Angels on duty's call

"If a customer gets too loud or brash, the security women come and stand next to the person... in a gesture that serves as a subtle reminder of their aggressive stance," notes Ishita Nigam.

The 24-year-old store executive of the all-woman Vodafone store, or the Angel store as it is referred to, is confident that the female security staff at her Prabhadevi outpost in central Mumbai are adequately skilled and sufficiently equipped to deal with untoward incidences. As the leader of the 21-member team — 12 executives and nine support staff — Nigam heads a 750sqft store that is not only unique in that it is the only Vodafone store in the city that is 'manned' entirely by women, but is also the mobile service company's most profitable one here. "Their revenue and postpaid (connection) sales are always high," reveals Kulsum Gilitwala, who manages nine Vodafone stores across south Mumbai. "Women are smart workers...they get more done. Even if they are stressed, they work hard with a smile." Nigam nods enthusiastically. "There's no role that we cannot perform...as women, we tend to be perfectionists," she says. "Even if a customer walks in after the closing hour of 7pm, we serve them without looking at the clock."

Kavita Nair, who heads retail and digital functions for Vodafone India, offers an explanation. "Latest findings within Vodafone indicate higher productivity and performance parameters recorded by the Vodafone Angel Stores across locations. We find Angels are more attuned to 'pause' and 'listen' as compared to other stores," says Nair. "This improves the quality of customer service since women, with their character traits of greater patience and empathy, are able to act and help in speedy resolution."

This is no mean feat given that customer service — the store's raison d'être — is still a largely thankless job. A majority of the 250-300 customers who walk into the store every day are there to either grumble about erroneous billing, complain about a lack of service or agitate about something that isn't working. "Nearly two months ago, a woman came in demanding details of an MMS she had received and the number of the person who had sent it to her," recalls Nigam. "She had an old phone, not a smart phone, so it didn't support multimedia. She was very angry and kept raising her voice. We requested her to approach the police for an NOC for security reasons before we started retrieving the information, but the cops summoned me instead because she had lodged a complaint against me," she laughs and adds that the woman, who appeared to be emotionally distressed, was eventually made to understand the legal predicament to get the information she wanted.

Nigam and her team are part of a larger grouping of the nearly 300 that run Vodafone's 36 Angel Stores across the country. Interestingly, while the company operates in 26 countries, India is the only country where it has an all-woman workforce for its retail stores. "Initiatives like Angel Stores encourage women employees to assume greater responsibilities at the work," says Nair. "The store gives them exposure to cross functional opportunities in the telecom and retail sector from finance, logistics, and customer relations to security. We believe this platform is a great building block in social and economic development and gives women employees' confidence to take independent decisions."