Robi Axiata Limited, the country’s second largest mobile operator, yesterday raised questions about the telecom regulator’s customer complaint management and reporting procedures.

In a letter signed by Shah Md Fazle Khuda, vice president of Robi’s regulatory affairs wing, the operator asked Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) to facilitate a better system in this regard.

On January 13, the BTRC published a comprehensive report on customer grievances with various mobile operators. Out of the 14,000 complaints received last year, only 37 per cent were resolved, according to the report.

Actually, there were only 3,641 complaints regarding Robi’s services while the rest were queries, which should not be reported as complaints, said the operator.

With 4.89 crore active users as of last December, Robi said the number of actual complaints they received is just 0.007 per cent of their total customer base.

E-mails or SMS notifications sent to the respective network provider when a complaint is filed against them should also be transferred to a BTRC call centre. Adding a process through which operators could monitor complaints on a weekly or monthly basis could also help address the issue, Robi said.

In most cases, after a complaint is lodged, the aggrieved customer does not respond when Robi attempts to attend to the matter and so, the provision of alternative contact numbers could also be incorporated in the process.

“We hope that these suggestions will help us overcome the mismatch between the BTRC and Robi complaint data,” the letter read.

Last year, customers lodged 3,630 complaints against Grameenphone and the market leader has resolved only 986 cases, or just 27.16 percent.

On the other hand, the country’s third biggest operator Banglalink resolved about half of the 1,488 complaints they received. Teletalk and the Bangladesh Telecommunications Company (BTCL) received 1,363 and 59 complaints respectively. 

Teletalk, the state-owned operator, resolved 138 complaints while the BTCL did not respond to any whatsoever, according to the BTRC report.

Once the most dominant market player, the BTCL is currently struggling to stay afloat with about five lakh active connections. From other segments, the BTRC received 1,681 complaints, of which 46.46 per cent were resolved.