“Anand Sonawane” Ji

Disclaimer: All the characters in this blog are fictitious and any person ……..This blog is provoked by the Phone Call that I received today morning. Well!! I have received similar calls lots of times before also. I received them in a meeting, while traveling, while sleeping and many other occasions which are part of my daily routines.Every time it has left me irritated and I never thought it would find some place in my blog. Some of the content here might also touch the technology aspect making it Technology blog or T-Blog as I call it. But let me not worry about it.

So what was the phone call that I received today morning? ….. While I was making up my mind for going to office and fixing the priorities of my office tasks, I received this call and person from the other side spoke …. “Hello Good morning, Mein XYZ bank se baat kar raha hoon, Kya mein Anand Sonawane Ji se baat kar sakta hoon? “. This has been start of all the wrong numbers that I have received from many other financial organizations for past couple of years. Excluding the time, I have been outside India; I get to hear same lines invariably from these financial giants. Initially I disregarded, thinking it’s a wrong number but as the call frequency grew, I made it a point to tell the person on other side that the number they dialed does not belong to Anand Sonawane but belongs to Yogesh Dhond (Me)…but all in vain. Things have not improved from then, I still receive the calls and I put them off saying “wrong number” … well If you can’t change it … get adjusted to it!! You see!! ?

By now I have understood few things about Anand Sonawane. He is the Customer of “XYZ” bank; incidentally it happens to be my bank as well. He has loan amount of few lakhs in another bank as I receive the calls/SMS to make some pending payment. He has also invested in share market. If at all he incarnates in front of me sometimes in future, I would like tell him all his transactions and surprise him.

Some how these calls have created the Fraud image of Anand Sonawane in my mind and I am awaiting his wife/mother or children calling me saying. “Aaj Aloo ki sabji leke aao” or “Papa, ghar aate waqt sketch pen lana mat bhulna”. Of course this is bit of exaggeration now!! I know, whatever I presumed about Mr. Sonwane is not true and he is not fraudulent also. For he may not be aware of my identity itself neither does he know the “wrong number” syndrome, that I am affected with.

This is where technical person in me got me writing this blog. I have passed through the pains of creating an account with bank, or to buy new mobile connection. I have supplied all those document proofs to comply with the requirement. All I know, that it is mandatory for all of them to know their customer well enough before they do any business with him. There are activities like KYC (know your customer) which are carried out even before they start dealing with me. But, When I get the same calls every time, I can’t stop myself ridiculing the whole system. Believe me, all these calls that I have received, are from organizational giants in their own domain. I remember couple of instances, where I have even requested guy on other side, to delete my phone number against Anand Sonawane’s name. At one instance, I got the call from same department of the bank twice. First time they enquired about Anand Sonawane and second time they enquired about me. I am really not exaggerating this.

It’s really funny to see a very pathetic CRM system being employed by these giants. A good Master Data Management would have been solution to avoid such problems. The companies, banks, mobile operators on the other side of the globe are embracing it, to increase the customer satisfaction. But their equivalent counterparts are probably not even looking at it. In fact, my firm belief is that, the programs such as KYC are pursued in mechanical way to abide the norms put forward by the apex bodies. They do not even pay attention to the spirit involved in it. Hundreds of people are employed to handle the customer complaint without the proper rights of executing the complaints. They don’t even understand that a proper planned Master data solution would save the leakage in their accounts books under the sections “Miscellaneous”. What else would you account for when you dialed same number asking for 2 different people?

This is precisely the reason I feel that it is high time for Indian giants from all the sectors to put their thinking hats on to identify the flaws in the way they handle their consumers. A master data solution or good CRM is their choice. A qualitative way or a quantitative method to run KYC is their choice. Getting their ideas mapped into software world or improving their existing system is their choice. But stitch in time will definitely save nine. Otherwise even a good nation wide ID project would loose big time without the required spirit.

And last but not the least, next time “XYZ” bank calls me …I would definitely like to hear … “Kya mein Yogesh Dhond se baat kar raho hoon?”… Is this an unrealistic dream?