Chennai: Restaurant aggregator and food delivery company Zomato on Tuesday apologised to a person, who alleged that he was denied refund by its customer care agent for not knowing Hindi and announced terminating the services of the employee concerned.
However, company founder Deepinder Goyal later announced reinstating the sacked agent, saying it was "an ignorant mistake" on the part of the employee.
A tweet from a user who goes by the handle "@Vikash67456607" triggered a major Twitter backlash, with the hashtag "Reject_Zomato" trending on top at the microblogging site.
In response, Zomato apologised to Vikash and also issued a statement both in Tamil and English, stressing that the company stood for diversity.
Earlier, Vikash tweeted he had ordered food on Zomato and complained that an item was missing.
"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. @zomato not the way you talk to a customer," he tweeted and tagged the company while sharing screenshots of his purported chat with the former customer care agent in question.
The Zomato agent also allegedly told Vikash that Hindi was the country's national language.
DMK MP Kanimozhi and others on Tuesday roasted food delivery company Zomato after one of its customer care agents told a complainant that Hindi is the "national language" and everybody should know a bit of it.
"The customer care of some companies operate only in select languages. It should be made mandatory for companies to serve their customers in their local language. A customer doesn't necessarily need to know Hindi or English. Hindi_Theriyathu_Poda," Kanimozhi tweeted without naming the listed company Zomato.
In its statement in the two languages which started off with the traditional Tamil salutation "Vanakkam" Tamil Nadu, Zomato said the company was "sorry" for the behaviour of its former employee.
