ICICICICI... Support- A Torturous Experience

ICICI-I don’t know what that means but I guess it is big name in Banking and Financial services.... It also sometime looks like an 'Aptitude Question on Series' ICICI.....? the perceived image of this BIG name in my mind had just crumpled. It all started with a phone call that I made in the night... The message rolled-down into my ears something like this 'their customer services in Hyderabad may be haywire until the 'Telangana' heat is at its peak, so don’t get alarmed if their person get your call in just couple of hours'... 2 prime things to be noted here:

1. Are these guys opening their Pandora box that they have their services ONLY in Hyderabad? There is no DR location?
2. They are making this very obvious that they are highly incapable of managing calls even at the late hours where call volume is supposed to be low.

The story doesn’t end here.... Like Shah Rukh says.... 'Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost',
to further meddle my already spoilt mood... A guy picks-up the call, I believe the marketing people are made to sit during these hours on the support desks for 2 very good reasons:

1. They come for cheap
2. They know the guys or customers who would call them at that odd time are potential investors and that's where they skip the focus on the major customer problem, start selling their products instead.
3. They comfortably explain the product on the inbound calls from customer on customer's expense. {I spent about Rs 14.25/- on DOCOMO per sec connection}

This support personnel was suppose to be connecting me to his Manager... Instead he tries to throw a marketing noose around my neck... how...here it goes:

Support Guy: Sir, before I transfer your call... I see that you are most privileged customer of ICICI, because you are holding our Platinum card.
Me: Yeah... That’s right.
Support Guy: I have something very special for you this evening.... bla blah blah...
Me: Ohh... the Security plan for my credit cards.... No I am not that interested.
Support Guy: Why sir... Any reasons that you are not interested.
Me: Yeah.... this is year end, I don’t want to plan for any of such extra expenses.
Suppurt Guy: you will not know ...now sir. When you lose your wallet while you will be picked up from the road.....Blah Blah
Me: Ohhh... Stop it. I said, I don’t want that.... now one more extra word from you... I will go mad.
Support guy: Ok... sir NP. But one thing sir...
Me: Yes.. whats that.
Support Guy: You have of your friends who carry bunch of credit cards and who are likely to lose their wallet {**}
Me: Boss... Can you transfer my call to your Manager?
Support guy: Certainly sir. Thanks for calling ICICICICICI.....

My brain is half fried by then… and the ICICI 'call wait' tune is so horribly torturing… well...! I cannot have my ear stick my handset for that stinking tune, so I put it on the speaker… guess what! Why kids my wife woke-up and started staring to me so badly and slammed the door behind them… and I knew I had to sleep on the couch until next morning. Wow…finally I hear someone with north-Indian accent with no greetings asks me:

Manager: I heard that you have problem
Me: Yes, can you help me…
Manager: Not sure, but please go ahead tell me
Me: I have moved to my new address and I wanted to change my address in your records.
{That should be a piece of cake for any service industry, but wait…
Manager: I believe that you have some weird Postal code{**}
Me: It is banaglore’s postal code ‘562125’
Manager: yes sir… that is weird for us… because our system doesn’t recognize this code.
{Wierdo it’s not the postal code..it is you and your bank who is weird}
Me: So whats your suggestion. I need all my mails to come to my new address.
Manager: We cannot help anything on this, because the system does not have that postal code fed into the database. Hence, please give us any other address.
Me: How can you say that? I can give you only that address where I live and my mails are being dropped into my old mail-box, there could be a possible identity theft issue, if we dont act fast.
Manager: Either you have to let the mails go to your old address or change your address to something that is understandable by our system.

I was so boiled-up by this time… can you imagine a manager who is supposed to be an escalation point of contact and provide solutions to the customer, but this guy was raising problems for me… He was insensibly portraying his system to be on top of the customer's voice. I had roll-up my sleeves and it seems the bad blood of 'Aparichit' started running down my viens which involuntarily altered my normal tone to a shrewed one. Finally, after few rounds of shellings of Management gyan... the guy seems to be talking like a manager now....

So the Moral of the story is…

The Companies get bigger and bigger while they lose the basics of customer handling techniques drastically and a steep drop is seen in the passion to help customers. And specially the 'last hope' managers need to get into some kind of training rooms and bring-in western culture of handling customers.