This is NOT the CEO of BigBasket, Hari Menon.
Why am I so confident?
One, because Hari Shenoy quote-tweets on that tweet.
This is Hari Shenoy and has nothing to do with BigBasket or Hari Menon. Wait, he does have something to do with BigBasket, but that is more because people mistake him to be the CEO of BigBasket.
Yes. For some bizarre reason, many people tag Hari Shenoy on Twitter when they are complaining about BigBasket. This is more because those people, with all their entitlement, presume that Hari Shenoy is Hari Menon merely because they start tagging a/any ‘Hari’ on Twitter and sometimes Hari Shenoy’s handle appears first. It’s part entitlement and part ignorance and part arrogance that they do not bother to check his bio or ensure they are tagging the right person.
Disclosure: We order from BigBasket almost 2-3 times every week and have zero issues with their service.
Anyway, people tag Hari Shenoy, for their complaints about BigBasket. This must be quite a bother to Hari Shenoy who wished he was the CEO of BigBasket so he could do something about those complaints. But he is not. And says so very clearly in his Twitter bio (if only people bothered to check it). And people still tag him.
So, what does he do? He goes on an incredibly funny and sarcastic trip, taking their trip. Here’s a small sample.
Most of his tweet-replies are abrasively funny, and much of that sarcasm is lost on hapless customers of BigBasket who presumed that tagging the CEO on Twitter would shame the company to do something about their problems on priority. Instead, they get sarcastic replies that rile them even further.
I love Hari Shenoy’s responses.
He is no doubt saddled with totally pointless tweets in his mentions, but he takes the proverbial lemons and makes tequila out of them, not just lemonade. And has fun at BigBasket CEO’s expense.
Now, the irony is that this is also a reputation problem for BigBasket, which is trying to do reasonably good customer service on Twitter through the company handle. Because when Hari Shenoy responds with sarcasm (sometimes outright mean and rude… and hilarious!), they don’t think poorly of some guy in Ireland named Hari Shenoy. They think the CEO of BigBasket was publicly rude to them simply for complaining about BigBasket’s service.
So, what can BigBasket do?
Is Hari Menon on Twitter? He’s not even on LinkedIn, forget Twitter! But, can BigBasket create a handle for Hari Menon, with an explicitly specific Twitter handle that shows up when people start the tagging with @hari…? Say, @harimenonbigbasket?
Why should they do this?
One, so that they redirect complaints to a source that they can handle.
Two, so they don’t let their customers be conned by jolly sarcastic tweets from another hapless Twitter user who is merely having fun out of his misery.
The other thing they can do is to also track @mentions to Hari Shenoy on Twitter (this is not difficult at all – @harishenoy is a search string, simple) and start responding to complaints about BigBasket before Hari Shenoy starts to unload his richly-deserved sarcasm on BigBasket’s customers. I’m sure BigBasket would be tracking complaints on Twitter, but that’d be using search strings about the brand, and that wouldn’t include @harishenoy as a search string at all. But they should include it, for obvious reasons.
For now, I’m having a wonderful laugh at Hari Shenoy’s responses. He doesn’t merely reply to most customer complaints; he quote-tweets them as a showcase of his wit. The only folks who don’t get the wit are the ones at the receiving end.