Airtel is in a soup. Former Jammu and Kashmir Cheif Minister Omar Abdullah took to social media (its always social media which is starting new fights) and accused the company of pandering to bigotry.
The reason was that one user of Airtel DTH had said that she had no faith in the effectiveness of a Muslim’s service and demanded a Hindu customer service agent instead.
While many were thinking that this could be a false alarm Omar had already told that this communication indeed took place!
Omar wrote that this conversation is genuine (I’ve seen the timeline myself) and that ‘I refuse to pay another penny to a company that condones such blatant bigotry. I’m beginning the process of porting my number to another service provider and canceling my DTH and Broadband.’
He was soon retweeted many times and people joined in to slam the customer and the company.
Here is the screenshot:
Dear @Airtel_Presence this conversation is genuine (I’ve seen the timeline myself). I refuse to pay another penny to a company that condones such blatant bigotry. I’m beginning the process of porting my number to another service provider & canceling my DTH & Broadband. pic.twitter.com/BZxJOaEsN6
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) June 18, 2018
Meanwhile, Airtel, after taking a lot of time decided to respond to the consumer saying:
Dear Pooja, at Airtel, we absolutely do not differentiate between customers, employees and partners on the basis of caste or religion. We would urge you to do the same. Both Shoaib and Gaganjot are part of our customer resolution team. If any customer contacts us for an ongoing service issue then the first available service executive responds in the interest of time. On your query, we will get back to you as soon as there is an update.
It is tough to do business these days because just about anything can get trolled and at the time when communalism is raising its ugly head, many businesses have to take a stand. But is Airtel the only one under the bus? Not really!
Take a look at these and see what the businesses are facing these days:
Patanjali lands in soup over holy Cross
Amazon in trouble as angry protesters call for its boycott
And here are the competitors of Airtel fishing for consumers. The Idea Cellular customer care jumped in on the chance as soon as they were mentioned, just like BSNL did at the time of this controversy:
Thank you for choosing us! We would love to see you as part of Idea cellular family. Please DM us your contact number, pincode, type of connection which you want (postpaid/prepaid) and we will get in touch with you.
Regards,
Sneha— Idea Customercare (@idea_cares) June 18, 2018
