Since our move from a government owned telecom provider to Airtel for Broadband connection, we have moved all our services to Airtel. With so many services from Airtel, managing the various accounts was pretty time consuming during the initial days. We switched to the My Airtel app when it was released and found it easy to manage the services but yet service requests and few other services had glitches in communication. We would not say it was a comprehensive solution then but still it worked for us. Further as the payment landscape changed with the services of Freecharge and PayTM offering more for the buck we switched to using them for our payments. One thing though, we never ventured into Airtel Money because we still did not trust the system to allow mobile to mobile payments. Maybe it is good but we honestly did not try it till now.

Now, after seeing the New Airtel App (available only on Android Phones) that Airtel has launched, we decided to give it a try and installed it. As our common mentality goes, we checked out what is special in this app that overpowers us to use this app in place of the others we are already using.

The first thing that caught our attention was the Airtel Surprises – First free recharge message and we should give it to the Airtel marketing team for understanding customer mentality and behaviors.

Home page of the app provides you with all the services enrolled using your mobile number and also gives an idea about the usage. It is a useful feature for the watchful mobile data users interested in knowing the usage to keep track of the use beyond fixed limit. Internet is one area we find very difficult to keep track of since there are many activities that can happen without our knowledge when mobile data is ON.

Home page also carries options to recharge any other Airtel number if you want to gift it to someone. We are sure this is a great option for all those looking to talk with their loved ones for long.  And many other options to get in touch with Airtel for new connections, Airtel money, buying, browsing, downloading songs, content products etc.

The next element we saw was the Shake or Swipe for More Offers. The word shake was the first thing that clicked and so we were shaking the mobile to see what exactly happens, and it did work. We understood it was for the offers that we can pick out for the amount we pay towards the various payments we make for Airtel.

It works like this. Let us say you recharge for Rs.300 you can avail offer with a possibility to take more than the  amount recharged. Be sure to check out the offers and also valid amount of recharge display below the offer. In case, you are interested in any one, be sure to recharge from the offer page. It can be a shopping offer where you spend Rs.999 to get Rs.300 discount or a travel voucher worth Rs.500 free if you spend Rs.5000 and the likes.

Airtel DTH management is now easy and it is now possible to check out those packages we are subscribed to and if you have kids at home loving television programs across various channels, it is a very useful feature.  Be sure to swipe the screen when you are on the main screen of DTH service to check out options to add on movies, program guide and games.

Few suggestions

a. It will be better if there is a prompting to choose the offers when users opt to pay the bill from the home page option without checking out the offers.

b. Voice and Data: Airtel can integrate Bill Plan and give us recommendations on the suitable bill plan based on our voice and data usage as it is difficult for us to keep track of new plans that keep coming out.

c. DTH: Unsubscribing from a Topup or channel is still in the hands of raising a service request in the app. When we have the option to add a Topup why not an option to remove topups on the go? Do give it a thought.