The Telecom Ministry has issued notices to state-owned BSNL, MTNL and India Posts after Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad personally took note of citizen complaints over service quality on social media since July.  Prasad, who has over 4.65 lakh followers on Facebook, received the complaints relating to the three departments under his ministry. The Minister has asked BSNL and other concerns to use the social media, following which it held a workshop for officers in-charge of public grievance redressal in each telecom circle.

On top of that, BSNL has appointed an agency to look into issues raised by subscribers on social media sites. When contacted, BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava confirmed that the complaint monitoring mechanism on social media is already up and running. BSNL reported operating profit after a long time and within 18 months of the new government coming to power. This is a sign of improvement in services.

As part of its efforts to step up, BSNL has outsourced its call centre activity to a leading agency that handles similar assignments for leading telecom operators.  According to Trai rules, consumers can register their complaints by calling up the customer care or shooting off an e-mail to the telecom operator.