Did Airtel really bow down to a discriminatory request? Maybe you should read this

In the past 24 hours, a lot has happened and a lot has been said. Mostly, untrue and factually incorrect. Allow yourself the next 60 seconds to come closer to the truth.

For us, Monday was simply a case of two dedicated professionals, Shoaib and Gaganjot, following a dutiful course in their regular work shift. But it ended with making national headlines. As is true for most customer care processes, the idea is to minimize the time taken to resolve any customer query. So when a customer writes in and one advisor is busy, the query gets assigned to the next available advisor automatically. Which is exactly what happened with Shoaib and Gaganjot.

Here’s what was different for them: Two things. First, a customer who made an outrageous request of preferring to talk to someone of a particular religious identity. Second, a realization that this was to be given more importance & responded to before solving the actual service issue. But regardless, they continued to dedicatedly work towards ensuring that the case was progressing towards a solution.

Here’s the part they didn’t see: That the world was watching and reading into this from a very different lens. The fact that Shoaib wasn’t logged in and that Gaganjot took up the case got read as ‘bowing down to bigotry’. The fact that Gaganjot didn’t check his colleague’s religious identity before taking up the case got read as ‘heeding to a discriminatory request’.

Here’s what they learnt: While Shoaib and Gaganjot, went about working on this case they learnt a harsh lesson. That their religious identity matters. That they should check identities before taking up the responsibility of a service request. Maybe from here on, they will. However, we will resist that. Strongly. We promise you that we will try our best to let them stay innocent and bereft of religious considerations in the path of their duty. Our training manuals will never carry instructions to pause and check one’s identity before serving a query.

We are still trying to wrap our head around how one colleague responding on behalf of another is being misconstrued as our ‘acceptance of discrimination’. We did not and we repeat, we DID NOT change the advisor because of the unfathomable request from the said customer. At Airtel, we never have and never will succumb to differentiating on the basis of religion, ethnicity or caste. We will continue to train our representatives to see the world without the filters of bias, of any kind. Airtel has been resolute for 23 years. And our resolve comes from the way we have built this company – on teamwork, perseverance and sheer love for what we do. We would not have gotten this far if we lived by shallow principles of discrimination.

Shoaib, Gaganjot and other members of the team will continue to respond to you basis who is ready and available. It’s now upon you to be the judge of what impression this episode has left on these two minds and possibly many more. And decide whether you want to share this with your family and friends so that they too can get closer to the truth.

Official Airtel Spokesperson
(Name withheld so you can read this free of religious and caste overtones)