I acquired Wimax broadband connection via Reliance sometime last year. Once construction started in the vicinity somehow connectivity went downward over time. I decided to disconnect them and sent a request-written/oral via customer support center on March 8 of this year. I followed up dilligently reminding them to take away the equipment and disconnect the connection before the next bill comes over. Finally got the confirmation that it was terminated on 21st march.
But alas, the process had not completed, they had not taken away the equipment till last month and every month sent me bill followed by physical person to pick up the bill amount. Off course the person who came to pick up the bill did not have any idea my connection had terminated in march and I had not used their connection for really long time :). But every month I would need to call up the support who would assure I would not get bill next month and nobody will make personal calls at odd times to collect the bill. Offcourse every call and related complaint result was nullified as none of this information ever flowed into the accounting/billing system.
BTW they went ahead and charged me for 2 months when there was no connection – this would be reimbursed in next 180 days 🙂
Challenges with Reliance CRM system-
1. Not integrated with billing system.
2. Not integrated with local last mile provisioning/deprovisioning system.
3. No one customer view – every time a call is made – there is no way to refer back to “open”/”hot” incidents related to the account. No way to see at one shot if connection is active.
One lesson –
Customer is big loser. Avoid group companies when you can. They acquire customers at fast rate without actual thought to “service”. The “margin” for local service providers is low that they have little to no interest in “helping” the customer. Their systems are antiquated with fancy sw but no real productivity.
Many of the CIOs of these kind of companies (many of the insurance folks fall in this category) actually themselves never avail these services so do not know the loss of productivity for service staff and lost customer cost. One of the firms uses a email system where customers need to break down the large attachments into mutliple mails and number them – this in the days of 5 GB limit mailbox and large attachment size available for free email systems :). Load of end user experience 🙂 who suffers becuase of these broken systems and apathetic folks.
Some place else 