Never bowed down to bigotry: Airtel on tweet row

Telecom giant Airtel today said it had never agreed to the "outrageous" request from a subscriber for a non-Muslim customer service representative and vowed to "stay innocent and bereft of religious consideration".

While Airtel came out with a strongly worded statement defending its actions, it emerged from Twitter timelines that Lucknow-based Pooja Singh had been contacted by Airtel representative Gaganjot in a routine manner in less than 10 minutes of Shoaib responding to her complaints of poor service.

Gaganjot messaged her once on her public timelines on Twitter and thrice through private direct message (DM) offering assistance to resolve her complaint, all before she tweeted seeking a "Hindu representative" as she had "no faith in his (Shoaib's) work ethics".

According to her twitter timelines, Pooja Singh complained of poor service at 12.09 pm on June 18, which was responded to by Shoaib at 12.18 pm.

Within minutes, Gaganjot responded to Pooja at 12.34 pm saying: "Hi let me check that out for you. I don't want to keep you waiting another minute! Please DM your 10 digit DTH ID along with your contact number via the link here, and we will connect with you to assist. Thank you, Gaganjot."
Even after being contacted by Gaganjot, Pooja, whose Twitter handle declares her as a management professional, a "Proud Indian" and a "Proud Hindu", at 2.59 pm wrote: "Dear Shoaib, as you're a Muslim and I have no faith in your working ethics because Kuran may have a different version for customer service, thus requesting you to assign a Hindu representative for my request. Thanks (sic)."
This message was responded to by Gaganjot at 3.25 pm saying: "Hi Pooja! As discussed, please let me know what time framework best for you so we can talk. Further, please share an alternate number so that I can assist you further with this. Thank you."
Airtel in a statement today said what has been reported of the company not standing up to bigotry is "mostly, untrue and factually incorrect."
Shoaib and Gaganjot, it said, followed a dutiful course in their regular work. "When a customer writes in and one advisor is busy, the query gets assigned to the next available advisor automatically. Which is exactly what happened with Shoaib and Gaganjot."
"The fact that Shoaib wasn't logged in and that Gaganjot took up the case got read as 'bowing down to bigotry'. The fact that Gaganjot didn't check his colleague's religious identity before taking up the case got read as 'heeding to a discriminatory request'."
"We did not and we repeat, we DID NOT change the advisor because of the unfathomable request from the said customer," the firm said. "At Airtel, we never have and never will succumb to differentiating on the basis of religion, ethnicity or caste."