They say we should be proud of belonging to this country. I don’t quite agree with it. If I’m born in my family, I don’t compulsorily have to take pride in the same. I’m just about fine and thank Jesus, I don’t grumble about it much. Maybe, that’s something you should be proud of?
We belong to a country where corruption is as rampant as human right violations, and the tenets of constitution has been raped with ridiculous brazenness every freaking single day. Did you say I should still be “pride” of my homeland! Why can’t you people just take it easy when I say I have a valid reason to complain about the place where I’m born?
Ok, let me cut the crap short and bring you to the point. We have been brought up in a land where, even after decades since slavery, elections are fought on petty issues of Roti, Kapda & Makkan. To top it up, we have, maybe, more pathetic issues including religion, caste, and just about anything that can perfectly polarize the voting population. The by-product of this BS is a bunch of so-called public representatives who don’t a shit about what they have been elected for. Ok, now we have a country run by, maybe, thousands of them, right? Sorry, brother I can’t see no pride in letting them decide my destiny. Unfortunately, they hold the keys to unlock opportunities for us. And, they just don’t know which side of the key to use!
The problem with this country is that most people don’t give a shit to speak up, even if passively. They have been conditioned to accept things as they are and move on, assuming that nothing can change the way things have been since ages. I haven’t seen a lot of people complaining about things that directly or indirectly affect them. And, this is precisely where the problem lies.
I’m glad to find a very few people who have the ability to agitate and not just accept things as they are. Here’s an email compliant from one of my friends who have the balls to agitate until they gets things done. I find his complaint quite appropriate for many people to learn from. Here’s the email for you to read and learn:
I am an existing customer or Ortel Broadband services. Fed up with careless services imparted by the first level personnel of the organization I am having to take this issue up to management level. It is unpleasant at the exact same magnitude to write for me as much I expect it would be embarrassing to read for you.
I am amazed & sad at the same time at how much an organization can change within 50% time of a 25-year old person’s life span. I clearly remember the wonderful years of my early teenage life when “Skyview” was just a synonym of “joy”. If you would have been there you couldn’t have failed to notice the shine in my eyes & ear to ear grin on my face when one fine evening back in around 1995/96 a god sent Ortel representative was trying to explain my father about a new service called “Skyview” at our then home at Saheed Nagar.
As he was mentioning there exist a lot more TV Channels apart from “Doordarshan DD1 & DD2″ and it would be possible to watch them all if we buy this Skyview thing, I was already convinced I must be amongst the chosen few to be living at the heart of the capital city to receive such a service. You cannot compare the happiness of a 6th class kid on discovering the fact that there is a 24×7 dedicated channel called Cartoon Network which shows only cartoons all the time & he does not have to wait anymore for every Sunday for a meager 1-hour long Disney program on DD2.
That was Ortel to me. That was the impression Skyview left on my adolescent mind. Someone who is only capable of bringing joy. Like Santa Claus.
As of this is year, 2011, as a grown young man, as a self-employed Internet based entrepreneur Ortel stands as a strong wall of resistance between me, my computer programming services & my overseas clients. Those great memories have fade out, reality has started sinking in & I see Ortel has become so big a company not to care for its customers anymore.
I remember being a broadband customer which seems like a decade or so and the experience was never pleasant to say to the least. I have applied & then disconnected Ortel internet services with frustration so many times all these years that my math fails me. The experience was never smooth. Every single time its some major goof up by the corporation or its employees that had forced me to disconnect, only to get a new connection at a later date because I must have internet and Ortel is the only ISP.
It almost appears like “Ortel Broadband” is a ugly, crackhead third-cousin of well mannered, well behaved “Skyview TV” services. How could two different services within a same organization be so drastically different is beyond me.
Cut to the chase, why are we having this conversation again? Because this time I only applied for a simple shifting-of-address and lo & behold! Like all hell broke loose I am down & offline with no internet access & no signs of getting my connection shifted/re-connected anytime soon. And its been 4 days as we speak, from Friday to Monday. And its within the city Bhubaneswar. Seriously Ortel, 4 days to shift a connection to a new location which is mere 300 meters away from the old? At this age & time where 4 days can change world politics, 4 days can change the way you do business, 4 days can make someone insanely rich & the very same 4 days can make someone go out of business for not servicing his clients at the right time because his ISP took more than 4 days to reconnect his internet.
Do you get me what I am trying to explain here? The notion that 4 days is not that much of time must change. At this age where world changes by the hour you must be spontaneous. Your first level of support staff must appear to be bothered to cater individual customer’s needs, not just act like an answering machine connected to a thin client reading answers from a FAQ manuscript on the screen.
You must realize you don’t have customers whose only interest in taking up a broadband plan is to watch porn videos at their leisure time. Or just to browse some websites. You must understand people rely on your broadband services to run their business. You must understand every time a customer of yours is unable to send an email for 1 hour because is the net is down, he is losing face & probably vital business with his clients. You as an organization must grow up, must man up.
People, those who are in direct contact with the customers must act like they care. Processes like re-connection, shifting of address, change of plans etc must be much faster, smoother & painless than they currently are.
You should just feel lucky for yourselves that you’re the only one in this ISP business so far. You must not ignore or forget the fact that you survive not because you’re the best, you survive just because you’re the only visible private internet service provider in the state, so far.
But times change. New services come up all the time. History has taught us time & again major corporations have diminished because of their careless attitude towards customers, who are supposed to be their closed guarded, nurtured assets.
New internet service providing companies are springing up all the time, ready to eat your lunch. And god forbid, if Airtel broadband enters the state, I can safely bet on my manly parts Ortel Broadband will be out of business faster than you can say ‘wow’!
In fact you can learn a thing or two from Airtel & their services. They are never cheap, they simply charge a premium for their services & retain quality. Is that so hard to do? With such a massive line up of infrastructure & manpower in place one would expect Ortel can replicate that much with ease. Just keep your services gold class & keep customers happy. Is that so much to ask for?
Also at this age when my 6th class cousin Facebooks her friends on her smart phone you will do a unforgivable mistake if you’re assuming your customers are less informed, less skilled, less capable or less authoritative.
Agitated loyal customers can turn into worst kind of enemies you might not have expected. I am not in the favor of keeping on grudges so If I do not get my services restored anytime soon I would simply leave for green pastures.
But If I had to take this issue to heart I know I can stir some good shit up. That might not be as powerful as the recent Japanese tremors to topple your entire organization down at one blow but its rippling effects & the collaborative efforts from other such frustrated, mistreated, ignored, long time loyal customers could have an strong impact, powerful enough to hurt your business in a major way. As your third grade services have done to my business, my client at the UK is sitting his hand tied down because I am offline at this miserable end of the world.
Are you going to do something about it?
