“Inconvenient slogan”

“Inconvenient slogan”

“Always there for you” the phrase used by the Bhutan Telecom, do they value their words or it’s just a paradox?? The market situation is so complicated in Bhutan that for one, business don’t know how to be monopoly and when there is more, market is just a click away from bankruptcy. What can improve the business environment in the Bhutanese market sometimes considered to be the smallest market in the world? Should it be quality of the product? Should it be customer service? This article attempts to explore some ideas with regard to the service and products of Telecommunications in Bhutan. The contents are my personal views and do not represent any research finding.

You will be greeted with long list of services on their website but how many of the service you know and you are using? As far as I am concern it’s not about the long quantity of the service it’s about few quality service. How many times you have to dial to make a single call this days?? and how many times your computer displays unable to connect to internet when the status of the connection is connected??? How many of you go to toilet or kitchen for a cup of coffee while your computer is loading a website??? How many of you gets a convincing answer on 1600?? How long it takes you to nave a broadband connection?

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong, it was a normal evening Friday were all the office going look for a exciting weekend on their tired face when I visited BT counter in centenary vegetable market sometimes around 4:30 pm to get a internet package I was bit lucky that there were no customer rush so I got all three counter option, so I asked for the counter 1 for an internet package, I was asked to go to counter 2 saying he is lil busy further I was pushed to go to next counter number three saying she don’t do internet recharge only to wait for few minutes till she is done with her call who seems to be in her late thirty with full of experience and perfect with the keyboards who enters the number without looking at the keyboard not the screen, my inconvenienced mind forced me to tell the number once again so I did. You will receive a SMS soon said the experienced women what I suppose. Surprisingly the SMS got jammed on its way as as it was typed 329 in place of 327. 18 hours later I called their toll free number 1600 and asked about the error, it was not updated it will be okay soon replied from the other end. Lastly I visited the same counter to cross check the number and found it was recharged to another number 329 in place of 327 when she sees that she confidently said you have given me the wrong number I was speechless for a minute later I asked if there is a possibility of recharging back to the correct number. How can that be possible when you have given the wrong number it’s now his/her profit said the beautiful lady, now I leave it to the reader to judge the possible mistake of me telling my number wrongly or her typing wrongly? I am not crying over Nu. 299/- I am just concerned if it happens to 10 more customer it’s likely to lose 20 customer in the next few days.

I wonder why good customer service seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Are good employees really in such short supply? Our job market has reached such a height that vacant job is for the rich people and those who have supporter, by default. Unemployment rates hits its ceiling with talented and qualified jobseeker with right education yearning at home because law covers and equals the humanity but not when you have wealth. Today you can’t rely on the amount you have in balance sheet nor the income statement for your sustainability. World class investor never looks at the statements you have prepared based on the amounts.

Remember you’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied. In the world of Internet your competitor is only one mouse click away in many cases, bad customer service is caused by negligent or incompetent employees that undermine the employee-customer relationship and its pursuit of short-term growth that often drives businesses to engage in practices that end up alienating the very people they should be treating like royalty.