Trai to fine telcos for poor call centre services

NEW DELHI: How many times have you called your telecom operator and faced inefficient or perennially busy customer care execs? Telecom regulator Trai is all set to penalise telcos if call centres answering customer calls are found short of specified quality benchmarks.

Trai has invited bids from audit agencies to assess the effectiveness of customer care divisions and also assess customer perception of these. These agencies will also check if the telecom service provider responded to the complaint registered with the call centre within the time frame specified by Trai.

The regulator had, in May 2007 while issuing regulations for ‘effective and speedy redressal of consumers grievances’, mandated that all complaints, pertaining to fault repair, service disruption and disconnection of service shall be attended within a maximum period of three days and all other complaints be attended within a maximum period of seven days. Trai had also given operators a two-month time frame to implement its new regulations, the deadline for which expired on July 4.

When assessing the effectiveness of such customer care divisions, the agencies appointed by the regulator will also evaluate them on a host of other parameters. Telcos will be hauled up if their respective call centres don’t register each complaint by allotting it a unique identification number (or docket number), of which the consumer would be informed.

Operators will also be required to ensure their call centres update consumers about action taken on their complaints through telephone, electronic or any other means within the time limit specified.

As per Trai’s regulations, the call centres must also supply contact details of the nodal officer (including his name, telephone number and address) to the consumer in case of dissatisfaction with grievance redressal.

Trai has also stipulated that operators answer at least 80% of the calls (voice to voice) within 60 seconds and 95% of the calls within 90 seconds of the customer calling the call centre. A recent study by Trai revealed that BSNL failed to meet this 80% parameter in seven circles, Reliance Communications in 20 circles and MTNL and Tata Teleservices in Mumbai.

BSNL’s subscribers in Andhra Pradesh were found the worst affected — only 11% of their calls are answered by the operator within the stipulated 60 seconds. Most operators, with the exception of Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular, have failed to meet the 95% criteria in many states, the study added.