Phone On. Caller Tune On.

Make way Telemarketing, Reliance Communications is here with new idea of selling the time each of its subscriber's phone rings as a Classified space. Seems a nice business idea for Reliance ADAG, they have tried it and succeeded with their own in-house Reliance Power. In a step up to the Reliance Power IPO, Reliance Communications has gone ahead and set the default Caller Tune of millions of its customers to the Reliance Power tune. Call any Reliance customer who hasn't apriori activated his caller tune service and you would get to her the Reliance Power jingle. This has a two fold effect. First, if the customer likes the caller tune or just ignores it, his callers would get to listen to Reliance Power. Advertising for Reliance Power achieved. Second, if the customer dislikes the caller tune and decides to opt out of it, Reliance ADAG would ask you to be patient for 72 hours as your request is under process. So, the customer would, out of frustration or to save face, just dial * when he is listening to someone's caller tune he likes. That means one more customer for the Caller Tune Service, most probably! Some astute way of selling, I tell you!

The tune, unfortunately, is so incoherent on the phone and makes the caller feel low of the person he has called. It has happened to me, so its experience speaking. Reliance ADAG in an effort to maximise its chances at the bourses, has left no stone unturned. Somebody lists the onslaught here. It is agreed that Reliance Power is going to rewrite what DLF has written, and it is a boon for the retail customer and blah and blah... But, shudn't there have been some ethics come into play when they planned their advertising?

In the era of opposition to Telemarketing, and formation of DND registries, Reliance has just opened up a new door for vouyuer marketers. The customer was neither consulted nor given an option to opt out of the service after it had begun. It is ironical to see that to copy a caller tune, you just have to dial a *, but to remove it you have to wait 72 hours after calling the Customer Service by which time the due damage could have been done. It is intelligent marketing and money making strategy, but too much of an intrusive one at that.

Apart from the woes of being a Reliance customer at such a juncture, I must actually be awed by how intelligent Reliance ADAG is when using its businesses to brand one of its businesses. Radio, multiplex, Telephone initially might seem not in fit with Capital, Finance, Power, Insurance etc... but the value they bring to the table to build the brand of something relatively unknown like Reliance Power tells us the positivity of a diverse business basket. Thanks to the existence of so many channels of Reliance ADAG, the folks have been able to cut corners and keep the figure of ad spend for Reliance Power to just Rs. 20 Crore. Just 20C for something not less than 9K Crore. Now, that's RoI.

But from the customer angle, the woes remain. A customer care that doesn't help, a company that doesn't provide information of opting out, and millions of customers knowing not where to go. That is Reliance Communications for you!