The Fibre Cut and the Three-Month Demand
You handle escalations for a home broadband provider in Bhubaneswar. A customer's 100 Mbps connection has been down for 11 days. He has called four times; two tickets were auto-closed by the system after 72 hours with no update, and the last agent promised a callback that never came. His monthly rental is Rs 899 and he now wants three months free plus a written apology. He has posted on X tagging the operator and says he will approach the consumer forum. The line test shows a fibre cut at the society junction box, and the network team's job card for that box was raised yesterday with a 5-working-day service window. Your empowerment is a rental credit of up to 7 days pro-rata that you can approve instantly; a supervisor can approve up to 15 days. The outage is documented from the first ticket. The customer is polite but audibly tired and is speaking in Odia.
1. Script your first 90 seconds on the call and state what you deliberately avoid saying.
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First 90 seconds:
- Identify yourself by name and role, and switch to Odia: 'Sir, I have the full history in front of me, and I am the person who will own this now.'
- Own the failure without blaming the system or previous agents: 'You have called four times and were promised a callback that did not happen. That is on us.'
- Summarise the facts back so he knows you have actually read the record: 11 days down, fibre cut at the society junction box, job card raised yesterday, 5-working-day window.
- Give the one thing he does not have - a specific, checkable commitment: a named callback from you on a date and a time slot, plus the job card reference.
Avoid: 'It is a network issue, sir' (he knows), 'As per policy' before any remedy is offered, promising a date the network team has not committed to, and asking him to delete the post - that last one escalates almost every time.
Reasoning: an escalation call fails when the customer believes he is explaining his case again. Proving you have the history buys the thirty seconds you need to offer a remedy.
2. Calculate a defensible credit and justify the number, including what you can approve yourself.
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The arithmetic: Rs 899 per 30-day month is about Rs 29.97 per day. Eleven days of documented outage is about Rs 330.
- What you can approve on this call: 7 days pro-rata, about Rs 210, credited to the next bill immediately.
- What you escalate for: up to 15 days, about Rs 450, which covers the full 11-day outage plus roughly four days of goodwill for the two missed callbacks and the auto-closed tickets.
Why not three months (about Rs 2,697): the service was down 11 days, not 90, and the contract's credit basis is the rental for the period of non-service. Offering three months sets an expectation the company will not honour for the next customer, and a supervisor will reverse it, which is worse than never offering it. Say that plainly and offer the alternative instead of a flat refusal: 'I cannot approve three months, but I can get you the full outage period plus goodwill, and I can add a written note of apology from the service head.'
Reasoning: the credit is defensible because it is tied to documented days, not to the volume of the complaint. Show the customer the calculation and the number stops looking arbitrary.
3. State your escalation decision and what you record so the consumer-forum threat does not become a real case.
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Escalate now, on three triggers: the value exceeds your authority, the customer has stated an intention to go to a forum, and there is a documented service failure with two auto-closed tickets. Route to the supervisor for the 15-day credit and simultaneously raise the network job card to priority with the NOC, quoting the 11-day outage - a faster restoration is worth more to him than any credit.
Record, at the time of the call:
- The full ticket trail with the two auto-closures, so the failure is visible and not just the customer's claim.
- The credit approved and the escalation for the balance, with approver name and timestamp.
- The promised callback date and time, and the job card reference given to the customer.
- The customer's own words about the consumer forum, quoted, not paraphrased.
The callback must actually happen. If the network update has not arrived before the promised time, call anyway with the status, because a missed second callback is what turns a documented complaint into a winning complaint.
Reasoning: in a forum or regulator complaint the company's defence is its own record. Auto-closed tickets with no customer contact are the weakest possible evidence; a contemporaneous note showing ownership, a calculated credit and a kept promise is the strongest.