This Time my column is more about questions than answers and I would ike to get as many opinions from CIOs who are reading it, as possible.

We have this enormous refrigerator hat looks like a cupboard – with the freezer on the left and the refrigerator compartment on the right. The refrigerator is as good as it is unique. There are only about six of the same kind in our locality (as told to me by he technician who came to repair it). The boon of uniqueness is also the biggest curse for such devices.

The problem started when we wanted to get the refrigerator serviced. The experience was nothing less than horrifying. How difficult should the process be? You call the customer service helpline – they take down the complaint – give you a complaint number and send the technician home. Not so.

It took six disconnections and 45 minutes to lodge that complaint. And, when the engineer actually landed up, he had no clue of what part to check and the source of the problem. He was not an expert on these kind of refrigerators (though he knew the number of such refrigerators in the locality). He was also ill informed and not prepared to handle the problem. He left with the promise of sending an expert – who never came. We promptly received a SMS stating “You complaint no. 12345 has been closed successfully, thanks for contacting customer support.”

There are a couple of problems here – one in the form of an ill informed customer executive with a system not equipped to capture all the details and second in the form of processes that are not tight enough. They are probably designed to help the customer – but clearly they are not working.

Can technology not help us here? We all talk of Business Intelligence and better dashboards on ERP, why are we not talking enough about customer help systems? The customers generally contact one of the least paid and trained employees in the organisation – the customer support executive. I know it is the most mundane job in the enterprise, but can we not empower the employee to be extremely well informed of the customer?

Some telecom companies and banks probably do a better job of this than most FMCG or consumer durable companies. A good system could help the organisation in not only saving money, but increasing customer delight, making the customer come back for more.

Also, I feel that the processes are not strong enough to ensure that the complaint loop is closed properly. There are easy workarounds for employees to bypass the complaint process and there are no proper checkpoints and alerts. Even if these things are built in the system, probably the system is not reviewed on a periodic basis to ensure that they are working optimally.

I would be delighted to know if any such processes and reviews exist in the customer relations software that are used. If yes, what are they and how are they managed? If not, are there any other solutions that you use to ensure that your customers are always delighted when they contact your company?

Do share your experience! I am sure many of us here can benefit from the knowledge.