Almost every other morning Amit Prasad starts his work day at the receiving end of a volley of abuse. "Why have you activated hello tunes without my consent," an irate caller takes off.
"You cheat, return my money, connect me to your senior you ****." It's mostly at that point — when the swear words begin — that the 22-year-old call centre executive who works for a telecom company in Gurgaon hangs up. Prasad is no stranger to the customer care business. He's worked in two similar roles in 2012. The reason for quitting both is that he couldn't cope with abusive calls.
"This is my third job in less than a year," says Prasad. And it's the worst of the three — the latest obnoxious call is the seventh in a span of a couple of hours. "I can't quit. I have to take it," he adds, requesting not to be clicked for this story by ET Magazine.
Abusive customers ostensibly dissatisfied with service or furious because their complaints are not being attended to are not alien in the telecom service providing sector.
However, industry officials point out there has been a dramatic increase in the number of such calls over the past nine months or so. "Yes, there has been a jump in abusive calls by customers," says Amanjit Kaur, head, CRM shared services, MTS India. MTS is the brand of Sistema Shyam Teleservices.
Indians were among most abusive customers in the world in 2012. While 12% resorted to profanities on the phone, 64% lost their temper with customer service.
A majority of their grievances relate to issues on value-added services (VAS), points out Kaur. At times, customers indulge in profanity in regional languages, she adds. MTS has 10 million subscribers across the nine circles that it operates in, most of whom are prepaid customers. In addition, it has 1.5 lakh high-end data subscribers. While the 10 million voice customers generate 65% of the company's revenue, the 1.5 lakh data customers bring in the rest. Vodafone India, the country's second-largest mobile operator, too has seen an increase in such calls.
"We have seen a trend of an increase in abusive behaviour on the part of customers calling in to the call centres," says a Vodafone spokesperson in an emailed response, adding that "abusive callers are a negligible part of our calls as we get millions of calls every day." Airtel declined to participate in the story. Another top mobile service provider is also facing flak from aggressive callers. "They [consumers] want a quick-fix solution to all their problems," the spokesperson says, requesting anonymity. "And abusing they think is the solution." The anger is not just confined to phone calls. It trickles down to abusive mails, nasty Facebook posts and vulgar tweets.
Why customers are angry
From allegations of cheating by activating VAS without consent to poor quality of service, including frequent call drops and bad coverage, to inflated bills, the grievances of consumers are far too many. Take the case of Manish Kandwal. The 27-year-old marketing manager's horror story started when he first requested for deactivation of 3G services. "In spite of repeated requests, they [telco] kept on sending me bills, which included 3G charges, for three months," says Kandwal, who works at Shree Balaji Alumnicast in Gurgaon.
"It's only after non-resolution of my problem that I got infuriated," he adds. Kandwal's anger may be justified. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recently directed operators to take double confirmation from consumers before activating VAS and deactivate requests in four hours. "Activation of VAS by service providers has been the cause of many customer complaints and is a major concern for Trai as well," the regulator said in a press release in July.
Trai has been addressing, from time to time, consumer complaints relating to activation of VAS without the explicit consent of the consumer, the release added. Early this year, an audit by Trai through independent agencies found that over two crore subscribers had complained in the past 15 months that VAS had been activated without their consent.
Across India, over 100.20 million subscribers had opted for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) till August 31, 2013 — a figure that clearly shows a high level of dissatisfaction among consumers. "MNP in India has been driven by demand, almost exclusively, from postpaid subscribers," says Jagan Ramaswami, director (consulting), strategy and technical insights, Frost & Sullivan. This is usually the urban, upwardly mobile subscriber base which values factors such as connectivity, billing clarity and customer service, he adds. "The number of MNP requests is an indicator of a sense of dissatisfaction of a demanding customer."
Irritation levels soar as calls drop
However, VAS is not the only issue. Frequent call drops too bug consumers. The reasons for call drops can range from inadequate coverage and quality of signal to network congestion and network failures. But there are customers who feel this is a deliberate attempt by telcos to jack up call numbers. Dilip Hirani, a 28-year-old who works as assistant manager (imports) at a freight shipping company, is one such disgruntled customer.
"Can't they find other ways of making money," he fumes, adding he is hardly able to complete his conversation without the call dropping. Trai has benchmarked the call drop rate at 2%, which most service providers had been meeting till December 2012. Service providers insist that they are meeting the benchmark.
"Idea is well within the defined limits of Trai's quality of standards across all parameters," says an Idea spokesperson. But call drops is not the only irritant that gets Hirani's goat. He also doesn't like being put on hold for ever when he calls in. "Now that is so bugging. Why can't they resolve the problem quickly," he asks, adding he has had countless abusive call sessions with customer care executives on this count.
While consumers think they have valid reasons to be disgusted with the service of telecom providers, the telcos put the blame squarely on the consumers. "These [instances of discontent] could be a customer's perception of wrong activation or charging," says the Vodafone spokesperson. Consumers also get angry in other scenarios such as network and payment-related issues, the spokesperson adds.
It's the slowdown, too
Experts on human behaviour point out that the fuse of customers may have got even shorter at a time when the economy is not exactly galloping. Factors like high inflation and interest rates, increasing job pressures and uncertainty and salary hikes that are not keeping pace with rising prices are eating into the share of the consumer's wallet reserved for such spending. And disputes on this front can inevitably result in blowouts.
"Our society is becoming unhappy and dissatisfied," says Dr Ekta Soni, a clinical psychologist at Apollo Hospitals. While salary hikes are not happening, expenses have skyrocketed. "Every penny pinches, especially when you feel that you have not got full value for your money. It gets manifested in displacement reaction, where you try to vent out you anger on somebody else, especially somebody who can't retaliate," she adds.
"This is an era of immediate gratification and nobody has time or patience to wait." The abusive Indian customer is a realilty. Indians were among the most abusive customers in the world, revealed a Global Customer Service Barometer report by American Express last year. While 12% resorted to profanities on the phone, 64% lost their temper with customer service, compared to the global average of 48%, the report said. "Since you can't scream at your boss or shout at your wife, you find an easy target in customer care executives," says Soni.
"Who likes to be a punching bag," shrugs Yakshi Arora Dang, a customer care executive with Tech Mahindra in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi. "Callers should understand that they are talking to humans and not machines," says the 20-yearold who has been working on the Vodafone account. "There are no quick fixes. We need time to sort out issues," she adds. Consumers may have perpetuated a crisis, but telecom companies are helping by training their staff on how to handle abusive callers.
Handling abuse
MTS has devised a special module on dealing with abusive customers. It lays emphasis on empathising with the consumers rather than sympathising. "We invest a lot of time, money and effort in training our service teams in soft skills," says MTS' Kaur. But if the empathy isn't enough, the executives are empowered to disconnect the call by using appropriate call closing verbiage, she adds. For Vodafone, which has over 155 million subscribers, there is a standardised procedure to handle abusive customers.
"All call centre executives have been skilled extensively on customer-handling; the skills include listening, empathy, telephone etiquette and objection handling," says the spokesperson. This skilling, he adds, has a special focus on irate customer handling. Idea Cellular too has increased its focus on training and is investing intensively in it. "Idea's strong focus on customer service has resulted in the company being the top gainer of MNP," says the company spokesperson. The telecom operator had the highest net gain of 7.62 million customers — 6% of its total subscriber base — as on August 31.
However, training alone is not going to help the executives. One has to develop the art of listening, feel experts. Mona Agarwal, assistant manager (training) at Tech Mahindra, says a good listener can often pacify an irate caller. "Don't lose patience, that's the most important thing," says the 39-year-old, who heads a team of nine trainers and has been training the Vodafone caller team. "You need to understand what the customer is going through. And then listen him/her out," adds Agarwal. Does she have a piece of advice for consumers? "Please understand that customer care executives too are human beings like you." But then the consumer is king, too, right?
