Tata Teleservices today said it would compensate its subscribers if the company fails to meet the pre-determined levels of service standards, a move that would help retain customers and force others to follow suite.
The Customer Service Charter for Tata Indicom, the company said, "Guarantees pre-determined levels of service and support and includes Compensation Clauses to pay back customers if the set service levels are not met."
The initiative was announced to commemorate the 171st birth anniversary of Tata Group Founder Sir Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, a visionary who sowed the seeds of industrialisation in India.
TTSL offers wide-ranging telecom services, including mobile (both GSM and CDMA based), landline and broadband services across the nation and is the fifth largest operator in the country with over 60 million mobile subscribers.
The service will be immediately available to Tata Indicom customers across all 20 telecom Circles where the company operates.
Commenting on the new initiative, Anil Sardana, Managing Director of Tata Teleservices Limited, said, "On the occasion of our Group's Founder's Day, we pledge to give every customer his rightful due."
TTSL was the first operator to start per second pulse in mobile services and had set the trend for others.
The company's new initiative would also help it retain its subscribers after the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is implemented, a service that enables users to change its operators while retaining the number.
According to sources, at least 15-20 per cent of the subscribers with each operator are likely to make use of MNP once it becomes available.
The Customer Service Charter, a first-of-its-kind endeavor in the Indian telecom industry, is aimed at ensuring that customer service emerges as a key differentiator for telecom operators, TTSL said.
The Charter focuses on several identified aspects of customer interaction, with the larger objective of creating world-class service standards and benchmarks.
The Charter will fulfill customer commitments -- five salient propositions have been identified by Tata Teleservices Limited to begin with, and Compensation Clauses have been built in, wherein the company will pay back customers if pre-set service levels on the chosen parameters are not met.
The Customer Service Charter includes five customer commitments, namely the bill dispute commitment, the call drop commitment, the handset replacement commitment, the VAS commitment and the call-cack commitment.
The bill dispute commitment offers resolution of every bill dispute within three working days, failing which TTSL will compensate its customers with Rs 25 for every additional day taken to resolve the complaint.
Similarly, other commitments also carry compensation in case the services are not the same as guaranteed.