Telecom Giant Announces 'Customer Aggravation' Programme.

by Anand Ramachandran, who is certain to pay a hefty fine.

Telecom giant Airtell (note the sly spelling change to avoid problems. Smart.) has announced that they have launched a brand new 'Customer Aggravation Programme' across the length and breadth of the country.

A company spokesman, addressing a press conference, said “We have always listened to our customers' thoughts. When queried, most of them answered that the qualities they associated with our brand are 'irritating', 'annoying' and 'mother blade'. Hence we decided to strengthen our core brand personality by implementing an action plan to reinforce these areas”.

The new ad campaign that will drive Airtel's new Customer Aggravation Programme. The campaign was launched at a glitzy party at one of India's plushest beach resorts, with attendees including Amithabh Bachchan (not in picture), Sachin Tendulkar (not in picture) and Vijay Lokapally (not in invitee list). Click the ad for full size image.

Company sources have claimed that the implementation of the Aggravation programme will not be easy. “It involves training all our call centre executives to make sure that every single customer has the maximum possible difficulty resolving the simplest of issues. We'll start with the basics – ensuring that the customer must carefully explain the problem and supply details such as his name, number, favourite Ajay Devgan moustache, and most memorable moon phase a minimum number of three times to different incompetent support personnel. We'll also help compound the situation by forcing the customer to listen to our blade A.R.Rahman signature tune for interminable periods while they wait for their problem to be consigned to our trash heap.”, said a spokesman, grinning evilly and looking eerily like Bimaldas.

Apparently, once the basic services are in place, Airtel plans to upgrade to value-added annoyances like pre-recorded swear-words, random call disconnection, a whole suite of handset-incompatible features and SMS based virus distribution. Naturally, these services will come at a huge additional cost, which will be intimated to unsuspecting customers only as a consolidated lump sum at the end of the first year. “Customers, Scmhustomers. That'll serve them right”, thought a smug middle management cretin to those around him.

“It's brilliant.”, said renowned Wildlife Photographer S.U.Saravanakumar, just back from his holiday in the United States. “They just have to follow the same processes they normally follow and they'll be fine.” “Damn, this guy catches on quick”, said a nearby Airtell salesperson.

“We have over ten million pissed-off subscribers. We hope to increase this number to over thirty million in the coming year.”, the spokesman signed off, before being engulfed in a cloud of marketing stupidity.

Not to be left behind, Tata Indiacomcomm has announced their own plans for another initiative on 'Total Consumer Frustration'. Their call centre could not be reached for comment, as all their support executives were busy on calls, The Son of Bosey team is still holding the line, since we're extremely important to their recorded message.