BENGALURU: Currently, BESCOM has 30 helplines and as part of their monsoon preparation, the agency is expanding their 1912 helpline capacity to address all complaint calls. On a daily basis, Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) receives anywhere between 8,000 and 9,000 complaints through various channels – helpline, online, SMS, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and e-mail.
In the last few weeks, Bengaluru has received heavy rains at irregular intervals and incessant calls flood in during such a situation. “Despite having several other channels to complain, consumers prefer the helpline the most. Starting this Friday, we will increase the line capacity by adding 15 more. This will ensure that all issues are attended to quickly and no one has to wait to reach our staff,” said Krishnamurthy B, general manager, customer relations, BESCOM.
“Ninety-five per cent of the complaints we receive are about power cuts. The rest are about billing and reconnection to power after delayed payments. However, since we will face a lot of power cuts due to the upcoming monsoon season, we want to be prepared to handle them 24/7. With the current rains in April, we received a lot of complaint calls,” he said, further adding, “We are adding a feature of Intra Voice Recording (IVR) that will automatically record the customer’s complaints by guiding them to press certain numbers for certain categories of complaints. They will receive a docket number and our staff at the back-end will follow up on the issue.”
Commenting on the same, Sujatha Ramprasad, resident of Doopanahalli, said, “The 1912 helpline is always busy during crucial times, such as power cuts during rains.The number is unreachable when we require information, as the lines are probably clogged with thousands of other complaints. Adding lines will be helpful to consumers.”
However, Ramprasad feels that he would prefer direct contact over automated voice recordings. It is a time-consuming process that private customer care centres also use. “Our complaints might just be taken for granted. The consumer gets impatient if they have to keep pressing numbers for getting an issue resolved,” Ramprasad added.
Agrees B S Manohar, resident of Basavangudi, who said, “BESCOM is responsive to our complaints and I would prefer to keep it manual rather than automate it. That would increase the number of steps as we have to start all over again if we press the wrong number.”