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Follow UsThe channel partners of
AOC are voicing their displeasure, especially regarding the
lackadaisical attitude towards the settlement of the service related
and spare parts scarcity complaints of the partners. The lack of
proper service facilities is hampering the credibility of channel
partners, as they are unable to offer efficient service support to
their customers.
Angry with the lukewarm
service response on AOC's monitors in Delhi, Dinesh Gupta, owner of
E-Corel said, “Response time is the major problem we face while
dealing with AOC's monitor. If we log a call for a customer, who
has developed a problem related to components, the local
representative generally doesn't have any sparepart. To add to it,
they don't have any other product for replacement on a
short-gap basis. These factors lead to an unpleasant rapport with our
customers.”
Another key issue that the
partners are facing is that when customers contact the toll-free
numbers of AOC, their doubts and
problems are never satisfactorily solved. “We have received
complaints from our customers, that
the customer care representatives ask technical questions. As the
customers find it really difficult to answer such queries, they turn
to us for help. Although the complaint rate is very less, despite
that company takes more than 2-3 months to resolve a small issue,”
sighed Manoj Bansal of Adline Systems. The service crisis is even
more severe in the upcountry market,
According to Dinesh Sharma, director, OST Technologies, “The entire
Punjab, J&K, Himachal Pradesh belt is affected with the service
crisis. We are getting numerous customers who are complaining about
the service time. The basic time to log a call and get any product
repaired is about 15-20 days which is too long. I don't understand
the reason for this delay. My business has been badly affected for
the past 5 months.”
Talking to Ajaya Kumar, MD
of Park Network, who is Haryana and Delhi regional distributor for AOC
said, “In my
opinion, there were service issues over the last 2-3 months. However,
now the situation is under control after AOC has gone from one
national service provider to regional authorized service providers.
Moreover, in addition to RD role, AOC has extended our relationship to
services as well for
the Haryana territory.” When The DQ Week contacted AOC on
these issues, Saurabh Grover, sales head India, AOC Monitor Business
clarified, “With increase in volume and continuous aggressive
growth, we had anticipated that our 5 year old service provider
(earlier RT Outsourcing) may not be able to take care of the
warranty needs across India, even if we maintained net failure rate
below 1%. Therefore, we decided to expand our service capabilities from
one service provider
to multiple authorized service providers (ASPs) that too regionally.
Hence, from Q3 2011, we
initiated a change in our customer support system, decentralizing it
from one national service provider to regional ASPs. Although, the
process of appointing ASPs in Punjab, J&K, Himachal, Chandigarh
and Goa are yet to be completed so we can understand some disturbance
in our service delivery.” He also added, “We understand that
there has been a snag period of 1 and half to 2 months in every
region at different points of time, when service support has not been
up to mark,
due to the hiccups of transition/change over phase from one service
provider to other.”
The company earlier had
regional storage of spares and parts, which meant longer transit time
from warehouse to on-site locations. Now, it has local storage of
spares and parts at all key locations, in some cases 6-8 in a state.
This has improved efficiency of parts handling and also shortened
lead time, thereby improving
efficiency. “We assure our valuable partners and AOC customers that
AOC has already initiated impromptu steps, to make sure that any
service concerns will not rise in the future and that we will
continue to benchmark our service with the best of Industry
standards,” assured Grover.