Project Group 7

Bad Customer Service in Vodafone Idea

12th December 2021

Consumer Behavior – Prof. Anurag Dugar

Anubhav Srivastava 2020192

Bir Vikram Dev 2020197
Akash Devarapalli 2020199
Nisarg Mehta 2020215
Sanika Chhabra 2020115
Shubhangi Joshi 2020232
Srashti Sharma 2020237
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 Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................3
Problem Statement ........................................................................................................................................4
Issue 1 ............................................................................................................................................................ 4-5
Issue 2 .................................................................................................................................................................6
Issue 3 ............................................................................................................................................................ 7-8
Issue 4 .......................................................................................................................................................... 9-10
Issue 5 .............................................................................................................................................................. 11
Issue 6 ....................................................................................................................................................... 12-13

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Introduction

Indian telecom sector has witnessed a significant growth and emerged as a noteworthy performer in the
service sector and at the same time, Indian Industries have grown tremendously and many strategic
alliances has taken place in India. Recently, Telecom sector is considered as the most volatile sector in the
country even though there are many mobile users in India. As per IBEF report (February, 2017), India is
ranked as second largest telecommunications market in the world and is expected to contribute around
13.5% to have over 180 million smartphones by 2019, contributing around 13.5 per cent to the world
smartphone market. Market Research Store in their report mentioned that the telecom industry will grow
by 10.3% each year and will touch US$ 103.9 billion by 2020. Indian telecommunication industry has
become a classical example of combination of government policies, innovation and new technology.
Mergers and acquisitions in telecommunication industry can be driven by the development of new
technology. Telecom companies for augmenting the performance are now opting for mergers and
acquisitions. They are using it as a strategic tool for improving their revenue and efficiency. From the year
ranging 1985 to 2017 the number of mergers and acquisitions has grown significantly in this sector.

Company profile

Vodafone Idea Limited is India's largest telecom operator with its headquarter based in Mumbai,
Maharashtra. Vodafone Idea is a pan-India integrated GSM operator offering 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services
under two brands named Vodafone and Idea. Vodafone Idea also provides services including Mobile
payments, IoT, advanced enterprise offerings and entertainment, accessible via both digital channels as
well as on-ground touch points, centers across the country. The company's vision is 'to create world class
digital experiences to connect and inspire every Indian to build a better tomorrow'. As of July 2018,
Vodafone Idea has 38.37% market share in India with 443.94 million subscribers, making it the largest
mobile telecommunications network in India and second largest mobile telecommunications network in
the world. Vodafone Idea has a broadband network of 340,000 sites, distribution reach of 1.7 million retail
outlets. On 31 August 2018, Vodafone India merged with Idea Cellular, and was renamed as Vodafone Idea
Limited. However, the merged entity continues using both the Idea and Vodafone brand. Currently, the
Vodafone Group holds a 45.1% stake in the combined entity, the Aditya Birla Group holds 26% and the
remaining shares will be held by the public. Kumar Mangalam Birla heads the merged company as the
Chairman, with Mr. Balesh Sharma as the CEO.

History
On 20 March 2017, Idea and Vodafone India announced that their respective boards had approved a
merger of the two companies. The merger got approval from Department of Telecommunications in July
2018. On August 30, 2018, National Company Law Tribunal gave the final nod to the Vodafone-Idea
merger.The merger was completed on 31 August 2018, and the newly merged entity is named Vodafone
Idea Ltd. The merger created the largest telecom company in India by subscribers and by revenue. Under
the terms of the deal, the Vodafone Group holds a 45.2% stake in the combined entity, the Aditya Birla
Group holds 26% and the remaining shares will be held by the public

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 Problem statement- Bad Customer Service leading to higher customer churn rate for Vi
Bad Customer Service Occurs when businesses fail to meet customer expectations in terms of service
quality, response time, or overall customer experience.

We have explained the issues along with their actionable measures in detail below.

Issue 1 - Fail to offer Real Time Support

Providing real time support for the consumers plays a vital role in increasing consumer satisfaction &
brand loyalty. As VI is not up to the mark in offering real time support they are facing negativity from
their consumers

User Expectations
1) Users expect to get some kind of response from the support team, when an issue is risen from
their side. They usually expect to get some kind of communication from support team this
will be their initial touch point. Reverting back in initial stage will help to increase customer
satisfaction
2) According to the research report by HubSpot, Immediate Response has been top priority for
more than 90% of customers when they have any issues or queries with the service there are
using. So, providing of real time support & trying to solve the issue in initial stage plays a key role
in increasing loyalty to brand
3) Consumers do not have enough patience to wait or reach out to support team multiple times.
They expect to receive Real time support from company support team & most of the users
expects a solution for their issue as soon as possible

Actual Reality
• Failing to provide the needed Real Time Support for the consumers is one of the important
reasons for Bad customer service perception among the VI users
• This kind of negative perception is one of the main reasons for the increased churn rate for VI
• Compared to VI its competitors like Jio & Airtel are providing better servicing for their customers
leading to increased subscribers for their competitors & decrease in subscriptions for VI

Recommended Solutions:

• Forming a 3-step pipeline for providing of Real time support for their consumers (Where we will
be providing servicing for the users through three different stages)-

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=> Making use of chatbots to interact with consumers in first
point (Giving an option to chat with Support Agent if users are
not satisfied with responses from chatbot)

=> In this Stage, Consumers will get a chance to chat with

agent to explain about issue & if consumer is still not satisfied
then a call from support team will be last stage of support we
can provide to consumer

=> In this final stage, If customer is not satisfied with

responses from chatbot & Chat from agent, Consumer will be
directly talking in call with support team agent in a more
detailed way

• Regularly measuring user’s satisfaction levels by Real time experience tracking tools like
MESH experience, Adobe experience cloud or Resonate to keep track of changing consumer
preferences for real time support & Making a priority list of where we should concentrate
more in order to satisfy consumers in real time
• In most of the cases though VI support team reacts to issues still due to lack of clarity or
miscommunication users might get confused. So, it is better to Work on information that we are
sending to consumers, Support Team has to send clear & consistent message for consumers
to understand the steps involved in resolving the issue
• If VI users do not know how to approach support team, they will think it as a failure of support
team & VI is not providing proper real time support for their consumers. So, we have to Ease the
process of communicating with Support team & interact with consumers in real time about
the issue in whichever way possible
• Though making use of Chatbots is very important in the first stage to give an immediate response,
still many consumers prefer human agents over chatbots. VI already has a chatbot in place,
making use of a Hybrid service model with both Chatbots (For simple queries) & human
agents (For Complex queries) helps to improve customer satisfaction levels among Vi users.

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Issue 2 - Failure to resolve customer issue in the first touchpoint

Customer touchpoints are the brand’s points of customer contact, from start to finish which becomes a
crucial factor towards customer satisfaction. A touchpoint is any time a potential customer or customer
comes in contact with the brand–before, during, or after they have purchased something. A potential
client normally interacts with a brand several times before reaching out or purchasing. For conversion
and/or a satisfying service, it is extremely important that their first interaction with the business is
powerful and positive.

Customers are emotional. An awful encounter can leave an acrid taste, and on the other hand, a brilliant
encounter can leave them praising the brand excitedly. Good customer service is an iterative interaction
with various touchpoints. Each could lead to a customer’s impression of the brand, yet it's the first
touchpoint that establishes the vibe of the relationship. All future collaborations will be amplified by
what happens first. A positive first-hand experience will act as a cushion for any following negative
experience which the customer might face but a negative first impression will worsen the customer
experience and may result in a dissatisfied and churned customer.

Such is one of the cases for Vodafone Idea Ltd. One of the main reasons for a bad customer service
perception among customers is the failure to resolve any issue faced by the customers in the first
touchpoint. When a customer reaches out to the customer support, they firstly wish to be heard and
understood by the customer care executive. Several complains published online over public forums
highlights the fact the most of the customers tend to be dissatisfied as the customer care executive on
the other end is unable to comprehend the problem faced by the user and they have to repeat
themselves a couple of times before appropriate direction is given. The customers have reported further
that many a times the executive just wants to entertain the call for the sake of offering the support but
unable to resolve their issue. This somewhat highlights the gap in the training the customer staff is
receiving.

The customers have further reported that their calls are put on hold by the executive, several times in
between the conversation citing the executive is searching for a resolution. However, they just unhold
the call and ask a few details before putting the call on hold again. This is really exasperating to the
customer and many a times they tend to loose their patience and disconnect the call in between. Last but
not the least, the customers have reported several cases where they are guided to an incorrect team
which has no idea whatsoever of the issue they are facing. Also, the concerned team is not notified of the
problem and the customer has to yet again explain the entire issue to the concerned team.

Recommended Solutions:

• Sensitizing the executives regarding first touchpoint - The customer executives need to be
sensitized about the brand’s message of customer excellence and explain them how a good
experience at first touchpoint is crucial for customer satisfaction. The marketing team should
work with the customer operations team and figure out if there is any gap in the training that fails
to align with the communicated service excellence to the customers.

• Customer feedback - The marketing team should pay attention to the public portals and VI
social media handles where customers often post their unhappy experiences. An effort should be
made to reach out to those customers, apologize to them and understand what exactly went
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 wrong and what were their expectations. The same should be shared with the operations team
for training purposes.

Issue 3 - Inefficient Customer Service Team

Customers are the lifeblood of every company; they are always correct. The customer's welfare should
be addressed to ensure that you do not go out of business. Customers that are treated like kings keep
coming back and referring others, which demonstrates the value of customer service. The longer you
stay in the market with excellent customer service, the more clients you will gain.

It's no longer enough to have a great product—companies are now distinguishing themselves by
providing outstanding customer service.

The owner is always clear about the brand image, objective, and vision, as well as what and who it
represents. But it is the customer service team that is responsible for expressing the brand and what it
entails to the customers and the general public.

The customer service team has direct contact with the consumer; they manage complaints and assist in
the resolution of issues, allowing them to learn what the customers want and don't want. Customers will
depart for the competitive brand if they do not love the service provided by your brand or are treated
with contempt. A terrible customer service team will also result in unfavourable reputation and
referrals.

There is no one such known instance where the customer may get irate. A few examples are:

• Difficult for the customer to reach the support team

• Long waits on the IVR
• Customers being kept on hold for ridiculously long period of time by the agent
• Customer calls being transferred from one department to the other with transfers made to the
wrong department adding to the frustration
• Wrong or difficult to understand language and a negative tone used by the service agent can
result in an unpleasant customer service experience
• There is nothing worse than apathy in customer servicing. Agents showing lack of interest and
enthusiasm may result in an unsatisfied call
• Agents low on product knowledge or making the customer repeat himself also results in a bad
customer experience most times

As per a survey, around 50 percent of customers shift to competition with just one bad support
experience.

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Recommended Solutions:

1. Ask your customers for feedback - Consumers want their problems resolved satisfactorily.
Companies that do this well understands their customers inner and out. They resolve issues
successfully because they recognize what both delights and irritates their clients at every single
state of their services. Asking for feedback regularly will help VI Group understand the core of the
problem and hire a service team that can
2. Hire a team with Empathy, patience and consistency - Some clients might be irate. Others can
be full of questions. And others will just be chatty. They have to realize a way to cope with all of
them and provide the equal level of services to the consumers.

3. Team’s Work ethics - Customers admire a representative who will solve their problems and
provide a good resolution. At the same time, the service team need to have exact time
management abilities and not spend an excessive amount of time handling one consumer at the
same time as others will be waiting. They should stay focused to your objectives to acquire the
proper balance.

4. Using social media to do more with less - Social media is often talked about as a new channel
that will need to be implemented to address new demand. It can also help you understand what
your customers feel about you. But could it also help you drive new efficiencies.VI can use it as
part of the overall service mix, social media has great potential to bring cut costs within the
customer service operation: For example, by diverting some people away from your phone lines

5. Use CRM Platforms - Businesses can streamline their service team processes using smart CRM
platforms. Such systems help to ensure that every team is on the same page - which is important
in establishing high customer service standards. It provides useful information about the
customers which can help VI understand their needs, resolve the issues faster, and provide a
personalized experience to each customer.

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Issue 4 - Complex Hierarchy for Customer Service Employees

After the Merger of Vodafone and Idea, the resources, divisions, operations & number of stakeholders
increased. This caused a problem called complexity in organizational structure. The customer services
department also faced the repercussions. The employees at call center weren’t provided with specific
designation which was a major cause of failure while handling a customer on call.

Understanding Customer Care Hierarchy at Vodafone India

The hierarchy at VI is quite

interdependent. Whenever a
customer seeks assistance on call,
the lowest level employee will assist
the query and henceforth the
feedback taken from customer gets
reported to further levels as and
when required. The lower-level
employees are in ambiguity as the
culture of Vodafone and Idea are yet
to mix with each other and there is
ambiguity as in to whom to report
and who will respond from higher
authorities.

User Expectations

• A customer expects prompt response from a supervisor or a manager, if a lower level assistant is
unable to rectify the error.
• Customer needs a clear direction of a company and its future goals for user’s fulfillment to retain
the product for use in future.
• A customer always seeks support from governing bodies who can take efficient decisions and
regulate the operations for a seamless telecommunication
• While addressing a query, customer wants a knowledgeable person who is sound and updated with
technologies available in the market so that the telecommunication and mobile devices stays
aligned thereby giving rich user experience.
Problems faced by Employees

• The employees in customer service department wanted efficient plan of actions on similar types of
complain once reported to higher authority. The day to day activities got recorded, but due to lack
of designation and improper allocation of tasks at managerial level, the customer service assistants
were clueless in order to roll out an offer or a plan to customers. This led to delays in addressing
customer’s problem.
• Post-merger VI has to let go more than 1000 employees from its customer service wing, which
caused chaos and disconnection among the culture of the employees from both the companies.

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 • Due to delayed decisions taken from the directors, the employees were in ambiguity as in towards
what a BPO team is leading to and how should they address queries of customer meanwhile
retaining them.
• Due to undecided designation of Supervisors and directors, the employee faced a challenge while
transferring important customer query calls. This also led in lack of training as well as confusion
about how to use the available resources.
Recommended Solutions:

Vi can follow the Inverted Pyramid Organization Structure. It is represented as below:

In the adjacent chart, we can see that the
employees are empowered and have a
more prominent role in VI.
The employees will find themselves in
autonomic condition which help them to
take important decisions fast. Here the
employees don’t need to conform from
top-to-down to communicate further
plan of actions. This structure will give
agility to the customer care service of VI
and helps to develop sustainable
strategies.

Plan of Action for at least 3 years down the line:

1. The first and foremost plan is to provide enough autonomy to customer service assistants and make
them understand their value at the organization. This could be done with added training programs and
updating them with AI/ML facilities which can easily help them translate the trends in the customer
queries into insights and thereby increasing the efficiency while solving the problems.

2. Instead of achieving sales target, the customer care employees must be given with retention target.
Thereby, giving them power without involving higher management, to take on priorities for those
customers who are loyal to VI.

3. The above mentioned two points could bring a vital change in the organization within the span of Two
years, which could further improve the customer care services. Post the same, the middle management
could be given enough funds monthly to use it for customer retention or attraction. While
communicating a telecom plan, if they could implement discounts/goodies in split seconds, without
confirming to higher authorities can increase customer satisfaction
ISSUE 5 -NOT TAKING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK REGULARLY

VI has lost 64.6 million customers in the last two years dropping it from the first position to the third
position in the telecom industry. The company failed at taking the customer feedback regularly which
plays an important role especially while providing services.

Customer feedback is a tool that lets you know how customers truly feel about the brand and their
experience that allows the company to easily track clients' perceptions of the brand in order to improve
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the services and satisfy their expectations.

Ideal Expectation
• Customer wants to feel heard, appreciated and valued. They expect the brands to have multiple
options for customer feedback, including online chat, email, social media, and phone call.
• According to a survey by Hubspot, 58% said this taking customer feedback regularly is a basic
expectation that all brands should meet.
• Taking customer feedback regularly helps the company to improve products and services. If
Vodafone would have taken customer feedbacks regularly, they would have introduced the 4G
LTE connectivity much ahead, understanding the customer needs. Instead they launched it two
years after JIO thus loosing market share and customer trust.
• Customer loyalty has decreased over time and the switching cost is minimal in telecom sector.
The competition is top notch so if the company is not able to make a bond and build trust among
the customers then they can easily switch to some other brand.

Actual Reality

• No proper system in place to collect feedbacks and analyse them to better the experience. Due to
lack of funds, the company is unable to invest any money in infrastructure for customer support.
• VI is technologically challenged in terms of providing customer experience whereas other
companies like Jio are aiming to make the zero-touch” self-optimizing network, while maintaining
reliability and performance
• VI does not have a page to collect feedbacks on their website whereas there is an option to track
your complaints. This shows the company’s attitude of being reactive rather than proactive.
Whereas Airtel, the third largest telecom mammoth is a customer centric company and therefore
it was able to withstand the entrance of Jio in the market. They take feedbacks at multiple
customer touch points through all the channels.

Recommended Solutions:

• Establish an omnichannel customer experience and feedback collection system. Multiple

consumer touchpoints across a variety of channels make up the omnichannel customer
experience. The idea is for all channels to work together smoothly, allowing customers to switch
between experiences on any device or platform. These could include the following-web, voice,
chat, messaging, social networking sites, video.

• The company should align their culture towards customer centricity. The company should focus
on taking customer opinions through various ways such as - Customer service feedback,
Customer surveys, Customer reviews, Sales or customer success feedback, Social media
posts, Comments etc or Build a community forum.

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Issue 6 - Usage of Automated Communication

Usage of Integrated Voice Response has created a lot of customer frustration. IVR systems have a
negative effect on customer satisfaction. The IVR system was used to provide an easy solution and
reduce cost for the company but in reality, it had impacted the customer experience. For customer-
service leaders, the unpopularity of IVR creates a dilemma. On one hand, their job is to improve
customer experience and satisfaction. On the other hand, they need to meet demanding objectives to
reduce costs.

Below are the problems faced using IVR:

• Low first-call resolution percentages, as the automated system does not help to resolve the
problem in a single call, leading to increase in number of calls by the customer
• Lack of caller information, the automated system uses the same scripted reply for every
customer without understanding the background of the customer
• A high abandonment rate is observed in case of IVR as customer disconnects the call hearing
the automated reply, it leads to major customer dissatisfaction
• Confusing navigation and terminology make it difficult for customer to use the system. The
language and terminologies used are very company oriented making tough for customers to
understand.
• Lack of timely updates of IVR system is also one of the major issues. The business offering
changes with time but the automated reply system is often slow in change and is not updated.
• Repetitive information needs to be provided again and again which develops frustration among
the customers. This usually happens because of failure of IVR to capture and understand the
information.
• Lack of Brand personality also results due to automated system. The IVR should reflect the
qualities we want to associate with our brand.

Recommended Solutions:

• Fast Resolution - IVR system can inform the customers about the status of outages as well as the
expected resolution time. This approach not only reassures customers that their issues are being
handled effectively but it also ensures resolution of thousands of calls every day without the need
for an agent
• Correctly identifying customer information - Accurate customer identification will allow you to
employ a proactive messaging strategy. This involves communicating important and relevant
information to a customer without them having to navigate through the IVR system. With making
customer easy to understand what information needs to provided it can be done easily.
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• To reduce IVR abandons - Identify when and where callers are abandoning. Some abandons is to be
expected (some users simply won’t interact with IVR systems or may be distracted while on the phone)
– we need to identify those that occur out of frustration.
• Easy navigation and low complexity- Instead of using jargons related to company, we can use
language which more customer friendly. The navigation can be made easy by reducing the number of
menus layers a caller has to go through before they’re transferred to a human agent or they’re able to
successfully self-serve.

• Update timely - As and when there are changes in business, the automated system should be
updated according to that making it easy for customers to get resolved their issues. Customer-first IVR
needs to rapidly and continually adapt as business offerings change, as new technologies become
available, and as understanding of customer behaviors and preferences evolves.

• Avoid redundant information - We can refine the IVR’s natural speech capture capabilities or
request simpler information from the customer to avoid repetitive information and also can consider
how our organization can begin implementing an omnichannel strategy that allows for the free
movement of information and customers between channels.

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