Customer satisfaction 103

In Delhi NCR, PRJ Auto Services provides a 24x7 service for emergencies on road. For this service they charge an annual fee of Rs. 400/-. Recently my subscription had come up for renewal and as is the practice of most agencies they called up and reminded me that my subscription is about to end and that if I wished to get the subscription they would send an executive to collect the money from me. So I said fine send someone to collect the money. When that person came he collected the cheque from me and gave me a new subscription number and when I asked for a receipt he said that the card itself is a receipt and there is no need for a separate receipt. Since I was more interested in getting the renewal done I ignored this.

Some days later, I found that instead of Rs. 400/- a sum of Rs. 3000/- has been deducted from my bank on account of the subscription renewal. I called up bank to get the mistake rectified, they said they have received a cheque for Rs. 3000/- so have deducted that much and asked me to check with the concerned party. When I called up PRJ's helpline, they confirmed that they had in fact received a cheque for Rs. 3000/-. However they said if this is a mistake they would gladly refund me the money. Then they enquired at their end and found that this was indeed a case of mistaken payment and then to my utter relief sent me a cheque of Rs. 2600/- to refund the excess amount paid by me.

This is what I call customer service, I was not required to follow up with them about the payment. I called them twice to enquire about the status and at both the times they were quite friendly and concerned about the issue. And then after a week or so they called me up to inform that they are sending a cheque to me for refund.

If more companies follow practices like these and show concern for the customer, then customer dissatisfaction will become a word found only in dictionaries.

Customer Satisfaction 102

After my recent posting on Customer satisfaction, I got some responses which highlight the issues that a customer has to face these days from the service providers. One of these makes an interesting read.

I am a highly satisfied customer.So feels my vegetable vendor, Kabadiwala, maid servant, driver, barber and all other persons with whom I have to interact regularly. This is because I do not have an alternative.
Recently I had to visit office of Registrar of marriage to get marriage certificate of my son. The counter clerk asked for sending across certain documents, like marriage invitation card, proof of residence, photographs, two witnesses and insisted that I need not come personally to deliver these documents. Any official on my behalf could come and see her. I was very satisfied.
My representative on reaching there phoned me to intimate that a sum of Rs.200/-has been requested towards some welfare organisation, for which a receipt would be issued. Shortly thereafter he intimated that another Rs.400 has been demanded for expediting the process. On the appointed time we all reached the office of Deputy registrar and the certificate of marriage was issued in about 30 minutes time. We were satisfied.
However the lady too wanted to be satisfied. She requested us to come to her cabin and fill up an opinion /feedback form. The information was sought on courtesy, promptness, etc and whether any one demanded any bribe.
Any suggestions?

Would love to hear what you have to say about this.

Customer Satisfaction 101

Recently I learned a new lesson on how to make a dis-satisfied customer satisfied, courtesy the most-intelligent staff of Eldeco.

Long time back we had given a list of complaints to Eldeco. There was no response to the list for quite some time and then all of a sudden recently the Eldeco staff came to review the status of list of complaints. One of the points in the list, was the bad quality of wooden floor that they had put in one of our bedrooms and we had asked for a replacement.
The person who came to us asked us to write a letter to Eldeco mentioning this complaint along with the fact that we are a "satisfied" customer and that this is our only complaint towards Eldeco. And he also quitely suggested that if we show our statisfaction from the services provided by Eldeco it would help him pursue our case with the Eldeco Group's Management and if we don't show our satisfaction then it would be very difficult for him to get things done.

This whole thing shocked us to no end. Imagine the guts of the person saying this. We obviously refused to write such a thing in the letter.

Moral of the Story: The whole episode showed us how to make a dis-satisfied customer, satisfied. Ask him to write a letter saying that he satisfied in case he wants to get his work done.

Postscript: Nice lesson from Eldeco on customer satisfaction, must be put together with the brilliant case study on them which they have been displaying on thier website.

Customer (Non-) Support from Eldeco

We had filed some complaints regarding the finishing of our house when we shifted to Ananda in January 2007. Some of the complaints have been taken care off but most of them have not been taken care off till date. See the portion circled in red in the photo, which has been taken from the complaint register maintained by the Estate Manager at Ananda, Noida. We had filed complaints on 23rd Jan, 2007 and till date some of them have a "not done" status.

I wonder what does Eldeco mean by customer satisfaction, with complaints remaining unanswered for nearly three and half (3.5) months. They do not seem like an progressive organization and are not at all bothered about the customer once they have sold the apartment. The funny part is that they are not even ready to handover the maintanence to the residents even when we have been asking them to do so since last 5-6 months. It seems Eldeco wants to derive some sadistic pleasure from putting us to this misery.

I think even Government of India departments are better performers now. Earlier I was staying in a flat constructed by NOIDA and I used to crib about lack of support from NOIDA, but I think Eldeco has managed to put even NOIDA to shame.

Electricity bill woes at Eldeco

The electricity bill for the month of Feb '07 at Ananda is another case in point of gross mismanagement by Eldeco. The electricity bill has an item called "electricty duty" which is calculated based on the consumption in the currect month and this has been the case since the bills started coming. But this month a gross error in the "computer generated" bill was made by calculating the duty on the total consumption of electricity till date. Not that the "mis"-calculation amounts to much but it is beyond ones thought that how come such errors could suddenly pop up in a computer generated bill.
When will Eldeco stop cheating on us???