Lessons of Product Management 101 from Tata Sky Fiasco!

From Thursday last week, I havent been getting signal on my tata sky set top box. Turns out that this is the 4th day where I dont have access to my TV. I was denied access to TV during the long weekend which was even more frustrating. What I am amazed is the way Tata Sky has gone about handling this entire episode. Here is my take on what they COULD have done to have not lost a customer!

• Fixing Voice Customer Support Asap:

  Thursday I called up the customer care and I had to wait for an annoying 35 minutes without a response before I decided to hang up. For anyone, who must have gone through their IVR would know that it was convoluted and screwed up! For instance – you will reach a point in their IVR – where it will ask you whether you are not receiving signals because of three reasons – I mean, why make a customer go through such a lengthy process! Today when I called them, they had an option of reaching out to an agent with a special option in case of loss of signal. It took them 4 days to implement this small change! Idiocy!

• Please Please dont auto time out – Chat:

  I gave up on their voice and tried their chat option. The worst thing about the chat is if you are not logged into the website the chat option with an agent will not persist. So what is the problem? The website auto logs out every 5 mins or so? I mean why? What possible data could be compromised? why implement this feature at all in the first place? So when I tried go through the chat channel – As my no reached from 100 to 44, the website timed out. Frustrating!

• Train the customer agent:

  I spoke to the customer agent and expressed my frustration. He was as cool as a cucumber which was great but there was absolutely no empathy on his part. When I told him that I would leave to Airtel and I would require the refund. He happily obliged. No effort from his part to even try stop me. I strongly felt not valued! Wouldnt a company of this stature know that they should train their agents to empathize and respond in the right way when such instances occur. I felt not valued. Worthless!

• Call back only if you mean it:

  So when you call the support there is an IVR option to receive a call back within 24 hours. I did receive a call from their support. When I told him about the signal problem he gave me another no to call to! How preposterous! Stupidity!

• Be honest and come clean:

  When you call the support, you hear them saying that ‘you may be experiencing signal problems as we are upgrading our systems’ ???!!! which company does a system upgradation without prior notice and at a loss of service?! How about acknowledging that you f**ked up and owning up for a change? Dishonesty!

• Promise a date of fix:

  When you call the IVR it says, if you are calling for a signal loss issue, not to worry it would get fixed automatically. So my questions are: When automatically? Do you expect the customer to check every 1 or 2 hours if the signal has come? Would you not let him know through all means – email/phone that the service has resumed? Wouldnt it have been nice if you had promised saying that we acknowledge that there is a problem and this would be fixed by so and so? Uncommonsense!

• The same rules apply:

  For anyone who has used Tatasky, there are ruthless reminders as you near the due date to the extent that they would cancel the service if you dont pay on time. What about this time when there is a loss of signal? How come there is no talk of refund? How is money in your account more precious than the customers? A company of integrity would have definitely stepped up and refunded for the loss of service and probably more because they know the same rules apply. Disparity! Register now for Product management workshop

So a 3 year customer, I have now left Tata Sky to Airtel. What a shame on such a reputed brand name!

This article was originally published on Linkedin