We all have our stories about Telecom Operators or Mobile Service Providers. I prefer to tweet and receive a call than just calling on customer support and waiting on long hold times. There is so much outrage on Twitter / Facebook against Telcos. Love-hate relationship. At times I end up feeling that the job of Social Media teams of telecom operators maybe more difficult than… err.. Alaska Crab Fish Jobs.

Despite the amount of outrage / complains / feedback, we have wondered multiple times – why do they fail to understand their customer’s agony/pain? How can they just goof up at times on plain simple things?

The answer is ridiculously simple. Most decision makers / process managers / folks in management working at Telcos are given mobile connections which are either not-billed or payed by the company itself. So their employees never or very rarely do any interactions with their own customer service staff like their customers do.

Telcos, there is one phrase extremely popular in the tech startup ecosystem – “Eating your own dog food.” It simply means – use own products / services exactly how your customers do.

To cut the story short – “Telcos, please stop paying mobile bills for your employees. Let them do it for themselves. Treat them as your customers and just see how your processes become more efficient and customer satisfaction scores improve. Eat your own dog food. Please!”