Kochi: A postgraduate girl student at Christ University Bangalore staying home during Covid 19 lockdown in Kochi found employment for herself and 21 other youth thanks to her language skills.
From being a mere translator, she was promoted to the post of Kerala Technical Head and Coordinator and had a team of 21 technicians assisted by her former batch mate.
After resigning from her job as Head of Operations for entire Kerala state, Reshmi Rose Tom of Kakkanad spoke to mattersindia.com before leaving for airport to catch a flight back to Bangalore.
Stating reason for resignation she says, “As my MA degree classes are resuming and I need to continue with my research work, I would not get time to wholeheartedly continue this work and hence I have asked the company to relieve me.”
It all started with lockdown induced rage for fitness machines in Kerala.
Reshmi’s dad Mr Tomy Mathew, a senior Managing Director at Kochi’s IT Hub had purchased a Treadmill on-line and the installation was delayed by several days.
Flipkart/Amazon demands that Technical Support and Assistance Team must ensure any work allotted is completed within 2 days time.
On enquiry, Mr. Mathew, found that the north Indian Support and Assistance Team of the treadmill faced linguistic issues to get local installers with English-Hindi-Malayalam language interface.
It was then that his daughter Reshmi who had her education in Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore stepped in with her language skills.
“The initial work assigned to me was translation,” says Reshmi who would translate from English / Hindi to Malayalam and vice versa.
“When I joined the company during lockdown last September, they had just 3 technicians managing work all over Kerala. But due to the unavailability of man power there was quite a bit of backlog,” recalls Reshmi.
On the request of Fitplus/Flipkart/Amazon Technical Support Provider for Kerala Mr. Yogendra Tiwari says Reshmi, “I began to take up further responsibilities and the technicians were asked to report to me. Slowly and gradually the team began to grow.”
Later Mr. Yogendra arranged for 2 more members from his team for technical and managerial assistance while I began to build the team in Kerala by employing technicians for every district in the state.
In this manner what was initially a 3 member team grew into a 25 member team with a total of 21 technicians operating in the State.
“Due to the availability of sufficient man power work was faster and more efficient and there was minimal backlog,” says Mr Tiwari.
On a normal day, Reshmi says, the complaints/installation calls would come in thrice a day – 10 AM, 1 PM, and 5 PM during which I would allot the work to the respective technicians along with installation/repair videos for their assistance.
Hourly updates would be taken from the technicians and the same would be updated in a Google Sheet which was shared with Mr. Yogendra.
With the increase in the workload of installation and repair calls I was assigned an assistant – my former batch mate from Madras Christian College – Mr. Issac Abraham based in Kerala; and the two of us would manage the entirety of the workload in Kerala along with our team of technicians.
In case of technical problems which required further assistance, we would conduct video calls with a technical support person from Indore and translate his instructions to the Malayalee tech onsite until the problem is resolved or an alternative solution is attained.
There would also be interaction with customers in order to guide them in case of any requirements or solve any issue they might face post installation of the product.
The company I worked for mainly dealt with the installation and repair of treadmills by Fitplus, Exercise Bikes by RPM Fitness and MTB/Terrain Cycles by Urban Terrain.
Reshmi recalls, “There have been days when we attended over 40 cases in a day and closed them successfully. Such days occur mainly during times when there are any forms of offers/discounts on Flipkart/Amazon.”
Reshmi proudly says, “It was a great learning experience in terms of human resource management, customer care and excelling in communication skills to achieve the desired goals.”