By this time most of them would be aware of what exactly is happening with Blackberry users round the globe in the mean time this is the 3rd day with no BBM services back in India and nor RIM or operators are giving any proper update when the service would be restored all we are getting is a random consoling text msgs stating services will be restored in 3 to 4 hours.
All operator’s in India have have already updated the call centre and other point about the blackberry services being down but still haven’t announced any initiative of the services like validity extension to the prepaid customers which has created a dissatisfaction among many customers. Now no operator is taking the blame as fault is at RIM.
If RIM continues to the same thing for the next couple of days people using Blackberry will be moving out of RIM and might move towards other smartphones.
Whereas operators back in UAE like Du and Etisalat have already announced that they will be compensating its users with 3 days free service for all existing Blackberry subscribers even though the service is yet to be resolved, though to my surprise no Indian operators have come up with any compensation plans which is truly very disappointing.
Whats our take and how Operators can overcome this :
For the prepaid users he can be compensated with the validity extension, but when it comes to postpaid users he is the one who is shelling out more money from his pocket.
Indian operators can think of giving waiver for these customers from Rs 50 to Rs 100 as based on the plans opted as per day if he is shelling out Rs 899 he should get a waiver for Rs 100 for 3 days. It’s not necessary that customers have to call the customer care. Operators can take initiative themselves to add more customers so that customers can feel that the operators do care for them.
If customer starts moving toward the Smartphone operators will have a tough time as the smartphone either requires at 2G or 3G plans which is comparatively bit cheaper than the blackberry.
If 50% of the users move from BBM then operator need to rethink on the BBM plans for the rest of the users.
We are still hoping that Indian operators wont put us down and come up with a very good compensation plan for Indian Blackberry Customers.
