Kunal Kamra, a comedian and unapologetic social commentator, has sparked a new online controversy and this time, directly against Ola Cabs and its vocal CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal. In a sequence of viral social media posts, Kamra thoroughly described an annoying experience with the customer service of Ola, accusing the ride-hailing giant of a severe inability to address a comparatively simple question. The event that soon turned into a mass spectacle has subjected the customer support systems employed by Ola to harsh critique and brought Aggarwal into the direct focus of the humorous but pointed remarks of Kamra.
As an account of the saga that has been widely propagated by Kamra, the saga itself started with an apparently harmless matter on a billing inconsistency on a recent ride with Ola. He says what then occurred was a maze of calls to generic call centers, hearing blank auto-responses and what appeared to be a lack of understanding or awareness of how to escalate the underlying issue by customer service agents. The posts by Kamra featured screenshots of what he called circular chats with chatbots and human agents who appeared powerless to get past pre-programmed replies and did not solve the original billing problem in any way. It was clear that the comedian felt frustrated when he narrated how much time he spent trying to get a resolution and it was, in his words, met with systematic apathy.
The fact that Kamra had his complaint publicized quickly brought Bhavish Aggarwal into the scene. Kamra, who has made it a habit to call out those who pose authority, directly addressed Aggarwal in his posts, doubting the CEO on his frequent customer experience promises in the context of his own experience. This head on collision has compelled Ola, especially the leadership of the same, into a defensive stance. Although Ola has privately approached Kamra via the official channels, the perception established in the beginning was one of a big tech unicorn grappling with core customer care, which is a key consumer experience point of any services sector.
The virality of the incident has struck a chord with scores of thousands of other users, who swamped the comment posts of Kamra with complaints about Ola customer service in high numbers and made a campaign out of one complaint against corporate apathy. Critics note that the push to grow and automate at AI in the technology giants could be unwillingly killing the human aspect of the customer service, causing frustrating customer experiences such as that of Kamra. The billing problem per se may not be a big business, but the way the complaint has been publicly addressed by the high profile name like Kamra has transformed it into a major PR dilemma to Ola and this requires urgently discussing whether technological efficiency is taking the place of real customer care.
