How an angry Zomato Customer’s spat with an executive snowballed into a “Hindi Imposition” war

Afraid that it will lose some of its woke points, food delivery giant Zomato on Tuesday (October 19) surrendered against a Twitter user that manufactured a controversy out of thin air regarding ‘Hindi imposition’. Reportedly, a netizen named Vikash took to Twitter to share screenshots of his chat with a Zomato customer care executive seeking a refund after an item he had ordered was missing.

Making mountain out of a molehill

While the issue was innocuous and could have been solved easily, the language barrier between the Zomato executive and the restaurant meant that Vikash’s order request could not be resolved. This triggered Vikash, and he raised questions on the hiring policy of Zomato. Vikash said, “If Zomato is available in Tamil Nadu, they should have hired people who understand the language. Ask them to transfer to someone else and get me a refund,”

By that time, the Zomato executive lost her calm as well and made a factually wrong statement, which a lot of people across the country tend to make.

“Hindi is our national language. So it is very common that everybody should know Hindi little bit.” said the executive.

An exasperated employee making an error

It is pertinent to note that there was no harm or malice in the executive’s statements. It was an exasperated employee that broke the dictated flow of conversation with a customer after finding no solution to the problem, despite trying everything at her disposal.

However, Vikash, looking to cash in on the situation, took to his account, Twitter created in May earlier this year where he had never tweeted once and shared the flurry of screenshots, accusing Zomato and its executive of imposing Hindi on him.

“Ordered food in zomato and an item was missed. Customer care says amount can’t be refunded as I didn’t know Hindi. Also takes lesson that being an Indian I should know Hindi. Tagged me a liar as he didn’t know Tamil. @zomato not the way you talk to a customer.” tweeted Vikash.

In subsequent tweets he tagged all DMK leaders (the ruling party in Tamil Nadu), chief minister’s office, some media houses and a few other DMK leaders, clearly looking to make mountain out of a molehill.

No one called Vikash a liar

Moreover, when Zomato asked Vikash to private DM the query in an attempt to resolve the situation, he falsely claimed that the food aggregator’s executive had called him a liar. “I need a strong clarification and public apology from the concerned person who accused me a liar and asked me to learn Hindi without any base reasons,” he wrote.

Nowhere did the poor Zomato executive try to impose Hindi or call Vikash a liar. Perhaps, in the heat of the moment, Vikash imagined up few extra fragments of the conversation.

Zomato fires and re-hires the executive

After the kerfuffle, Zomato issued an apology on Twitter, both in Hindi and Tamil and remarked that the agent’s services were terminated. “The termination is in line with our protocols and agent’s behaviour was clearly against the principles of sensitivity that we train our agents for on a regular basis,”

Zomato also added that the company was building a Tamil version of their app. “We have already localised marketing communication in Tamil for the state (e.g. we also signed up Aniruddh Ravichander as our local ambassador), and we are in the process of building a local Tamil call/support centre in Coimbatore,”

However, after netizens demanded that punishment meted out to the executive was too harsh, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal said the employee was reinstated.

“An ignorant mistake by someone in a support centre of a food delivery company became a national issue. The level of tolerance and chill in our country needs to be way higher than it is nowadays. Who’s to be blamed here?” Goyal tweeted

Zomato should have stood its ground

Zomato should not have chickened out. Instead of clearing the matter, it tried to wash it’s hands off the controversy by issuing an apology. The employee made an honest mistake and that was about it. Many of us have made bigger blunders at work and got away with it. After all, it’s all part of the learning process.

Read More: Zomato, Paytm IPOs show the tremendous strength of India’s startup culture

PM Modi has time and again made it clear that no single language will be imposed on the citizens of India. If that doesn’t make the supposed ‘activists’ comforted then it is really difficult to decipher what will.