So, after the Burnol episode early this year, Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal is at it again, with veteran automobile industry journalist Hormazd Sorabjee.
The last time, the issue was Bhavish’s nudge-wink hint about an electric car.
This time? Hormazd’s Ola S1 Pro did not power up.
If it were the days of the Bajaj scooter, the instant advice from any fellow Indian would have been to ’tilt the scooter closer to the ground and kick it again’ 🙂
But this is an electric scooter. It hasn’t been used for 10 days.
And Hormazd himself mentions, “Called the Ola rep who sent a truck pronto to pick up my dead scooter”.
Bhavish’s quote-tweet over Hormazd’s tweet is the clincher, though. “your tweet smacks of a strong bias”, and “Let’s see how many brands able to do this at scale”.
On the charge of bias, let me present this:
And when it comes to the 2nd part about scale, you simply have to look at the number of people vocally complaining about Hormazd, the famous auto journalist, getting priority service while normal buyers are faced with far longer delays.
This is just a small snapshot from the replies to one tweet by Bhavish! The overall complaints online are far, far, far higher!
Forget Hormazd the auto journalist. He is an Ola scooter buyer and user too, who has done exactly what many other buyers have done – paid, waited, and received the scooter.
The 10-day break in using a scooter could have been by any other user too.
But instead of taking it in the spirit of exploring a potential issue (that could be at any other customer’s end too), the allegation of bias seems more antagonistic than useful/helpful. In fact, the Ola service team seems to have acted a lot more helpfully given how promptly they landed and handled the complaint.
Considering I do not know if there is some kind of personal enmity between Bhavish and Hormazd (which only they would be privy to) that could have led to this sustained animosity by the Ola CEO directed towards one journalist, let me address the larger question: what does Bhavish gain by being visibly belligerent?
It may be very easy to dismiss these episodes with ad hominem responses—and I’m merely paraphrasing some of the comments I have seen on Twitter—directed at Bhavish: ‘he’s a sasta Musk’, ‘he is full of ego’, or the more abrasive variations.
But I’m assuming Bhavish is not a fool. He is the CEO of a huge organization with thousands of people working under him. He has put together perhaps THE most ambitious EV plan India has ever seen and is seeking more funds and states’ support to expand operations. So he may not be going after Hormazd for merely petty ego issues.
So, what else? A couple of thoughts.
1. Bhavish is possibly trying to protect Ola EV’s (corporate) reputation
This is the most likely cause, in my opinion. Ola EV’s reputation is already under fire from assorted sides, including the battery fires that are not only affecting this brand but the entire EV 2-wheeler category together (thankfully it has not spread—pun unintended—to electric cars yet).
And a government-appointed committee recently submitted a report to the Government where it pointed to poor testing as one of the many reasons, besides poor grade cells for batteries.
In this scenario, with a multi-pronged focus on product quality, the pressure to maintain the reputation is understandable. The reputation would quite literally be the reason for more people choosing the scooter from Ola.
Is there a better way to protect Ola EV’s reputation in the face of Hormazd’s tweet? Of course, there always is a better way.
The starting point would be to consider the full picture and not just one tweet. Hormazd clearly mentions in a reply that he had not used the scooter for about 10 days. It’s an electric scooter. Would Ola have data on their product’s usage after X days of non-use? How does the scooter’s battery hold after any X days of non-use?
Ola did use data to defend themselves during the case of a customer’s injury.
So what’s stopping Bhavish from using data again to respond to Hormazd instead of getting aggressive and antagonistic?
2. Bhavish is using Hormazd’s own tweet to accentuate the promptness of Ola’s customer service
Hormazd actually had very good things to say about Ola’s customer service in his own tweet!
EVs are a brand new category. Things that are new and largely untested (or being tested on a massive scale) tend to have issues. Problems aren’t the problem (sorry for the pun), how a company addresses the problems is the real point.
In this case, Hormazd’s own experience is that Ola was very prompt. Whether the brand was prompt because of who Hormazd is, or whether they’d accord the same promptness to any and every customer (a rudimentary check online says that this is not the case), we do not know the larger picture.
But Bhavish actually received something that he can build on Ola’s customer service with, from a reputed auto journalist no less.
Is there a better way to accentuate Ola’s customer service on the back of Hormazd’s tweet? Oh yes, there is.
Use the data-backed explanation and add the ‘glad our service team solved this same day for you’. But drop the ‘Let’s see how many brands able to do this at scale’. Clearly, if Bhavish has been seeing comments on social media about Ola’s customer care on the ground beyond replies by the Twitter handle, there is tremendous scope for improvement. Throwing the ‘scale’ point is a great example of ‘Apne pair par kulhadi marna’, or ‘shooting oneself in the foot’.
3. Bhavish is taking a thought-leadership position with that parting shot on committing to ending ICE age
I have no doubt whatsoever that we’d be looking back at petrol and diesel vehicles after 15+ years the way we see floppy disks and landline phones now. It just is inevitable. ICEs will most definitely cease to exist sooner than you and I think.
And as a brand, Ola, and Bhavish as its leader, taking the thought-leadership position to end ICE is a smart idea for both the brand and him.
It’s just that the positioning comes across as very condescending. I understand the optics – Hormazd has made a career writing about ICE vehicles. So it’s understandable that Bhavish is trying to use that to his advantage with the ICE-ending putdown.
Is there a better way to position the electric-thought-leadership? As usual… of course.
A significantly better way to frame the same sentiment is through coopting Hormazd’s tweet instead of making him seem like an adversary.
Imagine if Bhavish had said, ‘These are niggling issues that we can easily solve via software upgrades and an equivalent issue may be far more difficult to handle with ICE vehicles! I’m really glad to see you move towards the ICE-age with such confidence!’.
What I note above is not rocket science. This is simply corporate communications/PR 101. Any decent PR agency would be able to analyze Hormazd’s tweet and offer excellent counsel to turn it into an advantage (considering Hormazd had both good and bad things to offer). But the key ingredient here is in the hands of Bhavish, the leader: willingness to listen and act.