Ignorant mistake: Zomato reinstates agent fired over Hindi lesson to customer

In a viral food order dispute, Zomato today fired an agent after a customer from Tamil Nadu claimed he was told to “learn Hindi” when he requested a refund. Soon after, the founder of the food delivery app tweeted that the employee had been reinstated and that the country’s “level of tolerance and chill” needed to be far higher.

Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal added, “Tamil Nadu, We love you”.

The incident made hashtag “Reject_Zomato” trend when user “@Vikash67456607” flagged an unpleasant exchange with the agent.

“Ordered food in zomato and an item was missed. Customer care says amount can’t be refunded as I didn’t know Hindi. Also takes lesson that being an Indian I should know Hindi. Tagged me a liar as he didn’t know Tamil,” he tweeted.

In the screenshots attached to the post, “For your kind information, Hindi is our national language. So it is very common that everybody should know Hindi little bit,” the customer care executive told Vikash.

Zomato later apologised in an official statement. 

“We are sorry for the behaviour of our customer care agent, we have terminated the agent for their negligence towards our diverse culture. The termination is in line with our protocols, and agent’s behaviour was clearly against the principles of sensitivity that we train our agents for on a regular basis (sic),” read the statement in both English and Tamil.

“This customer care agent’s statement does not represent our company’s stance towards language and diversity,” the company added. 

Contributing to the Twitter frenzy, founder Deepinder Goyal tweeted caling it an “ignorant mistake” and announced that the agent was reinstated.

“An ignorant mistake by someone in a support centre of a food delivery company became a national issue. The level of tolerance and chill in our country needs to be way higher than it is nowadays. Who’s to be blamed here?” he said.

Deepinder asserted that most of the young call centre agents are not experts on regional sentiments and languages. 

“Having said that, we should all tolerate each other’s imperfections. And appreciate each other’s language and regional sentiments. Tamil Nadu – we love you. Just as much as we love the rest of the country. Not more, not less. We are all the same, as much as we are different,” he said.

All of this took a political turn when DMK leader Kanimozhi commented on the fiasco. 

“Tamilians need no lesson on who is Indian. It’s not a must for customer to know Hindi/English. It should be mandatory for support centres to speak in the state’s language,” said Kanimozhi.