Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea (Vi), the three private telecom operators in India, have a big challenge in giving satisfactory services to all consumers. There’s a phrase that goes – “You can’t make everyone happy”, and with hundreds of millions of users, it becomes even more relevant for the telcos. The telecom operators are service providers, and all they look to do is provide services better than their competitors to earn more. Note that the goal of the operators is likely to outshine the competitors, so if the competitors are weak, the services of the leading telco are likely going to be slightly better than weak. In simple words, the ecosystem of telecom services matters a lot because it sets the tone for the operators to offer the kind of services they are offering. So, if the ecosystem is a little weak, even the best operator would be offering slightly weak services. There’s one thing that the telcos can do to win over their customers with a sense to provide the best services. Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) all have an area where they can improve – customer care service. After-sales service or customer care service actually matters a lot when you are valuing a business and its performance. Everyone makes mistakes, and inconsistencies are inevitable. What matters is how quickly and in a painless manner can you resolve that issue. If you go on Twitter today, there are thousands of complaints every day about the services of all the telcos, including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). Apart from network services, there’s a big case and opportunity for the telcos to get an edge over their competitors by investing more in issue-resolving activities.
Which Telecom Operators Offer Best Customer Care Services Right Now?
It is hard to pinpoint that right now. But there’s one thing - there are customers everywhere in the country who haven’t received a satisfactory response from the telecom operators’ customer care teams and are still facing the problem they complained about. It should be the job of the telecom companies to set up transparent problem-solving mechanisms. With the 5G launch in the books, the digitalisation of India would skyrocket, and at that point, the consumers would want to be near the operators more than ever. There’s a clear gap today in the communication between the consumers and the telcos. This is certainly something that the government needs to look into as well.