Airtel India landed in hot waters on Monday after replacing a Muslim representative with a Hindu on the demand of a customer.
Pooja Singh, an Airtel customer uttered her disapproval of a Muslim customer care executive named Shoaib tending to her complain on Twitter of a service engineer’s misdemeanor and demanded for a Hindu representative.
“Dear Shoaib, as you’re a Muslim and I have no faith in your working ethics because Kuran may have a different version for customer service, thus requesting you to assign a Hindu representative for my request. Thanks,” stated Pooja’s tweet.
Pooja’s request received an instant execution as the official Airtel India account replied with a replaced customer service executive named Gaganjot.
“Hi Pooja! As discussed, please let me know what days & time frames work best for you so we can talk. Further, please share an alternate number so that I can assist you further with this. Thank you, Gaganjot,” stated Airtel’s tweet.
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Dear @Airtel_Presence this conversation is genuine (I’ve seen the timeline myself). I refuse to pay another penny to a company that condones such blatant bigotry. I’m beginning the process of porting my number to another service provider & canceling my DTH & Broadband. pic.twitter.com/BZxJOaEsN6
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Airtel’s approach to this series of public complaints is very hard to make much sense of. Instead of asking Pooja to shut up as soon as she made her noxious request, Airtel allowed Gaganjot to cheerfully take over her case from Shoaib.
It was only after widespread social media outrage, including a tweet from former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah announcing his firm intention to cancel his Airtel DTH and broadband connection and port his mobile number to a different service provider, that Airtel decided to put out its own direct response.
“I’ve Airtel mobile, landline and Wi-Fi connections. We all know you can’t give good 2G, 3G & 4G. Now we know that you don’t have even 1 G i.e. Guts to stand up to bigots like Pooja who perhaps never had the good fortune of having Muslim friends and hence has flawed knowledge of Islam,” a customer flayed Airtel.
Almost nine hours later, Airtel India issued a clarification – “We do not differentiate on the basis of religion. Both Shoaib and Gaganjot are part of our customer resolution team.”
However, Twitter was not pleased with the reply which was issued almost nine hours after the customer’s hate-filled tweet.
“Too little, too late,” wrote a customer as he announced that he has already moved to a different service provider.”It took them five hours to type five lines. Airtel is a very fast network,” a Twitter user mocked the service provider.
