Giant company with dwarf customer service

As of November 2009, Etisalat is the 13th largest mobile network operator in the world, with a total customer base of 100 million. On January 31, 2010, Etisalat reported net revenue of USD $8.4 billion (AED 30.831 billion) and net profits of USD $2.407 billion (AED 8.836 billion).

If you are impressed with the numbers above, I would say - "Good! you haven't experienced their service yet".

It has been one month and four visits, since I have been unsuccessfully trying to disconnect my old telephone number. Everytime I visit Etisalat office, I am assured that it will cancelled and I will not have to visit their office again for this issue. Still, nothing has been done and Etisalat is billing me for this period. No wonder the net profit figure is enormous for them.

This was not enough now another battle front is opened by Etisalat against me. For the new telephone connection, for which the fee is only AED 159, I have received a bill of AED 753. How is that possible? Well, I am asking the same.

What concerns me, is the way Etisalat flaunts its wealth while having so many dissatisfied customers. Unfortunately, UAE has only two service providers. While one is still starting its operations, Etisalat is the only choice we have. We have no option but bear the poor service and keep whining about it despite paying one of the highest call charges in the world.

Numorous reasons can be sighted for such an inefficiency. However, I see following as the main -

1. Competition - In the name of competition all Etisalat has is a weak competition from Du, which is all the time struggling to even provide the network coverage to its customers. Therefore, Etisalat has nothing to worry. It still has a monopoly in the market.
2. Philosophy - is there anything bad in being profit centric organization? No, till it is after customer centric philosophy there is nothing bad being profit centric. In case of Etisalat making profit, acquiring and expanding businesses globally is the main philosophy rather than taking care of the customer. For how long Etisalat can sustain with this attitude, that has to be seen.
3. Corporate Culture - As is the philosophy, the culture prevailing in Etisalat also remains to be indifferent to the customer. I was sitting in the Etisalat for 45 minutes, while waiting for the screen the executive attending me, leaves the desk and doesnt come back for another 15 minutes. When I stand up and starting looking around for him, he come back only to tell me that he forgot that I was sitting there.

I wonder for how long Etisalat will maintain this momentum of growth without tidying its act, while I try to find some way to resolve my problems with them.

Why couples start looking like each other

I always wondered why Yadav uncle and aunty look like brother and sister. Today I got the answer -

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Life/Relationships/Man-Woman/Why-couples-start-looking-like-each-other/articleshow/6105656.cms

Stanley Allen McChrystal's Departure

General Stanley Allen McChrystal has been sacked from his position of commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. How does it matter to me? Nothing!!! It doesn't matter to me at all unless I start thinking about it from Project Management perspective.

If I was Barak Obama, the stakeholder, bearing direct impact by the outcome of Afghanistan project, would I have done same? Yes, I would have.

General  McChrystal  is a career soldier with impaccable record to have reached the position of commander of US and NATO forces. Therefore, no one can challenge his capabilities as project manager of Afghanistan project. However, there were three things that led to his removal.

One, the non alignment of vision with the primary stakeholders. If the stakeholder and project manager do not share the common vision the project is likely to fail. It happens quite often happens the project manager doesn't agree with the stakeholder's vision or the methodology. It is important to synchronize between the two.

Two, public display of disagreement with the vision and the stakeholders, negatively affects motivation and direction of the team members, in this case officers and soldiers under the command of the General.

Three, availability of a substitute. Obama has an easy option of replacing General McChrystal with General David Howell Petraeus who has a proven track record from Iraq Project. It is obvious to assume that when he delivered results in Iraq, he shares common vision with the stakeholders and he is a good project manager.

All the above reasons can have an impact on a project of any magnitude, something as small as holding a house party or running a war expedition of this magnitude.

Waiting!!!

It is really tough to wait and wait for extended period to receive the response from not so punctual collaborators.

At the moment, all four projects are awaiting response from other side. Hope they respond soon and things move.

मेरी कंप्यूटर मैं पहेली हिंदी लिखाई

मेरे को तो यह मालूम ही नहीं था की इधर हिंदी लिखना इतना आसान था. अब तो मजा आ गया. शायद अब मैं काफी कुछ और लिख पाउँगा. मैं सच मैं बड़ा ही अचंभित हूँ की ऐसा भी संभव है. एक IT प्रोफ़ेस्सिओनल होने के बावजूद मैं इस से बहुत ही प्रभावित हूँ.

Want to post something!!!

Today I am determined to write something in this blog. After a lot of conflicts I thought of copy pasting a quote by Zig Ziglar which I liked



"If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."

Aiyerisation

A very interesting piece written by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyer (Veteran journalist) about himself. Published in The Times of India April 3, 2005.

My family and other globalisers http://www.swaminomics.org/default.htm

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaminathan_Aiyar

In 1992, I wrote a book titled "Towards Globalisation." I did not realize at the time that this was going to be the history of my family. Last week we celebrated the wedding of my daughter, Pallavi. A brilliant student, she had won scholarships to Oxford University and the London School of Economics. In London, she met Julio, a young man from Spain. They decided to take up jobs in Beijing, China. Last week, they came over from Beijing to Delhi to get married. Their wedding guests included 70 from North America, Europe and China.

That may sound as global as it gets, but arguably my elder son Shekhar has gone further. He too won a scholarship to Oxford University, and then taught for a year at a school in Colombo. Next he went to Toronto, Canada, for higher studies. There he met a German girl, Franziska. They both got jobs in the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, USA. They constantly traveled on IMF business to disparate countries. Shekhar went to Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Kyrgyzstan and Laos. Franziska went to Rwanda, Tajikistan, and Russia. They interrupted these perambulations to get married at the end of 2003. My younger son Rustam is only 15. Presumably he will study in Australia, marry a Nigerian girl, and settle in Peru.

Some readers may think that my family was born and bred in a jet plane. The facts are more prosaic. Our ancestral home is Kargudi, a humble, obscure village in Tanjore district, Tamil Nadu. My earliest memories of it are as a house with no toilets, running water, or pukka road. When we visited, we disembarked from the train at Tanjore, and then traveled 45 minutes by bullock cart to reach the ancestral home.

My father was one of six children, all of whom produced many children (I myself had three siblings). So, two generations later, the size of the Kargudi extended family (including spouses) is over 200. Of these, only three still live in the village. The rest have moved across India and across the whole world, from China to Arabia to Europe to America. This one Kargudi house has already produced 50 American citizens.

So, dismiss the mutterings of those who claim that globalisation means westernisation. It looks more like Aiyarisation, viewed from Kargudi. What does this imply for our sense of identity? I cannot speak for the whole Kargudi clan, which ranges from rigid Tamil Brahmins to beef-eating, pizza-guzzling, hip-hop dancers.

But for me, the Aiyarisation of the world does not mean Aiyar domination. Nor does it mean Aiyar submergence in a global sea. It means acquiring multiple identities, and moving closer to the ideal of a brotherhood of all humanity. I remain quite at home sitting on the floor of the Kargudi house on a mat of reeds, eating from a banana leaf with my hands. I feel just as much at home eating noodles in China, steak in Spain, and cous-cous in Morocco. I am a Kargudi villager, a Tamilian, a Delhi-wallah, an Indian, a Washington Redskins fan, and a citizen of the world, all at the same time and with no sense of tension or contradiction.

When I see the Brihadeeswara Temple in Tanjore, my heart swells and I say to myself “This is mine.” I feel exactly the same way when I see the Church of Bom Jesus in Goa, or the Jewish synagogue in Cochin, or the Siddi Sayed mosque in Ahmedabad: these too are mine. I have strolled so often through the Parks at Oxford University and along the canal in Washington, DC, that they feel part of me. As my family multiplies and intermarries, I hope one day to look at the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona and Rhine river in Germany and think “these too are mine.”

We Aiyars have a taken a step toward the vision of John Lennon.

Imagine there’s no country, It isn’t hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too.

My father’s generation was the first to leave the village, and loosen its regional shackles. My father became a chartered accountant in Lahore, an uncle became a hotel manager in Karachi, and we had an aunt in Rangoon.

My generation loosened the shackles of religion. My elder brother married a Sikh, my younger brother married a Christian, and I married a Parsi. The next generation of my children has gone a step further. It has married across the globe.

Globalisation for me is not just the movement of goods and capital, or even of Aiyars. It is a step towards Lennon’s vision of no country. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope one day you’ll join us. And the world will be one.