Service Accountancy

The India story has been shining for the past few years, with the service industry driving the growth wagon. Its a wonderful journey the country has traversed - from being a primarily agriculture driven economy to one being driven by services. While internationally we may be one of the global service powerhouses, domestically, there is a huge scope for us to better our services.
The public utilities, for example, are the most needy when it comes to realising the importance of service in today's economic environment. Recently, having shifted my residence, I requested the public telephone utility to transfer my phone along with the broadband connection. While it took them one month to transfer the phone number within the city (a process that should have taken 3-5 days), the broadband connection took two and a half months for activation. Of course it happened after rounds of phone calls and personal visits to various departments and offices, trying to understand the unique problem that each office defined as the reason for the delay. The matter doesn't end there; just two days after the activation of the broadband service I receive a bill from the department that does not specify the period of billing and has charges for broadband services amounting a cool Rs.11000/-.

So there begins another round of phone calls and visits to the offices trying to understand the nature of the charges and the services provided - when actually the line was lying dead. What was even more amusing was that while the metering department is at one station, the billing is at another station. So first u get clarifications from one office, then travel to another exchange and give them clarifications as well as request them for a fresh bill along with the rectifications. Again this doesn't happen as simply as it sounds; you have to traverse through various desks and floors before you are finally asked to pay the bill as it is and told that the amount will be adjusted against the succeeding bills.

While I was juggling through these exchanges and desks, a friend of mine was trying to book seats for his family to Pune in one of the Volvo bus services. Being a long weekend, there was a huge rush for such bookings and thus the bus seats were selling a 75-100% premium on the regular prices. After some bargaining and pleading, he finally managed to get the tickets, only to realise on the day of the travel that the bus is already full and his tickets are no good. The travel agent had sold the same tickets twice at different rates and the one who bargained lost his seats. And of course, nobody in the entire booking value chain owns up the mistake - everyone blames the other of having goofed up. So then, after a heated argument, all that the friend is offered is a honest refund of the amount he had paid in advance to book his seats. There go his weekend plans for a toss.

Maybe these small businesses are the next in queue to be enlightened about the term customer service. Or maybe feedback should be imperative each time he has been served, such feedbacks be audited atleast once in a year and customer grievances be heard by some forum that has the authority to penalise the wrong doers . Further, various business regulators should set some service quality disclosure standards like the ICAI sets for financial reporting across the country, and the service audits should be made public. Maybe then our country will become a service powerhouse in the true sense.

Wishful thinking.............maybe.....maybe not.....