First Written on May 24, 2007 Revised and Updated Thursday, July 10, 2008 Biggest is not necessarily the best - It may be the worst Customer service must handled by your best people, not by the most available - Madhavan Gopalachary We have often stated that the biggest is not necessarily the best. We were wrong. It may turn out that the biggest are the worst. Let me explain what happened with me. I have a gold Visa credit card issued by one of the world's biggest banking corporations. From January 2007, they suddenly decided that all e payments will be accepted by them only after registrations at their site for security reasons. Good, nothing wrong with that.  Since all my payments for various domain registrars and service providers are on auto debit, I tried registering at their site. This was most customer unfriendly, to say the least. Many big companies make their site very fancy with great looking graphics and ads. But they forget a visitor needs to access the page he or she wants. The most important element in the home page or the site map is the navigation bar and links. It should be simple and self explanatory. If you have to search for the concerned link, than it becomes useless. The KISS principle is forgotten by most. Since, I am traveling and living abroad, I did not have the PIN number the site wanted me to enter. I wrote to their customer service and a lady responded saying that I should register on phone and their site was secure and blah blah. Again I wrote to them that I was abroad, did not have the PIN number and explained in detail. I also told them that their automated voice mail system would be very expensive from overseas. In any case it would have been useless to attempt without the PIN number. Some other lady responded but there was no solution offered to the problem. I had to repeat the same thing like a parrot. I received an e mail from another lady asking for my contact number so that they can verify the same. I was happy and gave the contact number. Surprise, again I received another mail from some other lady saying that they have decided to do it on the net and gave me all the links but not the PIN number. In the various exchanges of e-mail, I noticed each time some other person responding and not aware of the problem. As a result of this mess, I had to send one payment of $ 39.10 by Western Union . They charged nearly 18 dollars for it. Even my service provider was sympathetic. But not credit card issuer. Unfortunately, I can't do much, since I do not have an alternate credit card. I mostly use debit cards. I am looking for an alternate credit card now making it an unnecessary additional expense but what to do? The best is yet to come. I received an e-mail on January 19, 2007 from another lady saying that they are not able to retrieve my records and wanted my name, address, date of birth etc., if I remember right, I am a member with them from 1992. It is rather a sorry state of affairs. The best part of it is that they have sent me a new card as the old card was expiring in end January 2007.   The above is a true life incident. The issuing bank is one of the largest British banking institutions in the world. Their service charges are very high. Obviously, when you pay a larger service fee, you expect the best service. Now I have come to the conclusion that the biggest are the worst. This is because most large organizations are using call centers and other e-mail support providers who are not trained well. They do not understand how the system works. They are given some standard templates for reply which are artificial, cosmetic and serve no purpose. It is rather strange and a sad state of development and if this is the nature of service, this bank will lose a lot of customers because the top managements in such banks would be blissfully unaware of what is happening at the grass root level. Most large organizations pay lip service to customer service. With the modern trend of BPO, this problem is getting more serious. When you offer or throw peanuts, you invariably get morons or monkeys, with little knowledge. Little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The problem with these people is that they neither know what to do nor do they understand what you tell them. The reception, front office, sales and service support should be manned by the best and not by the most available. Now we have one more problem. Better pay does not guarantee better people. You may land up with an 800 pound Gorilla with huge ego problems and tantrums. Then you need to get rid of the gorilla by paying a large amount of money. Written  by Madhavan T Gopalachary The above is an abridged and revised version of the pay for access article written on May 24, 2007. Free members can access their version by clicking here. The views, opinions and interpretations are personal. Sponsorship does not mean that the sponsors endorse them. Editorial Policy © Copyright, Jul-08 . www.madgopes.com . Without prejudice. All rights reserved www.mmgindia.com is the official website of Madras Management Group, Chennai, India. www.madgopes.com and www.mmg.name are personal websites and all editorials are published under their banner to retain editorial independence. We would highly appreciate feedback from readers and it may be sent to ipr@mmg.name.