Jago Grahak Jago, Consumer Court.
Jago Grahak Jago, Consumer Court.

What If Consumer Court was on Twitter ?

If you have been following my blog, you would read a couple of posts where I spoke about how twitter is becoming a destination for Customer Service. It has become a place where brands can connect with their audience – right from prospective buyers to loyal customers. Twitter has also become a place where consumers head to in order to get their grievances resolved, in short Twitter has become the Customer Support. With close to 335 million active users posting close to 300 million tweets, brands don’t want to miss out on any chance to keep their customers happy. There has been a new trend on Twitter in recent times – a separate handle to handle customer queries. Most brands like Airtel, BookMyShow use separate handles to deal with customers, while many others still don’t have this in place. It was today that I was talking to one of my renowned fellow blogger on Twitter. She was quite frustrated because of the poor service given by her bank. While exchanging tweets it suddenly struck me – What if Consumer Court was on Twitter ?

 

Currently the consumer court is a semi digital institution – ie. they have a physical presence in almost every district of India but not much of an online presence. We see the various ministries so active on twitter – Railways, MEA,even the ASCI are very active on Twitter. [Read: Why I withdrew my complaint against Flipkart] Indian government agencies have identified the potential of social media are taking small steps in the correct direction. Initiatives like the Digital India are doing wonders and thanks to that many people have been able to avail government services online. So what would happen if Consumer Court was on Twitter ?

Jago Grahak Jago, Consumer Court.
Jago Grahak Jago, Consumer Court.
  • The Brands would become extra careful in the way they respond to queries and will surely keep an eye on the turn around times of customer queries. No brand would want to be pulled up by the court for any reason what so ever.
  • Since the user base of customers is very large, the consequences of a complaint about a product / service would be large too. As of now, people tweet their issues, the brand gets in touch with them and resolves it (This is an ideal scenario, doesn’t always happen like this) But assume if the consumer tweets to the brand looping the consumer court ? What then ? The court can easily take a legal action against the brand.
  • What if there were hashtags that a user could use while reporting a brand. Maybe something like #Fraudulent #FalseClaims #RepeatedOffender etc could be used in a tweet to consumer court. I’m trying to paint a picture something like how banks today are providing banking services via twitter. I hope now you get a gist of it.

It’s easy to wonder what would happen if the consumer court was online. But in reality it is a humongous task. With a population of 1.2 billion, imagine the number of tweets the consumer court would receive in a day. Even if 10% of them are genuine and want to take a legal route, the amount of complaints would be way to hard to handle. Secondly the regulatory compliance aren’t in place for that. Further it’s a court and not a bank. There would have to be a separate guideline for the consumer court and the end-user describing the services and operating procedure.

Nonetheless, I do see this in near future. If not full-fledged, at least a part of it can come to social media and use its power to improve the lives of a consumer. With every person having access to the internet now a days – and this number is set to grow in future – it would be great to see the consumer court to join the twitter bandwagon.

Consumer Protection. Image Courtesy: ConsumerCourt.net.in
Consumer Protection. Image Courtesy: ConsumerCourt.net.in

So what do you think ? Should the Consumer Court join Twitter ? Share your views on this and help me get a different point of view. Because for good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate…

About Atulmaharaj

A seasoned blogger and a content marketer for close to a decade now. I write about Food, Technology, Lifestyle, Travel, and Finance related posts. Blogging brings me joy and the best part is I get to read and e-meet so many amazing bloggers! PS: I'm also the founder for Socialmaharaj.com :) Favorite Quote: "Traveling is like reading a book, one who hasn't traveled, hasn't turned a page.

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4 comments

  1. Why not? It would be easy, cheap and convenient for all. They should set monetary limit for the cases that can be settled by or on twitter.

  2. If consumer court is on twitter than people will spam the pages of products or service.

    • socialmaharaj

      Agree with you Arvind, as mentioned the products/services & consumer court would have to deal with thousands of tweets in a day, many of which could be spam as you pointed out. But atleast the presence of consumer court on Twitter can help the consumers who are in distress.

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