Replied HDFC ERGO on 30 March 2023

CC/353/2022 edaakhil A22090004397 OP HDFC ERGO Response Received on 17 Jan 2023 Objected and Replied by Complainant Ratul Aich.

1. Although the idea of UX and Usability goes much beyond the digital realm pervading into the physical world yet we will stick to the digital aspect of UX and CX (e-commerce) to maintain the relevancy and clarity wrt the case CC/353/2022 Edaakhil number A22090004397.
2. I’d request the OP HDFC ERGO to refrain from deliberately discussing any aspect of CC/354/2022 Edaakhil number A22080005770 over here unless there is a genuine cross-section between the lawsuits.
3. Digitalization has brought a major paradigm shift in society. The digital User Experience (UX), Usability Design, Usability Engineering, and Accessibility Design have extended the existing periphery of Customer Experience (CX) and Service Design. UX has been enthusiastically adopted by every sector of the digital ecosystem to optimize the design of digital products and services. One such major sector is the e-commerce sector. HDFC ERGO 8% stay active discount is an e-commerce UX and CX issue due to the absence of user/customer journey and information architecture required to carry out the transaction informedly and simply (simplistic) by the user/customer. In regards to the case, the digital interface ‘user’ is the ‘customer’ because an e-commerce transaction involving monetary benefits is taking place. The user/customer is also the ‘consumer’ being the primary policyholder.
4. The paradigm shift that has been brought about by digitalization in society has also left open an unaddressed cavity due to the lack of recognition of User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX) by the judiciary where the end users and customers as consumers of the product and services are victimized by dark patterns of UX/CX, dark algorithm and absence of User/Customer Journies as and when appealed by the complainant in the Consumer Court, altogether has been termed as concocted, frivolous and vexatious by the OP HDFC ERGO so effortlessly.
5. CX, UX, Usability, and Accessibility are Bodies of knowledge (https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/computers/disciplines-user-experience-design) which has subsequent schools of thought and centers of excellence in private and public sector organizations. The body of knowledge which has been nourished over a long period of time can’t be outright rejected. Some prominent audit and consulting firms in the field of UX and CX are Nielsen Norman Group (https://www.nngroup.com/consulting/expert-review/), MC Kency CX, UX, and Design Consultation (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-design/how-we-help-clients), Human Factor International (https://humanfactors.com/consulting.aspx), Usability and CMMI research paper (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271429627_Usability_and_CMMI), Two Sigma: Usability and Six Sigma Quality Assurance (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-and-six-sigma/).
6. The Consumer Court needs no introductions to e-commerce lawsuits that happened in volume since the last decade with key landmark judgments by the Consumer Court that shaped the practices in the e-commerce ecosystem. The HDFC ERGO litigation CC/353/2022 related to the absence of an appropriate user journey and information architecture is basically an e-commerce design malpractice. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel by pointing to the Hon’ble Supreme Court judgment of “Ravneet Singh Bagga vy. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (2000) 1 SCC 66” which will drift the lawsuit in the sphere of academia unnecessarily, sticking to the volume of e-commerce judgments by Consumer Court would keep the relevancy intact wrt the Consumer Court which will rapidly wrap up the litigation by addressing all the key aspects contextually.
7. Over the last decade, the CX audit firms have expanded their periphery by establishing benchmarking practices to evaluate the UX of digital products and services as much of the customer transactions are taking place online through e-commerce. Thus the CX firms are evaluating user journeys that are synonymous with the customer journey in the case of e-commerce digital interfaces as the monetary transactions are involved which designate a user of digital products and services as the customer of the company.
8. In general User Experience (UX), Usability, and Accessibility are considered a subset of Customer Experience (CX). The OP HDFC ERGO has received excellence awards from Customer Experience (CX) audit and compliance firm KamiKaze as featured on the HDFC ERGO awards page (https://www.hdfcergo.com/about-us/awards). The CX audit firm KamiKaze must have evaluated, and audited to certify HDFC ERGO with a certain degree of benchmarking for presenting the award of excellence in CX. The OP HDFC ERGO is going against its own word (principles of estoppels waiver) by dismissing (Preliminary Objection point number 4) the CX allegations made in the lawsuit by the plaintiff wrt the CX audit and subsequent benchmark for excellence awarded by the firm KamiKaze to OP HDFC ERGO. The OP HDFC ERGO is completely rejecting the existence of CX, UX, Usability & Accessibility body of knowledge but at the same time featuring the certified awards and recognition from the CX compliance and audit firm KamiKaze with established audit practices for CX fostering customer, investor, and stake holder’s sentiments. This gives us glims in HDFC ERGO company internal operations. OP HDFC ERGO’s wishy-washy response to dismiss a complete body of knowledge CX & UX that has firmly received statutory recognition in private, government, and public sectors made it evident that the ‘overall operations’ in the HDFC ERGO company between various departments are functioning in a desolated manner. The Legal Department of HDFC ERGO seems to have a damaged channel of communication with the Project Management Office and Software Development Department as observed in the contradictory (principles of estoppels) message stated by OP HDFC ERGO legal department for rejecting the existence of the body of knowledge of CX alongside featuring CX awards and recognition. The operations maturity model (like the Six Sigma wrt Service Design, CX, and UX Maturity Model in this order) needs to be re-evaluated and re-audited for re-benchmarking the operations of HDFC ERGO by the statutory firms which awarded ISO Certification (ISO 9001:2008) and CMS Outstanding Affiliate World-Class Service Award 2015 by Chubb Multinational Solutions that ranked (designated) and grant awards and recognition to HDFC ERGO in different aspects of company operations. Please take a look at ISO IEC International Electrotechnical Commission 25010–2011 and ISO 9241 which discusses Usability which is a part of UX and CX. Evaluating the deficiency in operations of a Company like HDFC ERGO is also necessary to retain the faith of the shareholders in HDFC ERGO. A company’s internal operations are a major part of Service Design, CX, and UX. Customer journey mapping and user journey mapping are integral parts of the CX and UX practices to an extent that the excellence in CX awards and the subsequent evaluation, audit, and benchmarking by the CX audit firm KamiKaze will be questionable if user journey and customer journey are found to be anyway deficient in HDFC ERGO and ignored by CX audit firm. All of it cumulatively raises doubts about the audit, evaluation, and benchmarking standard practices opted for, by the firm KamiKaze which presented an excellence award to OP HDFC ERGO despite a clear surface-level deficiency in CX and overall Operations. Thus I’d request the Consumer Court under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs Central Government of India to demand a report of the assessment and benchmarking from OP2 KamiKaze carried out on OP1 HDFC ERGO.
9. Further, I’d also request the President of Barasat Consumer Forum (N24PGS, WB) to take a Suo Moto initiative to report the visibly (apparent) deficient assessment, auditing, and benchmarking practices of the firm KamiKaze, ISO Certification (ISO 9001:2008), and CMS Outstanding Affiliate World-Class Service Award 2015 by Chubb Multinational Solutions, to the pertinent Central Government Authorities like IRDAI, SEBI, and any other competent central government authority/ministry as a standard routine protocol for ‘pre-disaster financial risk and planning foresight’ because the investors’ sentiments and faith in OP1 HDFC ERGO greatly depend on the awards and recognition presented by the statutory audit firms like OP2 KamiKaze, ISO Certification (ISO 9001:2008), and CMS Outstanding Affiliate World-Class Service Award 2015 by Chubb Multinational Solutions. If not already exists, this is a good opportunity to establish UX & CX audit practices in SEBI, IRDAI & different departments of various Ministries by exercising the advantages of a Quasi-Judicial body that resides inside the Ministry and can rapidly take inter-departmental actions.
10. Institutions have massive Communication Departments to manage their brand image. An integral part of managing the brand image is to collect and scrutinize the discussions in the public domain among people about the brand. The communication department partner with many technology marketing companies which collect real-time data from all social media and then carry out a lot of analysis on the data to figure out the transforming brand image’s strengths and weaknesses. In the age of digitalization, all the ‘curated’ social media and popular website posts are carefully analyzed because of the various statutory guidelines by the Government of India to regulate different types of explicit content all across the internet. In the last few years, a lot of awareness and systems have been put into place to check the spread of Fake News. Clearly stated assumptions and opinions contextually can’t be termed as Fake News. An organization can’t term a clearly stated assumption/opinion by a layman as defamation towards the company because it clearly violates my rights to expression and freedom of speech. Although organized propaganda by one institution on another institution can be viewed from the lenses of planned defamation. I as a layman individual don’t has the monetary capacity and capability to spread organized propaganda. Although such a statement from OP HDFC ERGO’s legal department does raise questions on the state of their Communication Department. It may be the case that their Communication Department is also working desolated which again questions the state of the maturity level of external and internal Operations of the company.
11. The defamation allegations against the plaintiff by OP HDFC ERGO is a planned attempt at character assassination of the plaintiff by questioning the intentions wrt the straight-forward evidence, dialogues, and arguments put forward by the plaintiff in colloquial language, in course of litigation, which seems to be a planned tactical move by OP HDFC ERGO, in a lieu of it, a trick to dismiss all the cases by the plaintiff against HDFC ERGO.
12. I’d request the court to take notice to be not pulled into the bias, such that the dialogues around one litigation with grey areas to address should not bloat onto all the other lawsuit as some of them has been backed by black-and-white hard evidence.
13. The 8% stay active discount should be discussed in the lawsuit CC/353/2022 and the repudiation of the 2000/- health checkup should be discussed in the lawsuit CC/354/2022. I’d request the OP HDFC ERGO to keep the two cases separate to avoid taking undue advantage of one case over another as explained above.
14. The Consumer Court should also note that the plaintiff is managing the ‘thrifty amount’ dispute in his personal capacity with limited resources by single-handedly responding to the multinational company OP HDFC ERGO and expressing the scenarios and phenomenon that happened to him in colloquial language, best to the professional and personal knowledge he acquired practicing UX with academia in the same field. The plaintiff also feels responding to the 17th Jan 2023 OP objection copy that the tone used in the writeup by OP HDFC ERGO is threatening towards the plaintiff which may be employed to set an inherent example for discouraging the public from lawfully raising questions against the practices of a multinational organization along with discouraging the public from approaching quasi-judicial / judiciary, which will further give a freehand to extend exploitive malpractice by the organization.
15. Consumer Court is not a Customer Court or a User Court. If I am consuming directly, even though I’m not primarily paying to qualify to be the direct customer, still I’m entitled to file the lawsuit and be heard in the Consumer Court. The baby consuming a product is not the user, the mother feeding the baby is the user and the father purchasing the baby product is the customer, yet the baby’s interests are secured under the Consumer Protection Act (Inception and Revised).

Registry Post RW651171439IN.

Additional point CC/353/2022 OP HDFC ERGO Response Received on 17 Jan 2023 Objected and Replied by Complainant Ratul Aich, submitted hardcopy in Consumer Court Barasat on 30 March 2023.

1. Referring to the article (document) submitted earlier, “Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility”. It seems non of the following questions asked by the complainant has been answered by OP HDFC ERGO and Consumer Court (Digital, Tech Savvy Society and Judiciary systemic level challenge) in the response document. It is important to establish a rationale by reasoning on the following questions prior to finding an appropriate conclusion.
   How would the court verify and establish the authenticity of the screenshots from Google Fit and excel sheets downloaded from Google Takeout?
   How long would we avoid taking regulatory measures to hinder releasing prematurely usability-tested essential digital services in a tech-savvy society?
   Which party between the technology company and the user should be held liable for the non-registration of data in the backend server given the app has been procedurally installed by the user on the mobile?
   What choices does the end user have other than unquestionably accepting the average count given by the company?
   How could we evaluate the information provided by the company as a layman standing on this side of the desk?
2. Every pixel of the digital application is carefully & pixel perfectly designed by HDFC ERGO Technology Team and every pixel of the operating system is designed by the Android or Apple or modified by Original Equipment Manufacturers (Xiaomi, Samsung Mobiles, LG mobiles, OnePlus, Vivo, Oppo), thus comparing digital world (scenarios and user journeys) with the physical world’s (scenarios and user journeys) is incoherent because the stakeholders of the physical world’s environment (air, material, frequencies) is multi-participatory between Nature and Man-made.

Screenshot Captured on 20 Jan 2023

Quality Council of India QCI may regulate private certification agencies to protect Brand India. (Link)

The first in this series is Judicial Investigation Friendly Digital Systems, Judibility. (Link)

The previous in the series is Communication Gap in Court Hearing Expectations. (Link)

The next in the series, Collection of Key Email Conversations with HDFC ERGO in The Case Judibility. (Link)

Last edited on 9 January 2024.