Making Marketing Music by Chintamani Rao

Author:Chintamani Rao
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

* * *

* Enlarged and updated from my original article, ‘I’m too sexy for my shoes,’ published in Campaign India, December 2010.

CHAPTER 7

A Service Is Not a ­Product*

After weeks of resistance I succumbed to the iPad. The argument against it was that there aren’t many Wi-Fi hotspots in India, which limits your ability to use one. The answer was to get the one with 3G. That’s not central to this story; it is only to say why I was in the market for a mobile phone connection.

Well, Saturday was Christmas and I was going to be travelling from Monday, and you know how it is with tech toys: I wasn’t going to wait until I returned and went to my office. And so it came to pass that on the Sunday after Christmas I was shopping for a mobile connection.

I chose Airtel, unsurprisingly perhaps, given the 3G options available and the recent salience of the brand.

From the website I got a list of outlets within a short radius of my home. It gave addresses and had columns for parking (‘Yes’ for all), timing (10am to 8pm for all), and the weekly day off (blank for all), but, strangely for a telecom company, no telephone numbers.

I have Airtel landlines and ADSL at home and some kind of preferred customer status, so I called the designated customer service number. After wading through the interactive voice response (IVR) menu and getting a live human voice at the other end (Why do call centres speak to you in Hindi after you press ‘1’ for English?), I was told this number was only for landlines and that I should call 98101 98101.

So I did. When I asked where I should go for a new connection, the gent said, ‘You can get it where you buy recharge coupons.’

‘Ah, but I don’t buy recharge coupons,’ I replied. ‘I need to get a mobile connection first.’

‘I’m trying to help you,’ he said. ‘If you don’t find that helpful there’s not much I can do,’ and hung up. Being well trained, though, he didn’t forget to first say, ‘Thank you for calling Airtel.’

I stubbornly called again and got someone else. She said that number was only for prepaid connections: for ‘postpaid’, as the term goes, I should call 98100 12345.

So I did. More IVR, about bill payment and value-added services and so forth, and ‘to go back to the main menu press 1’, or whatever. Oh, I missed what I needed. Back to the main menu. But I was right the first time: every conceivable kind of information was available except if you wanted a new connection.

Clearly, Airtel didn’t expect that if you wanted a new telephone connection you might use a telephone to help get one.

I got that list from the website and set out.

The first outlet was closed. And the second. And the third...‘Aaj Sunday hai na, ji (It’s Sunday, you see)’. If the website hadn’t left the thoughtful ‘weekly off’ column thoughtlessly blank, or had given a phone number to call, I would have saved time and trouble.

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