It is the season for KYCs. For the uninitiated, that is “know your customer”. Your bank wants to know you. Your gas supplier wants to know you. And, of course, your telephone service provider also wants to know you.
Huge caution, though, to those of you who may have a Ghajini -style short-term memory loss; or for those who may be too old, too sick, too busy or just too stressed to remember details.
KYC is not just about giving your address, date of birth and other such mundane stuff — but also about remembering the precise details you fill out in the form, and for several years to come!
A recent experience, and an exasperating one at that, with a telephone service provider bore out exactly why you need to remember precise details you fill into forms: mailing address (pincode included), nearest landmark, bill amount you wrote on your last cheque, down to the decimal!
Wrong answer
After three attempts to get through an interactive machine called the helpline, I finally met with a voice, which needed to establish my identity. The questions began. Date of birth? No confusion on that.
Since the outgoing calls on my phone had been blocked, I was jubilant to get the first answer correct and confident about the next question too — which means, I establish that I am I, and my connection will soon be restored!
Mailing address? I rattle off happily. But no, the voice at the other end asks, a tad impatient — pincode? Sure enough, my mind now starts playing leap-frog between the pincode of my residence and my office. But with some anxiety I manage the right answer.
That was not enough. Landmark, the male voice asked again. And the following conversation went something like this: Petroleum house, I said confidently. Wrong answer, I was told. Er…near CCI or Samrat Hotel or Mantralaya, I offered, less sure, listing out all possible landmarks in the vicinity of my workplace. No, the almost robotic voice replied.
I have been at the same office for the last eight years. But being new in Mumbai when I took the cell-phone connection, I may have mentioned a less important building or further-off landmark that I cannot remember now.
Churchgate Station maybe, I wondered, now breaking out into a sweat, because a complete disconnection of my phone seemed imminent!
What is your email address, the voice asked. Well, I don’t remember you sending anything to me on my email IDs, I answered, knowing in my mind that was not the answer to give!
The voice replied, the company’s rules are that you need to get two details right. And I hadn’t done that. Date of birth and mailing address don’t qualify?, I asked, by now feeling like I was a criminal on the Interpol’s most wanted list.
Needless to say, I disconnected the helpline, feeling utterly helpless. You need to be as loyal to detail as the pug seen following its human friend in the advertisement of a telephone service provider, I thought.
Next I tried contacting the “relationship manager” — having spoken to two such earlier. But my confidence was soon destroyed, by a third who informed me, that I no longer had a relationship manager!
Why were they assigned to me earlier, and why have they been taken off now? No answers.
Recounting the incident brought some comfort, as others too had had similar meaningless interactions that stranded customers, while classic offenders manage to slip through.
In fact, economists at Germany’s Jena University, in their evaluation of call centres (located overseas in their case), point out that that the only decisive criterion for a positive evaluation was the “customer orientation” of call centre agents.
They, in fact, recommend that companies focus on customer-orientation when recruiting call centre staff, a suggestion companies operating in India would do well to heed. A little nimble thinking on the part of the call centre representative would have made the difference between a happy customer and an angry one, now exploring options of switching to another telephone service provider.
No ‘higgeldypiggeldy’
Whether companies’ KYC forms and help lines are structured to capture customers or terrorists – one knows not! But if you are the kind to create email addresses for different online transactions or tend to have delightful words such as “higgeldypiggeldy” as your password — here’s the red light of caution: Treat all information you put out as detail your life, nay your identity, depends on. It needs to be cast into the grooves of your brain!
It doesn’t matter if you are a good, tax-paying citizen, whose worst crime is the occasional late bill payment.
If you don’t remember your details, the voice over the ‘helpline’ could leave you feeling like you are a terrorist’s first cousin.