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BIS to set standards for the services sector too
Why it is in news?
- The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has kicked off the process to set new standards to measure quality of services offered to consumers across different sectors, including telecom, aviation, e-commerce and healthcare.
- The BIS, which sets the quality regulations for various products from gold to bottled water called a meeting of industry bodies to “persuade them to be part of the process and give their inputs.”
- Service sector is one of the key sectors of the Indian economy with a huge potential to grow into one of the largest markets of the world.
- Standards can play a major facilitative role in this regard.
- It is important that the standardisation needs and priorities of the sector are determined
- During the meeting, the BIS pointed out that the initial focus will be the 12 champion services sectors identified by the government.
- These include IT, tourism and hospitality, transport and logistics, accounting and finance services, legal services, communication services and construction.
- The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) standards is set to formulate a framework for quality services that should be provided to consumers and also talk about the benchmarks to deal with consumer complaints or after sales service in an effort to ensure quality in the services sector.
- Under this, different technical committees will be set up — one for each service. The committees will have various stakeholders such as government officials, experts and industry representatives.
Poll feedback
- The process was initiated after concerns over lack of standardisation, particularly with regards to after-sales service, in their feedback to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.
- In a poll, online community network LocalCircles found that in the absence of defined customer service standards in the country, a majority of consumers were not happy with after-sales services.
- As per the poll, 43% feel that mobile handset and computer manufacturers are the worst in after-sales services, followed by white goods firms (38%) and automobile companies (11%).
- About 93% of respondents said brands should at least acknowledge complaints from users within 72 hours.
Source
The Hindu