Turning Complainants Into Followers

Wallposts & Tweets Are In; Complaint Boxes Are Out

SANJAY PINTO 

You may have come across an SMS rant about how a pizza reaches home faster than an ambulance! Whether or not that smacks of exaggeration is debatable. But there can be no two opinions that the response time is such a key element in customer interface that today a business entity can do a Dale Carnegie and ‘Win Friends & Influence People’ on the social media with ease. Quite like Sunny Gavaskar who was known to use the pace of the Carribean quickies to make the ball reach the boundary  faster, mobile operators’ twitter handles like @ Airtel_Presence  or @VodafoneIN or @TataDocomo have been converting a good number of complainants or feedback providers into followers. The response time, they claim, is less than ten minutes and their dedicated cyber net teams are active between six in the morning till twelve midnight. Let off steam on twitter about a connectivity issue or even the eternal telemarketing menace despite being on the Do Not Disturb registry and you get an immediate reply with a request for more details through a Direct Message. The trick here is that you need to follow each other to be able to send direct messages. That’s the first step in the following, as it were. Of course, the proof of the following is in the follow up! With more than fifty thousand to a lakh tweets and twenty five to fifty thousand followers, these  private mobile operators have realised the scope for a speedy redressal mechanism on twitter and facebook. Or call it customer anger management if you like!

Contrast this proactive approach with what I’m tempted to refer to as the King Herod mindset of a public sector telecom body . The Roman King had come up with a fiat to kill all male new born babies just to wipe out any future threat to the throne. With a similar broad sweep strategy, to remind a few defaulters, every subscriber is disturbed. So even those who have paid their bills, are woken up with reminder calls at odd hours. I have even got SMS payment acknowledgements at two in the morning and a payment reminder the next day, perhaps unwittingly designed to ruin that rare afternoon siesta! Surely, they can spare customers who have paid up, of this nuisance, instead of reminding everyone in their database with an afterthought: “If you have already paid your bill, please ignore this”.  What’s worse, the other day my broadband connection stopped working. The Service Centre nonchalantly mentioned that a server was being changed. How about the courtesy of advance intimation to customers that even Electricity Boards give out?

If private players can reach out to customers on the social media, and even the Chennai Traffic Police or the US Consulate in Chennai  can engage with the public on facebook quite effectively, what is stopping public sector undertakings and other government departments from keeping up with the times? Mindsets. And archaic rules like banning social media sites in office computers. As if most people don’t have them on their mobile phones. In this age of mobile number portability, the customer may not be the king but definitely a chooser. And it does make sense to reach out to a few crore  people on their very own platform.

Ideally, every civic body, every police commissionerate, as well as other departments like Registration, Passport, Transport, Electricity and so on that have high public interaction, must be on the social media. Let the respective pages be monitored by the department heads periodically. With the private sector, we have a choice; with some of those government wings, we don’t. All the more reason for interaction between public servants and the people they serve, in the medium of today. When let’s say,  a senior citizen, sitting at home, manages to reach the Police Commissioner at a designated hour, that’s empowerment. That’s accountability too. Wallposts and tweets are here to stay. The days of shabby complaint boxes opened once in six months, are over.

(An edited version of this column of mine was published in The Hindu)

A Tale Of Two Concerns

What Is Sauce For The Mainstream Media Should Be Sauce For The Social Media Too.

SANJAY PINTO 

It’s worth recalling English jurist Jeremy Bentham’s observation “Where there is no publicity, there is no justice. Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself while trying, under trial.” Quoted in a few landmark judgments of the yesteryears like the Naresh Shridhar Mirajkar case, this Bentham gem is a reminder of the old toss up between the open justice system and privacy coupled with a fair trial. A debate rekindled by the recent Supreme Court verdict that allows postponement of publication in select and sensitive trials. Yet again, the mainstream media under the scanner.

The same week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh raised the issue of abuse of the social media by mischievous elements in his meeting with Directors General Of Police. Two authorities, two separate concerns. Today, there are defamation suits claiming damages of a hundred crore over a tweet, filed in India. So why is regulation, which constantly haunts the mainstream media, considered a bad word in the context of the social media? It’s all very well to keep placing checks and balances for newspapers and television channels but what about the possible world ‘wild’ web sections on twitter and facebook? Public opinion is created, cemented and disseminated much faster on these platforms. Hours before a prime time discussion on national tv  could take place or a strongly worded editorial could come out, the verdict was already out on twitter and facebook on the biggest stories of the week. On cartoonist Aseem. On the Koodankulam protest. Both these cases were being heard in courts. Can it be anyone’s contention that tweets, retweets, wall posts or tags are any less potent? That they come with diminished potential of influencing minds that matter? I’d say there is more hard hitting and incisive commentary on this platform. The 140 character brevity is now a fine art! Two sets of rules? At least, there are Editors to take the rap for objectionable content in news reports. Who will take responsibility for trolls and orchestrated vilification campaigns on the social media? Twitter Inc which does not even have an office in India? Anonymous folks or worse, those with fake identities who revel in sniper shots? Please don’t misconstrue my line of argument. I’m as much a fan and beneficiary of the social media as I am of the concept of  ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. That I have ceased to be a part of the mainstream media from this week should establish my bonafides!  

While there is anger on the social network, there is also the softer side. Some of the most sentimental comments on Yuvraj Singh’s comeback and the passing away of the ‘Milkman of India’ Verghese Kurien were not on tv or the papers but on walls and through tweets. And yes, on the Amul billboards too, that I’ve grown up admiring.

(An edited version of this column of mine was published in The Hindu)

Free Speech Vs Hate Speech

Blocking twitter handles is like yelling "shut up" to a person screaming!

SANJAY PINTO

The guillotine for dandruff? That’s the broad charge against the government of India for it’s attempt to clamp down on the social media against the backdrop of  rumour triggered violence against citizens from the North East. Faced with a volatile situation, the authorities were undoubtedly walking on egg shells. But by blocking twitter handles of innocent but well connected individuals, the authorities ended up with egg on their face; scoring an own goal, as the social media waved the red card with somewhat justified ‘I told you so’ indignation. Not to speak of sermons on how the government could have tackled rumours with information; instead of going after parody accounts.

We do need to understand that the social media emerged the way it has, because of disenchantment against the common enemy - the ‘system’ – politicians, officials and even the mainstream media. And when officialdom takes on this section that’s armed to the finger nails with anonymity, it’s a lost battle from the start. Like Jesus said “he who has not sinned pick up the first stone”; the social media is entitled to ask politicians as to how many of them have made inflammatory speeches in the past. What is their credibility to now preach to the common man? The malady is that neither are the authorities tech savvy or quick enough; nor do they understand human psychology to deal with this rather piquant situation. Piquant also because there are vast sections on twitter who lack the maturity to hold their punches when circumstances warrant restraint or to even suffer fools gladly.

To add to the circus are innumerable self styled ‘cyber experts’ who vie with one another; or even hire PR agencies, for their fifteen seconds of ‘fame’ on national television or to try a ‘quote’ marshall in the papers, just to spew text book sort of ‘solutions’ like the constitution of a Super Nodal Agency or whatever, with some of them as members! Blocking is often a cure worse than the disease. It’s like yelling “shut up” to a man screaming! And the sms restriction that was by-passed made officials seem too clever by half.  Still, there were those who couldn’t get text alerts on bank account withdrawals, delays in train and flight departures, stock market updates.

I’m just wondering if it is possible to monitor  key search words and take quick corrective action. The Cyber Society Of India has mooted the idea of India developing  its own indigenous operating systems, search engines, anti  virus  kits and servers, so that we don’t have to rely on foreign powers for technological support during an emergency. The suggestion on mobile phone number verification for  website creation or on social networking platforms comes from those who probably have not watched ‘A Wednesday’! Identity proof is hardly foolproof today. Everytime you get your driving licence or some other ID card photocopied outside, how sure are you that an extra copy isn’t surreptitiously  made and misused? All that you need to get a pre paid sim card is a photocopy of any of these documents! Physical verification of addresses based on identity proof submitted, happens at least a fortnight later. Unless, in this case, twitter has proper filters and more importantly, the will to keep out incendiary content, a realistic golden mean between free speech and hate speech can hardly be worked out.

Coming to the much bandied about  ‘self regulation’ magic potion. It did work with the mainstream media especially during the Babri Masjid judgment. The National Broadcasters Association is a vibrant body that silently sets standards and tries to make news channels adhere to a code of ethics. The Press Council Of India has a proactive, well meaning but sometimes misunderstood Chief. Early in my career, I remember Superintendents Of Police in sensitive districts informing journalists about some statue of a caste leader being damaged by miscreants but requesting us not to report it in the interest of peace. I know of many mediapersons who complied in public interest. Because free speech is not absolute. And in a toss up between freedom of expression and human life, the latter must always prevail. The social media that has its legitimate space in a democracy must also show restraint in a crisis. That will be a far better response to politicians than calling them names.

(An edited version of this column of mine was published in The Hindu)