New Delhi: Airtel India faced the wrath of Twitterati on Monday for bowing down to a customer’s demand to give her a “Hindu representative”.
Pooja Singh, an Airtel DTH user, took to Twitter to air her grievances. She received a response from a customer service representative of Airtel India, Shoaib.
This invited a sharp reaction from Singh who tweeted back wanting a “Hindu representative” as Shoaib was a Muslim and the Quran “may have a different version for customer service”.
The company’s next tweet came from a different CSR, Gaganjot, who promised assistance to Singh.
“Airtel India pathetic Airtel DTH customer service. I raised complaint for reinstallation of DHT. but assigned service engineer miss behaved with me. His words are “Tum Phone Rakho Dobara call mt krna” his number is +91 79-********. This is how Airtel is looting it’s customer (sic),” Singh had tweeted.
The company responded by saying, “Hey, I most definitely appreciate you reaching out here! We’ll take a closer look into that & get back shortly with more information. Thank you, Shoaib (sic).”
To this, Singh then gave her Islamophobic reply, “Dear Shohaib, as you’re a Muslim and I have no faith in your working ethics because Kuran may have different version for customer service, thus requesting you to assign a Hindu representative for my request. Thanks (sic).”
Airtel then changed their customer service representative and replied, “Hi Pooja! As discussed, please let me know what days & time frames work best for you so we can talk. Further, please share an alternate number so that I can assist you further with this. Thank you, Gaganjot (sic).”
This caused much furore as Twitterati soon turned on the company for bowing down to Islamophobia. Many said they did not wish to be part of the company anymore, while others were slamming the network for its inability to stand up to bigotry.
Former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah also raged against the company saying, “Dear Airtel India this conversation is genuine (I’ve seen the timeline myself). I refuse to pay another penny to a company that condones such blatant bigotry. I’m beginning the process of porting my number to another service provider & canceling my DTH & Broadband. (sic)”
He further tweeted saying, “I hope she gets a 16 hour Air India flight with an all Muslim flight crew. She can spend the flight screaming about their “work ethic” while trying to jump out.. (sic)”
Nearly five hours later, Airtel woke up to the backlash and reacted to Singh’s zealot thought process. “Dear Pooja, at Airtel, we absolutely do not differentiate between customers, employees and partners on the basis of caste or religion. We would urge you to do the same. Both Shoaib and Gaganjot are part of our customer resolution team. If any customer contacts us for an ongoing service issue then the first available service executive responds in the interest of time. On your query, we will get back to you as soon as there is an update. Thanks – Himanshu, Airtel Response Team Lead (sic),” tweeted the company.
When News18 reached out to them, Airtel claimed that customer satisfaction was their “primary motive”. The company said they had addressed the demand and “will look into the matter closely in the coming time”.
News18
