Deepas Principle of Organizational Competence

January 21, 2014

The competence of an organization is inversely proportional to the number of desks and people that the customer is re-directed to.

I’ve been having severe problems with my BSNL internet connection. First of all, I had to figure out that it was, indeed, the internet connection that was the problem (my first thought generally is, Oh God, I’ve done something wrong again.) Then, I wanted to check on my BSNL broadband plan online. Lo and behold (or rather, NOT behold)….my plan was not to be found anywhere on the website.

So I went to the BSNL Customer Care Service Center in Jayanagar. It took me two solid hours and being shuttled around to NINE (yes) people before I could get the details of my broadband plan. (“Madam, that’s an old plan. So we don’t have it on our website any more.” “But why can’t those of us who are using the plan access the details?”..”We don’t know Madam, it’s not there.”) I had to go from desk to ao the next-pointed-out-to me desk to find out the details, which I found at the eighth person. It’s a fairly advantageous plan for the consumer, no wonder it was quietly removed without notice.

I realized that under this plan, even if I exceed my bandwidth quota, I only get charged Rs.0.30 per unit, and the speed is NOT supposed to drop. So why has it dropped? I was shunted around from Accounts to Commercial to Customer Care all around in a merry cycle.

All that has happened at the end of it is that one person has “asked” someone else, somewhere else, what is happening. I suspect that like most plans in existence today, when I exceeded my quota, my internet speeds have been throttled..which they should not be, under this plan.

I’m feeling giddy with the BSNL merry-go-round…and I’ve forumlated the Principle of Organizational Competence (in Airtel, for my mobile internet, I was shunted to 3 people) which I think will fluff up well into a book…now to think of a catchy cover title…