Recently, I
wanted a credit card company to stop sending me hard copies of my
monthly statement, and instead send me email statements. I located an email
address for their customer care and sent my request. There was an automatic
acknowledgment followed later by an email saying I could request the change
through digital channels and giving me a link and a call center number. I
clicked on the link which gave miscellaneous information but did not say how to
stop the paper statements. So, I called the call center and went through an
elaborate process at the end of which the operator said that my request has
been noted and they would act on it soon. Then the operator asked me to speak
to his supervisor to give my feedback rating his performance. The supervisor
had a chat with me and said that an email request would soon come to me on
which I could give my feedback. I must have spent over an hour on this wild-goose-chase.
The whole thing reminded me of a newspaper report a decade
ago which said that a certain airline had 18 employees standing by at various places on the side all along the route,
as a passenger walked his way from the security check to his seat. This
airline, after bleeding the country of several billion dollars year after year,
was finally sold for peanuts.
When are we going to realize that this country’s productivity is the most important index to watch and to improve? Otherwise, we may become a five-billion-dollar economy rather than a five-trillion-dollar economy!
Srinivasan Ramani
