Airtel's bigotry row: Vittal says "lesson learned," "should have" to act faster

Weeks after facing a reaction in a row of bigotry, Bharti Airtel, telecommunication major, said he should have acted faster in handling the demand for a non-Muslim customer service staff by a user and now
In an interview with PTI, Airtel MD and CEO (India and South Asia) Gopal Vittal said that the company has a social media war room and fixed processes like last month, when & # 039; 39: A LTHERTNOW-based DTH official of Airtel Pooja Singh wanted a non-Muslim leader to take up his complaint, the company had stated that she had never been there before. inclined. Vittal said in the era of social media that "companies have become easy targets"

"In any call center environment, if you receive a complaint from someone (and ) if the person (customer service) is busy the next complaint goes to another person and they have a history of pop-up of the whole conversation that took place with the person A (complainant) .It arrives in the companies Vittal explained: "Now, for a bigot to have extinguished And for it to become a rage … the only thing we should have done is probably to react faster and tell what's going on.

The Airtel Shoaib leader had first responded to Pooja's complaint. but soon after he was busy and the same was taken over by another Gaganjot executive who exchanged messages with her about the complaint. All of this happened before she tweeted in search of a "Hindu representative" as she had "no faith in her work ethic (Shoaib)"

Vittal Alluded to that this fact should have been published before. a good lesson learned but it is very unfortunate that this thing has even happened because it is so far from reality.As a business, we are proud of the diversity not only of religion but of all natures, "said Vittal

. An integral part of its culture.

"For us, diversity is a vital part of who we are … religious diversity, gender diversity … This (incident) for me is hurtful that it exploded like that." Vittal said that several measures have already been taken by society in the past, and that the processes are now strengthened.

"This is not right after the incident .." We have already taken steps to do not wait for this incident, we just need to be more specific and better, "he said. Vittal said, "We have a social media war room, a center, keywords, fixed processes … even before that. It's just that these steps are strengthened. "

Airtel last month declared that the company did not resist bigotry "for the most part, false and factually incorrect".

A client made "a scandalous request to prefer to speak to someone with a particular religious identity," but the two department heads continued to work diligently to ensure a resolution to the complaint, he said.

Shoaib was not identified and that Gaganjot took over the case, he was interpreted as "bowing to bigotry" .The fact that Gaganjot did not check the His colleague's religious identity before taking the case was interpreted as "discriminatory demand", he said

Airtel had pointed out that this had not changed the advisor "Because of the unfathomable demand of the said customer.

"At Airtel, we have never and never give in to differentiation on the basis

(This story was not edited by Business Standard staff and is generated automatically from from a unionized stream.)