Conversations with strangers

When we were all kids, we were taught to not speak to strangers because they could be dangerous(they could have kidnapped us). We all took it so much by heart that most of us don't do it for the rest of our lives.

I somehow find it a tad interesting talking to strangers for no specific reasons. Strangers can sometimes talk about things we otherwise do not think about or sometimes just a random conversation which can leave a good taste in your mouth or may just leave you thinking.

Today morning I stopped at a traffic signal. Next to me stops an auto rickshaw.

Autowala: Where is the number JK from?
me: Jammu and Kashmir
AW: Hmmm(with a broad smile, kind of astonished and a cloud popping over his head, where is J&K on the Indian map etc.)..pause
AW: what model is this car?
me: 88 model
AW: hmmm(even more astonished. Another cloud above his head - thinking what was his age when it was 1988), very good car..always keep it..
me: thanks..

He and I both left smiling.

Not all strange conversations can be short and sweet. But, I guess to have a few we need to try more often.

7032

When was the last time you set a goal for yourself, chased it hard and had the pleasure of achieving it. It was great to Sachin Tendulkar in that state on Saturday night - it took him 22 years to achieve his life's goal of winning CWC.

I have been trying to setup a goal for my self for the last few quarters and at the end of every quarter it remains untouched, not started.

This time I thought to pen it down here to see if I can come back 3 months later and hopefully see the goal achieved.

Code named 7032. This would be a big and tough goal to achieve in 3 months. However, the tougher the goal is the more is the joy of achieving it.

So let's see..

Customer service

Last week while flying Delhi-Jammu, I bought a toy for my niece on the airport and gave it to her. However, policeman stopped my brother on the boarding gate as the toy did not have a tag. I had already thrown the bill by then. Helpless i just took over the toy back to put in my bag as I was flying next flight.

One of the Indigo ground staff on the boarding gate noticing this, assured us to carry on to the shuttle bus and mentioned it will take him just one minute. Thereafter he took the toy, ran back to the scanning machine, got a tag, got it scanned, got it stamped and got the toy back for the baby before the bus left from the boarding gate. Now that's a lot of effort for good customer care and is worthy of appreciation.

Who says, there is not much budget airlines can do to differentiate!

Airtel

There were a couple of different names I was thinking for this post but either they would have been too long or only touching upon one of the aspects of change in airtel. So I stuck to what is this post all about.

A few months ago, when airtel changed it's logo I made a very foolish argument. My argument was - the logo lacks any creativity. It is almost like an inverse image of the Vodafone logo and this when Vodafone is airtel's biggest competitor at it's home ground - India.

This according to me was a loss of vision and differentiation and reduced focus due to it's immediate and major focus on Africa and widening the foot print.

Honestly, I knew my arguments were good fun for a water cooler discussion and did not make any real business sense to begin with.

With so many veterans and top managers at work from airtel and agencies this wasn't a school project. It was part of a Rs 300 crore marketing campaign airtel was to take on for its expansion to Africa and 3G roll out.

However, looks like the worsened logo and theme tune were signs of what was to come from airtel in future. How airtel has changed in last few months in it's network, service and marketing quality now makes me think - may be I said something right while I was giving gyan.

In the last few days some things that happened which make airtel look weaker than ever before.

- While sitting in my Bangalore office I got an SMS 'welcome to Airtel Chennai, enjoy great roaming rates'
- On requesting the Re. 1, one-time missed call alert, I got the first SMS for thanking me that we have received request and charged you, I never got the SMS with actual missed call details.
- I have had more call drops than ever before in the last so many years.
- I get 'number is invalid' response for calling numbers that I call every day and a few attempts later it starts working. It's the first time it's happening despite using airtel for over 5 years now.
- My friend requested for number porting to airtel. While the first request was rejected by VF due to billing problems, the second request did not even fetch a response from airtel.
- But since he did submit his documents in the first request, even though he does not have an active connection with airtel yet, last night he received an original hard copy of a zero rupee bill. Yes, it has his name printed and has bill amount 0 - while he is still happy and active on Voda.

Many of the above are not bad customer care or kind of bad reviews you will find on mouthshut.com, they are plain vanilla mistakes on customer focus and ensuring quality.

Not to forget their campaigns on number portability, 3G, DTH, VAS service have become more lackluster than ever before.

Being one of the ardent loyalists of airtel for ages it feels sad to see it loosing its qualities that led it to reach the heights it stands today.

No wonder as data shows, it is no longer leading the race and is managing to be at the end.

Would be interesting to see if it can do some magic again to be back in the race and lead the pack.

Till then 'Express Yourself'