Udaipur : Amidst the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown, citizens have been confined to their homes and are completely dependent on telecom networks to study, work, access essentials, source information and entertainment. Vodafone Idea’s customer service teams and field staff have been working round-the-clock since the national lockdown was declared, to enable customers in Rajasthan to stay safe and connected on Vodafone Idea’s reliable TurboNet 4G.
Vodafone Idea customer service personnel in Rajasthan have been tirelessly going the extra mile despite the lockdown so as to keep businesses and individuals connected and functioning in this trying time. At several locations, customer service associate contact details have been put up outside the stores for customers needing personal intervention. Senior customer service managers have also been monitoring and attending to customer requirements varying from KYC compliance, SIMEX procedures as well as handset re-setting.
Here are a few real life stories on how VIL’s Lockdown SuperStars are working on ground to ensure customer convenience in the state:
Connectivity is the only link with the outside world during this lockdown. As a result, sometimes when there are outages our teams have to swing into action. That’s exactly what Shah Alam and Pankaj Agarwal from the commercial team did. Called in to address a network outage, they needed to access our warehouse so that critical equipment needed to restore the network could be dispatched. Shah Alam and Pankaj Agarwal decided to drive to the warehouse, picking up other colleagues along the way. They managed to reach the warehouse despite multiple barricades, gather the equipment needed and made sure that a vehicle was dispatched to the affected area with the equipment.
Our customers are relying on us to keep their businesses functional more than ever right now. 24X7 connectivity is absolutely vital for them to be able to operate. One such customer is a company that provides remote technical support services for U.S.-based clients, which means every employee’s home needs to be internet enabled. VIL tried providing broadband connectivity but it was feasible in only 30 percent of the locations. We recommended equipping the rest of their employees with dongles. However, with the lockdown coming into force the very next day, our channel partner wasn’t able to deliver the dongles to the customer. But the moment we received official communication that telecom fell under ‘essential services’ our employee Deepank Jain immediately took the initiative to go and collect the dongles from our warehouse and deliver them to all the customer’s employees waiting for connectivity. He took all the necessary precautions, throughout, sanitizing his hands regularly, strictly adhering to social distancing guidelines. He didn’t touch any surfaces and went for a bath as soon as he got home. Thanks to Deepank, our customer’s business continued unaffected.
Akhil Mohammed is another of our Lockdown Superstar who rose to the occasion. The customer in this instance was STPL, an enterprise primarly engaged in the ISP business but was venturing into the Vehicle Tracking domain. They had taken on a project which had to be rolled out in the first week of April. Because of the lockdown, however, they weren’t able to get IOT SIMs for the vehicle tracking devices. They got in touch with us and Akhil took on the responsibility to make sure the customer received the SIMs in time. He arranged for the SIMs to be delivered to the home of our channel partner and picked up by the customer’s field engineer. He then coordinated the entire process end-to-end, ensuring a seamless handover and smooth activation. The MD of the company thanked the entire VIL team for going beyond the call of duty and helping keep the project on schedule.
Ganesh Saini is another VIL Lockdown Superstar. Ganesh heard about a doctor who was practicing at a hospital in Baran but had lost his mobile phone while on duty. His colleague had lent him a spare phone but the doctor wasn’t able to procure a new SIM due to the lockdown. Ganesh, who lives in a nearby village, personally went to the hospital. Observing all safety precautions, he activated a new Vodafone number for the doctor.
VIL Fiber Link from Bhilwara to Shapura was reported down, leading to an outage of over 100 sites in and around Bhilwara city (city with high cases of N COVID-19). At that that time super curfew was imposed in Bhilwara city. Engineer Vivek along his team Ashok, Tufan, Jitendra left from Chittorgarh to address the issue. At multiple locations they were stopped by the authorities despite having documents with them. The Team then approached the collector office and managed to receive the permission. Team reached the location and Fiber cut fault was identified near Bhilwara bus stand that had happened due to Nagar Nigam drainage cleaning work. OFC cable depth also 1.25 mtr. under road bitumen. The team had to put in a lot of effort to get the cut rectified and network restored
Swati Chauhan is a Virtual Service Desk Manager with Vodafone Idea Limited. She has been instrumental in setting up the entire Business Continuity Plan in next to no time. She coordinated efficiently with internal and vendor teams and ensured the VSD process was up and running smoothly as per our BCP plan. This includes setting up workstations at our VSMs’ homes, creating VPN ids and arranging for network connectivity Sims. Swati’s initiative and tireless efforts have helped us be there for customers, keeping them connected when needed the most!
Seema Verma is a true example of customer centricity. She helped the Tata Capital team stay connected while working from home on critically short notice. She took a challenge to setting up the work from home ecosystem for Tata Capital thus enabling the customer to run the operations smoothly. He support and out of the ordinary contribution was highly appreciated by the team at Tata Capital Financial Services ltd.
These are just a few and there are multiple examples of Vodafone Idea employees and service associates across cities and towns in Rajasthan, who have braved the odds to serve Businesses and individual customers. Their reward has been the grateful acknowledgements and effusive appreciation from Customers for going beyond the call of duty to serve and assist when help was needed the most!