Jagoinvestor
November 25, 2010
JagoInvestor/Moneylife helps a customer get his money back
What do you do when you are facing un-ethical practices by some company officials and You are not getting justice anywhere? You should reach out directly at the top of the management somehow because, believe me customer care just does not work ! . This is exactly what I did, when one of the readers complained on our forum that one of his friend is facing issues with India Bulls Real Estate from last some weeks. Here is his complaint
Dear Forum Members,
I’m writting this on behalf of my Friend-Colleague, Ravikumar GovindaNaik, who had a very Bad experience with Indiabulls Home Loan division.
Application Ref no with IndiaBulls – 150625
Name: Ravikumar Lamani GovindaNaik
In August 2010, he initiated the process to buy a 30×40 site near Hosur road, Bangalore. Since the property had only B-Khatha and loan amount was only 10 Lakh, most the major bank representatives denied his enquiries.
Then one Mr. Sivakumar from IndiaBulls Home Loans have appeared as life saver to him an agreed to get him the loan amount approved, with the whatever B-Khatha he have. Every now and then he asked for somany documents copies and it went for almost for a month. In between my friend got an SMS from indiabulls informing that his loan got approved. When he asked about this to Sivakumar he told, Loan is approved by Finance Division but Legal team still have to approve. Also he asked my friend to pay Rs. 5,000/- so that lawyer from Legal division would approve the loan amount. My friend disagreed to pay and asked the contact details of the Lawyer to talk. He refused to gave and tried to divert our attention.
When there was only few days to expire the sale agreement with the Land owner, Sivakumar again appeared and told Loan in COMPLETELY approved and shown photocopy of the cheque favoured the Land Owner. Later Land owner had some dispute on the registration amount and canceled the Land deal.
On October 05, 2010 My friend send a mail to Sivakumar and Indiabulls to cancel the Loan, since he no longer needs it. Nobody responded to mails and phone calls even after repeated attempts, and my friend was scared about the blank cheques he have given.
As he feared, on 13-Oct-10 Rs. 2,216/- was withdrawn from his bank account using the cheque claiming as Pre-EMI, eventhough the Loan Amount cheque was never delivered to him. Immediately my friend contacted Sivakumar and his Manager Praveen enquiring about this, but they suggested to contact customer care. When he contacted the customer care they told him to contact Praveen, The MANAGER. Many e-mail written to Sivakumar, praveen and customer care fell into deaf ears.
On top of that, again on 8-Nov-10 Rs. 20,275/- got withdrawn from my friends bank account using another blank cheque claiming as EMI of the Loan Amount, when the loan amount was never disbursed. Now they have stopped answering my friends calls. Do the Financial Institute have the rights to do like this?
The representative was from Indiabulls that we confirmed, called up the customer care, they also have the application reference number. The cheque’s were in favor of Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd., only the amount was unfilled. They told that cheques are required for security and to initiate EMI-ECS facility. After the second incident of cash withdrawal, my friend used the “stop payment” facility of his bank. When I searched in Google, I could find lots of complaints against Indiabulls Loan services. In this case they have looted the money on top the processing charge Rs. 5,000, charged earlier.
Yesterday, my friend spoke to the representative Sivakumar again and threaten to send the details to RBI and would file a case, he was least bothered. He just told “Do it!”
What should my friend do now? Anybody knows a Higher official in Indiabulls, who could help? Or writing to RBI about this would help?
Please Help, Thanks, Surabhi R
What action I took ?
I emailed the whole incident as it is to Sucheta Dalal of Moneylife, who helped in escalating the whole issue directly to Gagan Banga, CEO of the company . Moneylife got the reply directly from CEO within same day that he will look into the issue and by next day itself .
—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Gagan Banga <>
To: Sucheta Dalal
Sent: Sun, 21 November, 2010 1:31:12 PM
Subject: Re: Bad experince with Indiabulls Home LoansMa’am, this will be sorted out by tomorrow. Thanks for your feedback and for escalating this issue to me. Regards, Gagan
IndiaBulls had talked to the customer and apologized, they also handed over the refund cheques towards Pre-EMI & EMI the same day. They also dispatched Post dated cheque’s & loan cancellation letter to customer the same day. Here is a reply
From: “Gagan Banga” <>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:09:28 +0530
To: Sucheta DalalSubject: Re: Bad experience with Indiabulls Home Loans
Dear Ma’am, Firstly I would like to accept the mistake of my team and our system . We have already apologised to the customer for the inconvenience caused and handed over the refund cheques towards PEMI & EMI today. The remaining PDCs & loan cancellation letter are being dispatched today and should reach him in a day or two. Once again thanks for bringing this to my attention, such feedback will surely help us in improving our processes. Regards, Gagan
This was a reply made from Gagan Banga to Sucheta Dalal of moneylife and she forwarded to me later. Sucheta Dalal has been in journalism from last 25 yrs and its because of this fact that Moneylife has strong ability to reach top management. Moneylife has been helping investors like Ravikumar get justice from many years now and they routinely do grievance redressal with success rate of over 80%. Moneylife also conducts various Financial literacy initiatives for common public in association with Industry experts .
Customer finally got Justice
After I got an email from Suceta Dalal that finally the issue is resolved, I personally talked to the Ravikumar (customer) on phone. Here is what exactly happened (as per the telephonic conversation)
Ravikumar went to Koramangala IndiaBulls office on Saturday (20th Nov) and the Manager-Praveen was not in office. One gentleman at office connected Ravi to Praveen over the office phone, and Praveen was not happy to talk with Ravi. He told that, today I’m on leave, will be back to office on Monday only, would look into then. There was nothing much to do for Ravi so came back home.
I think after that moneylife sent mail to Indiabulls CEO and he acted on it. On Sunday morning Ravi received a call from Mr. Praveen Pradhan (some other Praveen) , we claimed to the Location head of IndiaBulls in Bangalore. The other manager Praveen reports to this Praveen Pradhan. He might have received the communication from CEO by that time.
This Praveen Pradhan spoke to Ravi for 10-15 minutes, and collected the whole information about the story. He promised to Ravi that, he would receive money on Monday morning without fail. The interaction with Pradhan was pleasing and he apologised for the whole mess.
Monday morning (22nd Nov), Ravi visited Indiabulls office at Koramangala again, and he was directed to finance division. Straight away they have handed over the Refund-Cheque of Rs. 22,491 and as a latest update, while I was drafting this mail, some executive from Indiabulls called up and informed that he is coming down to our office in hour and would deliver the rest of the documents and those blank cheques collected.
– Ravikumar Govindanaik
Problem lies at Bottom level most of the times
This whole incident and what happened opens some questions . Is the problem mainly at lower levels or bottom of the pyramid which involves employees, and managers at lower level ? When we face any issues its never entertained by them or even customer care as they are just not bothered about the company ethics and only interested in their salary and day-to-day activities . However top of the management takes these issues very seriously and acts upon them faster ? What is your opinion on his point ?
Also what are your comments on this whole story ? Do you know some one who has faced these issues ? According to you, what can reduce these kind of frauds or un-professional behavior ?
I experienced the same with India bulls almost same time, sept 2010. They asked me to go for Insurance for the house which I am buying for. The Policy amount is 50000*6 years(3,00,000). I said no and Immediately I said I am not intrested in the loan.
The next day they deposited my 5500Rs cheque. and later a 20000 and 30000 cheques with my blank cheques that I gave.
They never return my signed application forms as well as the blank cheques.
I should take serious action against them. I have all the data with me. Please guide me to sue them.
Ramesh
You can either write directly to [email protected] or let me know what was the exact issue
Manish
Hi,
I dont think its just about the bottom level. Its about the culture that the top management drives. If the top management insists on getting things right and reprimand any such incident brought to their notice, there definitely will be improvement in future. however, if only damage control is done without getting the message down, this is bound to happen again and again. I am even aware of managments, which belive that if there are 10 cases in which company has benefitted incorrectly, and had to refund in one case, the other 9 are still benefit and the employee has seemingly done good to the organisation. Haha!! hence beware of small companies which are over-enthu in granting loan.. there are no free lunches, friends!!
Shilpa
Yes ,, agree with your points
Manish
Manish,
I don’t think the problem lies entirely on low level employees. It lies more on the top level and their intention not to put in place a process to check/address these issues. You might have helped one Ravi thro’ your contacts but who knows how many Ravi’s are out there and who is going to help them all, they will be running between pillars to get their issue resolved.
Also I don’t agree that CEO should pick some cases from online and need to resolve because this not the solution for the problem instead its like temporary solution.
Instead the company itself should have place (a box/register ledger in office and of course in company website too) where customer can drop in their issues and CEO should ensure that each and every, I repeat each and every case should be cleared. In this way only he can say that he is more customer centric.
I do understand the practical difficulties in implementing this but they have no choice but to do something like this. In fact they should have had this process in place even before they start the company.
Rajendran
Yes , the suggestion from you is more relavent than just random picking from the CEO or any high official , but I am not sure why that wya of solution was not part of the plan
Manish
Manish,
Great work Manish. I personally think the lower level managers are interested only in fulfilling their target quota (i.e the amount of loan applications they can bring in ) and do not care about customer experience .
Indiabulls need to undertand that they are a service industry and if they keep on taking customer’s for ride in this competitive service industry they will be the losers.
Thanks,
Nilanjan
Nilanjan
Thanks to give your views 🙂 , I agree with you .
Manish
Excellent work Manish!!
why don’t they keep a dropbox for customers complain which directly goes to top management:)
even if they dont ever check those, still it might go a long way towards more commitment from lower level employees.
Anindya
Thats a great suggestion and can be very effective ,but the problem is how to make it a standard !
Manish
Excellent work Manish!!
Inspirational 🙂
Excellent work Manish!!
Inspirational 🙂
Great work Ms. Dalal and Manish for taking the problem to MoneyLife.
Nice to know Moneylife addresses customer grievances.
Thanks Pattu
It was sucheta Dalal who escalted the issue . It was not possible to resolve it if she had not helped 🙂 .
manish
Great work Manish!
Dear Manish
I notice that you have, at only one place mentioned Moneylife, without a hyperlink or explaining what Moneylife is. You have also carefully cut out the fact that Gagan Banga responded to me (you have removed my name) to give the impression that it was a response to Jago.
The 46 comments from readers indicate that they believe it was your effort that led to the resolution.
You also make no mention of the fact that I told you in my email that Moneylife Magazine (www.moneylife.in) routinely does grievance redressal and that our success rate is over 80%.
You also talk about taking a complaint to the top, without ever mentioning that it is because of our contacts (Debashis Basu and I) and our 25 years each in journalism that we are able to reach complaints to the top level.
A fair story would have included these facts.
You have now asked if you can continue to forward complaints to us. I think reads need to write to us directly.
best regards
Sucheta Dalal
Managing Editor
Moneylife Magazine
http://www.moneylife.in
http://www.suchetadalal.com
Sucheta
I am not sure why it has given wrong impression , I should not have used “we got the response from CEO”, which has given an impression that “jagoinvestor” got the email response directly. Didnt want to put names or email’s as you would start getting too many emails directly in that case . What I avoided thinking that can be problem is actually expected by you . I will do that right away now .
My apologies if it has given impression that I tried to downsize the role of moneylife in the whole matter, It was never the intention. I didnt put more info about moneylife as its already a known face. But now i realise that I failed on my part . I am extemelly sorry for that . I should have had mailed Debashish and you before posting it . I will make the changes in the article right away .
Please take this as my mistake and ignorance. I never wanted this to happen actually.
Manish
manish
bravo. of the whole article, what i liked most is u presenting even this complaint of suchetaji (not that i didn’t like other parts of the article or discussion). it simply shows ur faithfulness and shrewdlessness (i dont know whether that is the correct word or not, but i think u got the meaning, right?). this is once again thought provoking article by u. as suggested by many it shall be great if you can pick some issues from the forum and help the readers in settling them
keep enlightening
dr kishan
Dr Kishan
Thanks
Just to add to that joining Money life foundation will help, which is free by the way. I am promoting it because i am a beneficiary of its service, as mentioned above in my previous comment 🙂
Dear Ms. Dalal,
We are grateful to you for taking the issue to the higher authority of India Bulls and finding a solution. It’s an invaluable service that MoneyLife is doing for commen men like us. With out your high level contact this recovery would not have happened.
When my friend was struggling with issue, I tried to get help from many of the other experts in finance via twitter.
http://twitter.com/iSurabhi/status/4806666277101568
Since IndiaBulls Home Loans doesn’t have a specific twitter account, I even wrote to @ibullsecurities twitter account
http://twitter.com/iSurabhi/status/4808010543144960
Nobody responded on this apart from @KapilNakra
http://twitter.com/kapilnakra/statuses/5093088594759680
I was following you too in twitter that time, but didn’t get the courage to write to you about this. I felt like MoneyLife is a Bigger platform, where these kind of Induvidual Issues may get ignored. (And if you if you don’t take it personally, I was bit scared of you, like students scared about Headmistress. May be because of the boldness in your article and comments you do.)
It was then, Manish came up with JagoInvestor Forum and people started making use of it wisely. I thought of putting my issue too in Forum, since couple of times manish helped me earlier. With that confidence and comfortable feeling I wrote to JagoInvestor Forum and rest of the story all knows.
Manish, as a person defenitly got Big role to providing a platform to bring up these issues, and he personnally followed up the issue. On that weekend I was on vacation and went native and didn’t have access to internet. Manesh wrote mail to me in available mail id’s and contacted my friends in twitter to get my contact number. Frankly I didn’t expect such a personal effort from Manish or anybody who are bit of a famous.
I personally feel like Both MoneyLife and JagoInvestor equally important to commen men like us.
Thanks & Regards, Surabhi Rajan (and Ravikumar GovindaNaik)
Sorry for writting this late, I got a reference to this article again, when I was reading Deepak Shenoys following post. http://blog.investraction.com/2010/12/readings-bank-elite-mfi-moneylife-99ers.html
Good work Manish & Moneylife ! I had a similar issue. This was with Geojit BNP Paribas. While they did some fraudulent practices on my account i tried to contact the branch. But the responses was even pathetic and irritating. Finally I somehow found the Managing Director’s (Mr. C J George) mail ID and posted the complaint to that mail. This time MD responded within an hour and assured me of justice. Within a day, I got whatever I required. Any way with that instance, I stopped all my transactions with Geojit. If interested, I can forward you the mail I send and its reply.
Thanks and Regards,
Shinoj Jose
Shinoj
thats a good thing to know . How did you find the email ?
Manish
I had a similar issue with SBI although not as serious as this and i approached Money life too. It got resolved within a week.
According to me its the ignorance of the low level employees in our banking system that creates these problems.
Every bank has to focus on their complaint redressal systems now. Gone are those days when customers were ign3orant and take employees for their word. If you see any injustice make it a point that it is escalated and justice is done. You never know your actions might help many in future.
Srikanth
Yea .. thats the solution even I see
Manish
Great work. Most of these housing finance companies train their lower level and middle level employees how to misguide the customers and keep them in darkness once loan is disbursed. Many educated people after taking home loan get confused about principal and interest part of EMI, Tenure of loan, change in interest rates, prepayment, Balance as on a date etc. They keep a new entrant at the cusomer care desk all the time so that the customer should not ask logical questions. I have Home loan from a very reputed pvt. housing loan company. I had some problems like not getting proper information about my account from customer care at their office,I contacted manager level person and he provided me the required information. I am a subscriber to Jago Investor for last 3 years. Also I read Moneylife magazine for last 5 years. Frankly speaking, It was Jago Investor and Moneylife from where I got `real education’ regarding good and bad aspects of finance like Mutual funds, ULIP.personal loans,Home loans etc. Thanks -Padman
Padman
Thanks for your comment . Yea .. Even I have been reading moneylife . You can find some good sites like moneylife and moneymantra are some big names which are doing some real work for investors
Manish
Good work. Keep it up.
Now a days the standard of customer care is dwindling at an alarming rate, eventhogh many ads and rhetorics to the contrary.
Main reason for this is huge growing markets in which the thrust of companies is always attracting and getting new customers and not retaining and satisfying existing customer. Weak consumer movement also helps this. Next comes the indifference of the consumer himself about his rights as a consumer, which are reinforced by prints on the bills like “Goods once sold wont be taken back”.
As a consumer one has to know and understand his rights first. Also he should understand the redressal mechanisms. This will help him long way in purchasing and enjoying the product he wanted.
In this regard, i feel, approaching higher ups in the company will most likely settles the matter. However, finding the higher up through customer care call centre is impossible, as these people themselves are hired and know very little. Internet helps a immensely in this regard.
In last 2 or 3 years i had many personal experiences where the issues were resolved when i approach higherups with details. Else one can approach bodies like ombudsman.
Srinivas
Yea .. approaching higher authority increases the chances of getting justice , but as others pointed out in their comments, the main problem is the culture and how good value bottom level gets from top management. that needs to be fixed .
Manish
Manish,
Good work for a small customer. Really heartening
Sandeep
Sandeep
Thanks
To a great extent the attitudes of lower rung employee springs from their value systems imbibed through their friends, family and their schools and colleges. This results in poor work culture and ” don’t care” or “chalta hai” attitudes.
If this continues the demographic dividend which India enjoys presently will be of no use.
When I speak to Foreign Businessmen they complain about endemic corruption, poor work culture and unionism as reasons for not investing in India compared to China.
Sundar
can you explain what is meant by “demographic dividend” ?
manish
India has one the youngest population. % of youths and active working age population to the Total population is high compared to other countries. But if this workforce or budding children are not trained with proper skills and requisite motivation and work culture then it will be a land of unskilled youths who can cause devastation. This is called “demographic dividend”.
Skills, Research and Development and Entrepreneurial Spirits are the hall mark of progress. If our society does not care for this we may remain behind developed nations for a long time.
Sundar
Thanks for explaining 🙂
Manish
You can not blame things on bottom employee and give clean chit to top management. I faced similar case with HSBC.
I recently transfered loan to HSBC, I also availed top-up facility.
They did not handed over top-up loan cheque until they got papers from previous bank. I did not had money for 10 days but made to pay interest for those 10 days.
Why they did not told me it earlier ?
When they know it is transfer of loan case and other (any) bank will take time to return papers, why they prepared cheque in advance.
When they had already released 16 L, what risk with another 4 L, also previous bank was not handing over paper directly to them. If I have to keep papers with me I could have as 16L were already disbursed.
Bhupesh
“They did not handed over top-up loan cheque until they got papers from previous bank.” . Is this their rules ? or they went ahead and did this intentianlly ?
Very true, customer care just doesn’t works. I often wonder why companies spend so much money on it. Keep posting such incidents so that everyone should know how to deal with it.
SS
customer care is the only way they can give a way of contacting and putting their complaints , what other solution do you have ?
Manish
Just barge in, thump the table and shout for manger. Much better then waiting for your call to be connected to coustomer care. And it works instantly. My opinion is dont call customer care untill and unless you dont have anything interesting to do with your time.
SS
Thump the table where ?
Manish
I agree with SS here on the “barge in…” point.
Unless it’s tele marketing type of company, running only on the basis of a telephone number there would be some establishment/office/premises which would have dealt with the case. Just barge in there and thump the table. Even if you land up at the wrong persons table, doesn’t matter. Once you become a pain in his a** he will at least find out who the real concerned person is to the best of his knowledge. Repeat the above process until you reach high enough hierarchy in the org or right enough person 🙂
It has worked for me in a case involving ING Vysya. And every time you are redirected don’t forget to note down the employee name/id, time of conversation etc.. details with you. And each time diligently mention(read out from a piece of paper) those details to the next person in chain and say few words on how you are planning to write a formal complaint giving all these details to the big guys mentioning how a customer is harassed with wrong information etc etc.. bla bla…
If you are the soft type who can’t thump the table, one can use emotional blackmailing like until this case is solved am going to seat in this office etc etc… (You need to have time in hand to prove your intentions 🙂 )
Am suggesting this in the rarest or rare case, like this one is.
In minor cases CC works good enough for me. I would say CC guys do a decent job of handling regulation cases. So, you as customer, too need to know how bad is your case.
Regards
Raja
Manish,
Great work. Good to see that justice was done.
Rakesh
Rakesh
Thanks , you didnt put what do you think about the solution to this bigger problem , what solutions do you suggest !
Manish
Lovely Story and lovely work by you.
BUT i disagree with the conclusion part. The problem doesn’t lie more with bottom rank employee than it lies with the top rank ones. (The top ones were at the bottom some day, isn’t it ??) . As per me the problem is still at the top only.
Let me explain why !
A bottom rung employee is mostly driven by target and deliverables (Defined by top ranks??) and day to day work. Unfortunately the satisfaction of a would be customer who is no longer now going to remain as a customer is hardly any deliverable/target. Right ??
Also your incident doesn’t reflect anything conclusively about Mr. CEO’s (top rank’s) concern for such customers in general. It is just that this incident was followed up by a powerful lobby (you and Moneylife in this case) and duly resolved as it rightly should have been in the first place. If a top rank leader really wants to solve such issues, he need not just give ethical/moral lectures to all. Just take up few such cases periodically from an open forum/CEO customer care mail id/or any such other form of open communication which enables normal customers to reach him. Resolve those cases with similar agility and give exemplary punishment to the guilty. That would help in long term in my opinion.
For every single RaviKumar that you and Moneylife rescued there would be 10 ravikumar’s still out there probably undergoing similar pain until Mr. CEO comes with a right plan to tackle these kind of issues systemically. Just his prompt action in this case doesn’t prove a nickel about him or top rank in general for me.
Hope you see reason in the disagreement 🙂
Regards
Raja
I completely agree with Raja.. This is the systematic problem of India.
“Aapka connection hai to kam ho jayega “..Earlier it was common to be connected to police officer . politicians etc and now its important to be connected to Media. As long as ppl at top like CEOs keep entertaining such connections, Mango(aam) aadmi will continue to suffer at the hands of the system.
Dhruv
Yea .. what do you think about my suggestion or views replied to Raja in comment above ?
Manish
Raja
I agree with you . You are right about the system designed . I think I should have concluded in a different way , I wanted to say that Top management or higher officials are fearful of the fact that their image can be tarnished if some authority like moneylife and jagoinvestor highlight this fact that they are not taking public greviance, So they act faster and solve the issue , bottom management and employees do not have any motivation to take things seriously as all what matters to them is their salary , how company name is in market does not effect them seriously .
As you said the whole problem lies in the culture and how they organisation is shaped .
Thanks for putting that point . As you suggested i think the best solution would be for top management to pick up some cases from public forums and give personal attention to them . If this happens I am sure the intermediate level management will make sure they dont embarass the top management again and again for same kind of issues .
Manish
Hi Manish,
We have to relaize one thing. In such financial org’s everyone has an assigned role (probably diligently played for salary, as you say). I think it’s not in good taste to doubt the morals/Ethics of the lower level just based on the reason that they work for salary. Tell me one thing if a lower rank employee gives out a loan just based on his moral judgement of a needy but insolvent person, will the system appreciate him (after the loan becomes NPA) ?? No, for sure.
So, lets not put the higher officials on higher moral pedestal just based on such anecdotal evidence. You may say and hope that better one’s of the lot have risen to higher levels because of good moral qualities. But there is no guarantee/evidence of that. I would say there are equal %tage of crooks at any level of human society. Just that motivation and circumstances varies. And this thouht of mine has nothing to with this case.
In my opinion this was a simple mis-handling of particular a type of case which occurs may be 1 in 50 cases. Every new org starts with a basic infra of handling a certain set/type of regular cases and as time passes and such exceptional cases arise they should/do form rules/regulations for handling such cases in orderly manner. Doesn’t it happen in software development ?? Base case handled in first release and exceptional cases handled in maintenance/stabilization phase ?? (sometimes after bugs get raised) That’s human.
Get these data from Mr. CEO –
1. Were there rules in the org on how such cases will be handled and were the responsibility of someone? If yes, then who failed in his duty ? If he is a person did Mr. CEO reprimand/punish him ?
2. If there were no rules on how such cases will be handled did he assign someone to fine tune the process to handle such cases better in future ?
After getting reply to these question, only we can say that the CEO has done his job. Even then i wouldn’t put him on higher moral pedestal. Just that he would have done his job properly.
so, i am sorry. i still don’t agree with part of your revised conclusion like below 🙂
‘bottom management and employees do not have any motivation to take things seriously as all what matters to them is their salary’.
That’s like an insult to a vast majority of our hard working force on whose shoulder many a great corporation stand.
One of my guru would probably put this conclusion of yours as a psychological bias and call it something like – ‘holding the traffic constable responsible for the bad road’ syndrome 🙂
Regards
Raja
Raja
My apologies if it sounded too harsh . The motive of my statement was not to say that “employees at lower level lack in ethics compared to higher level” , like you I agree on each part as you said . As you said, this case was actually on the extreme end and it was resolved faster so that it does not become even bigger .
All my point was that “employees at lower level” have a different way of looking at the complaints than higher level” . I take my statement back which I gave in last comment , as my previous comment does not communicate what I actually wanted to convey ! . Thanks for the disagreement , which intiated the talk further .
What do you suggest should be the solution to this problem , and what ever solution you recommend , why has it been not implemented till now ? Most of the people are suggesting that we should have the top officials taking some time out to pick cases from forums etc and resolve it . Do you think some sense in doing that ?
Manish
I have another suggestion… Companies should come up with a process which should have timeline to resolve issue and if not resolved then it should be automatically escalated to the next level. This is the process a s/w guy would follow to resolve the issues and its very effective. Also the person who handles the complaint shouldn’t update/close the complaint without getting approval from customer by sending the relevant docs to the customer and giving enough time for the customer to come back in case if any issue.
Importantly the customer should have option of reopening the already closed ticket and if issue pops up again.
In my case, when I send any complain via email to my banker ( I do it so that I will have record that when I sent the complaint etc for future use), you know within a day or two someone from customer care would call me up and they will not listen to you instead will say whatever they want to inform you and within sec you cut the crap call you will get a message stating that your issue is resolved is to your satisfactory thanks. Now I have to raise the same issue as a new one and I am back to square one.
Rajendran
THis is the most logical way of getting one’s query resolved . But I am not sure how much of it would be realistic for a big company to handle thousands of queries !
Manish
It will be realistic only. Since it is realistic for a small co. to handle 10 such complaints and to make things alright.
God bless you, Manish.
Its heartening to know that your knowledge and presence of mind has helped someone who was on the verge of becoming yet another victim to financial fraud.
Keep up the good work.
Arun
Thanks a lot . I did what ever little I could have done ! . What are your views on higher level management attitude towards complaints ! . Do you think they should take time to look at public griviences personally ?
Manish
Manish,
The senior management is usually considerate especially when the case is genuine like the one in which you intervened. But they are only worried about the negative publicity this might generate. They are quick to sort things out for customers especially when they are supported by media related forums like you or any tv channel. The fear of negative publicity is the only thing which drives them. Else they couldnt bother less !
Arun
Yes .. agree with you . Do you think employees at lower level like customer care are just not interested in taking any efforts to resolve the issue ?
Manish