The Hindu Business Line : If driven crazy, press one!

NOT too long ago, during the permit-licence-quota raj, both Government and business conspired to make the customer miserable with all the evils of a sellers' market: Indifference to complaints, neglect of quality, artificial scarcity, arbitrary pushing up of prices and absence of service spirit.

These past 10 years have seen India pass through a process of globalisation and increased competition among both domestic and foreign players. The marketplace is overflowing with the superficial features of a new-found solicitude for customers, but in terms of work-a-day experience, they amount to little more than gimmicks.

One gets the feeling that the private companies are unable to cope with the exacting demands of customers and that the Indian lethargic work culture is triumphing over the assumed "quality first, service first" attribute of a free market economy.

For instance, the ads for products and services are full of captivating words of assurance of instant attention at all times and entice you to call at the numbers given. When, falling for them, you make the mistake of calling, no doubt you are answered in dulcet tones, but, alas, of a recorded voice.

You have then to hold on patiently as you are put through the drill of pressing the numbers for various departments, and find that in quite a few instances, the maintenance of the device is so poor that even after you press the number, either nothing happens or the recitation of the numbers starts once again right at the beginning.

Or, if you do get somebody at the other end, he is gruff and curt belying the language of the ads, or you are passed on from one employee to another with no definitive solution to your problem.

The experience with the much hyped about call centres is no better. They are usually hired out to outsiders and so the poor boys and girls manning them can do little more than being sweet and nice and taking down your phone number, promising to call you and forgetting to do so. Buyers of products who have entered into maintenance contracts are encountering neglect in the observance of the terms by suppliers, and worse, long delays, sometimes of days, in attending to complaints of breakdowns.

Nowadays, most market executives cannot be reached through their mobile numbers: In order to evade the customers, they set their cell phones to voice mail, and most of the time do not return the call.

In sum, customers are yet to get a taste of the fruits of globalisation at least insofar as the attitude of business and industry is concerned.

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