India Broadband Forum

nirajkvinit

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Today I read this quote in Maidan Metro Station, Kolkata. I was on my way to my client to train him about the product and services we had provided. This quote got me thinking that I play both role, as a customer or a seller of something. How true it is. Further thinking took me down the memory lane with some good and some bad experience. One such experience is as follows-

March 2007 - I finally overcame my tendency of being an emotional fool and orderded disconnection to my ISP (Local), despite being closely attached to the management. Reason - I wasn't getting the value of my money from their service, despite innumerable sugestions and complaints to them to improve their service. Anyways it was a good riddance.
After a small research I decided to get me a Dataone connection, and applied to my nearest Telephone Exchange (Jadavpur, Kolkata). I can remember reading something on their noticeboard "Broadband connection within 7 days." But the guy on the counter(Where I had submitted the Connection Application Form) dint let my Happy Surprise live longer. He said the connection will be installed within 2 weeks. I thought, "Never mind.. I can happily wait for 1 more week".

April 2007 - I have been working in Comunet Systems as a developer for 3 months. I am a fresher and I need to consult Books and Internet more often to do research and get code snippets to stay in the race. In the office I dont get enough time to do the research. I get some free time only at night. But damn.. I haven't got my internet connection, although it's been more than 2 weeks. What happened? Where are the Telecom officials? Sleeping? They roused my hope by installing the telephone line promptly only to crash it. Where is my Internet connection?

May 2007 - Work pressure is driving me bonkers. I desparately need my internet connection. I had to take a day off to get the status of my connection at the Exchange. There I went to the "Broadband Cell". Oh! What a horrific experience. Typical Babudom. If you ever want to see the extreme of Rudeness, take my advice and visit "Broadband Cell" of Jadavpur telephone exchange. Thank you guys (Broadband cell officials) for testing me and helping me know my limit of patience.
However, I've learned it much earlier that this world is based on "Duality System" and so I met this guy "Mr. Maity". A nice person, quite helpful, well behaved and modest. Atleast he explained me nicely that my case will take some time as the the necessay Hardware is not available. I literally spent my whole day there shuttling between office to office, one officer to another like a shuttle cork. I had read few chapters of "The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick". It helped me gain access to the offices to meet officials aka badminton players (I was their shuttle cork.)beyond official visiting time. The official assigned time wasn't quite enough for a full game.

June 2007 - Finally I received the Letter of Salvation from BSNL stating my username and password of the connection. But I dint know how to configure my Dlink-GLB-502T modem. I searched online, came here and read few posts to configure Dataone on my kind of router. I tried , tried and kept on trying till finally I got myself convinced that there is some problem in the hardware. So I called Mumbai D-Link's call center. There I talked to this guy named "Nirav". Again a nice fellow. He guided my with the configuration, but it was not working. He asked me do some tests. I did as he said. Finally he pronounced that probabely my Modem is broken and I need to take it to the nearest RMA center. Luckily my router was still under waranty. He gave me the address and I thanked him for his time. Oh! Nice fellow... quite helpful, patient, and polite. All call centers must have this kind of guy. Or perhaps he was trained for the same. Whatever it is, He is a nice guy.
I called up and went to the RMA Centre. It's near Golpark, Gariahat, Kolkata. There I met this guy "Chitrajit". Again a nice fellow. I don't know what happened, but it seems my saviour dint want to relive horrific meetings again, perhaps He dint want me to meet rude persons again. Anyways, he took the Modem, upgraded the firmware and trained me to configure it for the Dataone connection. I thanked him for his attentation, promptness and helping hand extended to me.
On my way back home from the RMA Centre I was pretty excited as I wanted to get this thing done and over with. I had to take another unpaid leave from my office. (I couldn't make any excuse as I was running out of excuses.) I came home, started my computer, and configured the router as per Chitrajit's Instruction. But to add to my woes, the connection dint work. I decided to visit the dreded cell "Broadband Cell" again. Unfortunately I was 15 minutes late and as I had expected I got 'FLAT REFUSAL" from those so kind officials to atleast hear my say. Anyway I came out and decided to try my Luck by meeting this friendly guy "Mr. Maity". Bottomline - He finally got my connection working. I thanked him a lot but he was modest enough to brush it off by saying it was his duty. And as far as I know his duty-time is probabely till 5 PM, but he helped me till 6.30 PM.

I live in a country where it helped me a lot to learn these words by heart "Perseverance", "Manage", "Politeness", "Patience" etc..
Now a days when there are lots of options, it still pays good to get few premium things. Some of which are:- 'Driving Licence', 'SBI Account', 'BSNL Cell/Internet Connections', 'Ration Card' etc. The BSNL Dataone connection made me do lots of things, let me learn many new things. The best thing was 'Never Losing the hope' and perhaps 'The Art of Deception' too.
I take this opportunity to thank few good persons for doing their job sincerely,

Mr. Maity - Jadavpur Telephone Exchange, Kolkata
Mr. D. N. Chakraborty - Jadavpur Telephone Exchange, Kolkata
Nirav - D-Link Call Centre (Mumbai)
Chitrajit - D-Link RMA Centre, Golpark, Kolkata

(Note:- If you liked this post then please do me a favour by Thanking these nice people. They deserve appreciation. Thanks!)
~nirajkvinit

Admin

Nice to see you take time to write nice words about those you thought were doing thier jobs well as normally we see people moaning and screaming about things that went wrong and never returning to appreciate things which went the way they should have.

Would be nice if you sent these guy's supervisors or managers an e-mail appreciating thier work and put a link to this thread in your e-mail to show your appreciating towards thier sincerity towards thier jobs.

Here is a big thank you to, Mr. Maity - Jadavpur Telephone Exchange, Kolkata
Mr. D. N. Chakraborty - Jadavpur Telephone Exchange, Kolkata
Nirav - D-Link Call Centre (Mumbai)
Chitrajit - D-Link RMA Centre, Golpark, Kolkata

Keep up the good work

Regards
Parminder Chahal

nirajkvinit

Wish I knew their e-mail address. Anyways, I tried and searched the Internet for addresses. I found some and sent them the messeges containing this thread's link. Hope my message reaches to the right person.

Those e-mail Addresses are:
Jadavpur Telephone Exchange, Kolkata - skpathak@bsnl.in
D-Link RMA Centre, Kolkata - kaltech@dlink.co.in
D-Link Customer Care - techsupport@dlink.co.in

Thank you Parminder for guiding me.