Airtel bigotry row: Top executive says 'lesson learnt, should have 'acted faster'

 Weeks after facing backlash in a bigotry row, telecom major Bharti Airtel has said it should have acted faster in dealing with the issue involving demand for a non-Muslim customer service staff by a user and now processes are being "further tightened" to deal with such issues.

In an interview to PTI, Airtel MD and CEO (India and South Asia) Gopal Vittal said the firm has a social media war room and fixed processes as well as marked key words that should trigger a quick response. Last month, when a Lucknow-based DTH cutomer of Airtel Pooja Singh wanted a non-Muslim executive to attend to her complaint, the company had stated that it had never bowed down to bigotry. Vittal said in the social media age "companies have become soft targets".

"In any call centre environment, if you get a complaint by one person (and) if the (customer care) person is busy the next complaint goes to another person and they have a history of pop up of all the conversation that happened with person A (complainant). It happens in airlines, credit card company, banks. This is the way call centres work," explained Vittal. "Now for one bigot to have put out some silly tweet and for that to have become a rage...the only thing we should have done probably is actually respond faster and say what is going on," he conceded.

Airtel executive Shoaib had initially attended to Pooja's complaint of poor service but soon after he got busy and the same was taken over by another executive Gaganjot who exchanged messages with her about the complaint. All this happened before she tweeted seeking a "Hindu representative" as she had "no faith in his (Shoaib's) work ethics". Vittal alluded that this fact should have been brought out before.
"I think it was a good lesson learnt but it is very unfortunate that this thing even happened because it is so far from reality. As a company, we pride ourselves in diversity not just religion but of every nature," Vittal said. Airtel considers diversity as a integral part of its culture.

"For us, diversity is vital part of who we are... religious diversity, gender diversity...This (incident) to me is hurtful that this was blown up like this. I am glad it got settled," he said. Vittal said several steps have already been taken by the company in the past, and the processes are being further tightened now. "It is not just after the incident...we have already taken steps not waiting for that incident, we just need to get sharper and better," he said.

Outlining the processes in place, Vittal said, "We have a social media war room that is there, we have a centre, we have keywords going, we have got fixed processes...there are many steps we had taken even prior to this. It is just that these steps are getting strengthened." Airtel had, last month, stated that the company not standing up to bigotry is "mostly, untrue and factually incorrect." A customer made "an outrageous request of preferring to talk to someone of a particular religious identity" but the two service executives continued to dedicatedly work towards ensuring a solution to the complaint, it had said.

"The fact that Shoaib wasn't logged in and that Gaganjot took up the case got read as 'bowing down to bigotry'. The fact that Gaganjot didn't check his colleague's religious identity before taking up the case got read as 'heeding to a discriminatory request'," it had stated. Airtel had emphasised that it did not change the advisor "because of the unfathomable request from the said customer". "At Airtel, we never have and never will succumb to differentiating on the basis of religion, ethnicity or caste," it had said.