestions from such customers seriously and done a good follow-up.
Sify on the other hand was far from this. As a customer I spend a good amount on phone calls to the local sify technical incharge and the sify customercare giving constant complaints of faulty connection. I was not able to access the internet for about 10-15days every month. The worst had not yet come.
In April 2009, on one rainy night there was a power surge through the sify LAN cable which burnt my motherboard and resulted in what could be called a ‘mini-diwali’ with a cracker sound from my CPU (Approx incurred loss is INR 8000)
That was it! It had gone too far this time. I called the customer care and mailed them about this daily for 10 consecutive days with no reply from their side. In India acting on such issues legally would have demanded shelling out more money and a positive result if any would come really soon in about 10years time.
So I finally decided to switch my ISP and opted for Airtel Broadband which is widely acclaimed as the best in the country with respect to Internet connectivity and customer service. I requested for an Airtel connection and within 30mins I had a sales manager come home and take a written application. The following day a technical team came home and in less than 24 hours I was connected to Airtel Broadband.
I’ve been using this connection for some time now and my observations:
- It does cost marginally higher than its main competitor BSNL but it scores way better in customer service
- BSNL gave me a waiting time of 4weeks to install my connection whereas with Airtel it was just 24hours
- Airtel inspection team conducts surprise visits to customers to enquire about and check for proper working of the connection on a regular basis
- Whenever you post a complaint on the Airtel website or make one through the helpline you get a message on your mobile indicating the time deadline by which your complaint would be solved (trust me they take not more than half the time indicated)
- To top it all, the customer care executives, the linemen incharge of wiring and the technical team of Airtel all knew good English unlike their counterparts in BSNL and Sify!
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3 comments:
now that u got airtel hope u will be bzzzzing regularly :)
I wish i could shift to airtel too for my mobile..but stuck with Vodafone for now
lolz... :)
i too hope to do that on a regular basis... ;)!!!
well with respect to my phone connection i'm with vodafone too and i dun have ne major issues!! :P
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