Social Customer Service Review – Airtel

Airtel is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company, headquartered in New Delhi, India. It provides mobile prepaid/post paid, broadband and Digital TV services.
Being a telecom company, Airtel has to field hundreds of customer queries on a daily basis on social media platforms which requires the customer service team to be on their toes every time.
Airtel has quite a formidable presence on social media channels – They have a dedicated account on Facebook and Twitter by the name of Airtel Presence which is primarily meant for addressing customer grievances.
Now, we are going to dissect various elements of their social customer service approach one by one to find out how active the telecom provider is on social media;
Element 1 – Tone of Messaging
On Twitter, the brand seems to be doing pretty well, in terms of sending personalized responses with the name of customer support executive which is a good practice as it ensures the credibility.

But when we checked on Facebook, it was quite surprising that the brand was not following even basic grammar rules. This was a bit shocking, as being a reputed brand it leaves you with very less margin for error when it comes to serving customers.
See the snapshot of one of their replies to a Facebook query;

Element 2 – Are they sending canned responses, without understanding the context?
This is one of the most common problems brands face while responding to social media queries. In this special instance, one can easily see that the Airtel presence has responded without understanding the context of the complaint. Proper care should have been taken as the customer happens to be a social media influencer with a strong followers count.
 
 Element 3 – Response Time
Airtel Presence has a good response time – On Facebook their response time is 20 minutes and on twitter their response time is close to 18 minutes (The data has been taken from replies/conversations from past three days)
It shows that Airtel India has a good social CRM system in place and reflects a higher sense of concern towards the customers.
Element 4 – Is brand sending personalized replies?
Airtel presence personalizes all their responses with the name of the customer support executive, which shows their concern towards the customer,

Element 5 – Is brand following up on the complaints?
By seeing this actually happening, we were quite pleased – Brand is duly following up with the customers and keeping them updated about the status. 

Element 6 – Is brand answering to all the queries?
Though they are answering to all the queries, but yes, there are few which are unanswered
 
   
Element 7 – Is the brand present on major complaint forums?
Mouthshut.com which is one of the biggest online complaint forums has about 827 complaints about Airtel broadband alone, but none of the complaints/queries have been responded, which is not at all expected from a reputed brand!

Element 8 – Is brand sending duplicate replies?
Thankfully, No!
Customer support team is sending original personalized responses specific to the complaint, which is a good practice.
It looks like Airtel India has achieved a good response time but they have still a long way to go when it comes to attending to all the negative queries and especially when it comes to responding after understanding the context.
Suggestion: Before responding, it would be great if Airtel India team can check the profile of the user so as to know if it has come through a power user or not, though all the complaints should be treated on a top priority basis, but extra care should be taken when it comes to talking to influencers as the conversation would usually have a higher reach as compared to others and chances of things getting out of hand are quite high!
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