Vodafone: Happy to sue?

In what will likely become a classic B-School case study on how not to leverage social media, Vodafone India earlier this week sent a legal notice to Dhaval Valia, one of its mobile services customers in Mumbai. The story has since gone viral on the Net, but what seems to have got Vodafone India’s goat was the supposedly defamatory Facebook posts made by Dhaval on his private Facebook page, SMSes ’threatening’ Vodafone, and the fact that Dhaval’s friends on Facebook joined him in ‘defaming’ Vodafone.

I asked Dhaval for details and he sent me Vodafone’s legal notice, his response and his correspondence with Vodafone, all of which he has since put up on Facebook. I’m no legal eagle, but to me the defamatory accusations seem largely around Dhaval’s rants about Vodafone going to market with a half-baked 3G network, the SMSes are mere threats that he will approach TRAI, India’s telecom regulator; and as for his friends defaming Vodafone-they are mostly Vodafone customers who have serious issues with Vodafone’s services.

[caption id=“attachment_20479” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A Vodafone India office in Mumbai. Arko Datta/Reuters “] [/caption]

You’d be hard pressed to find a single comment sympathising with Vodafone India in the raging fire of comments on articles carried globally on the issue, and on Dhaval’s Facebook page. The case has not only caught the attention of global media, even TRAI has clambered onto the bus, and Dhaval claims TRAI has asked Vodafone for an explanation regarding his complaint. To put it in a line, Dhaval Valia has become the Anna Hazare of Indian mobile phone users, or at the very least, Vodafone India customers. There was already a fairly popular anti-Vodafone account on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/#!/ChodafoneIN ) I knew of, but now there are also Facebook groups dedicated to exposing Vodafone.

What’s worrying is that rather than see what is apparent to everyone that they have serious service and customer satisfaction issues, which is what Dhaval’s friends originally commented on in Facebook, and hordes of others are now commenting on in media sites and blogs on the issue, Vodafone India seems to believe this is defamation.

Seriously. This from a company that asked Tata Indicom to disconnect my ported Vodafone number for non-payment of dues. The amount? A few paise. Which I didn’t realise when a Vodafone employee swiped my card for only the rupee part and ignored the paise part (less than 50 paise) of the bill. Vodafone later told Tata Indicom I had unpaid dues.

Seriously.

As for Vodafone 3G–my employer is a large corporate customer of Vodafone, yet, it took more than a week and calls to senior Vodafone executives for me to get a tariff plan for 3G in the second half of May, more than a month after the official launch in Mumbai.

Seriously.

Vodafone also accuses Dhaval of creating a ruckus at their Saki Vihar store in Mumbai. Perhaps he did. But I live a few minutes away and have visited that particular store on three excruciatingly painful trips in the past few months-each time I have seen Vodafone employees screaming at customers when customers even as much as raised their voice slightly.

Screaming. Seriously.

The only issue where Vodafone seems to be on some solid ground is the issue of whether Dhaval’s deep frustration gave him license to post mobile numbers of Vodafone executives on his private Facebook wall and invite other friends on his social network who have problems with Vodafone to call them for grievance redressal. Vodafone’s legal notice claims these executives are now facing ‘mental trauma and torture.’

Gautam John, avid social media user and erstwhile lawyer has this to say: “I would think the intention matters–if Dhaval posted it so that other people could solve their problems, then it’s in a very different league from posting it and asking people to harass them. I do not know if it is illegal.” Of course, there’s also the matter of how Vodafone accessed Dhaval’s private Facebook wall, unless Facebook gave them access, or uh-oh-Vodafone hacked it. Which is certainly illegal.

Initially Vodafone also made some comments to media about female employees being harassed by Dhaval, but after he warned them he would sue for defamation, Vodafone now refuses to comment on the issue–they also refused comment for this piece.

To say Vodafone has a social media mess on their hands is an understatement. Interestingly, this entire episode comes right on the heels of research from Ovum that reveals that Indian consumers are turning to social media as a viable alternative to the phone for customer service, with almost 40 per cent of Indian consumers using social media to attempt to receive customer service. Ovum further states that a large number of Indians (44 percent) use social media to complain about bad service or a faulty product.

As Madhuri Sen, Managing Director at the Indian arm of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a global communications firm puts it, “The very success of social media lies in the fact that now people trust the voice of peers over establishment or authority.”

So, can Vodafone extricate itself from this mess, and what can other Indian services companies learn from this unsavoury episode?

Surely Vodafone has enough communications professionals on their rolls to advice them on this particular mess-perhaps the telecom giant would now prefer to listen to them rather than trigger happy lawyers, but in the larger context Sen says that Vodafone would also do well to relook their marketing and communication strategies and provides the example of Visa where marketing now incorporates what Antonio Lucio, Visa’s global chief marketing, strategy and corporate development officer calls the three principles of social media–sharing is the new giving; participation is the new engagement; and recommendations are the new advertising.

As a Vodafone customer I don’t believe Vodafone is serious about its ‘Happy to Help’ slogan, but the consequences of being perceived as ‘Happy to Sue’ may be much worse. Hopefully, someone at Vodafone India is listening.