I know many Airtel customers may be annoyed by the IVR (Interactive voice response) that for some reason has been set to a language you are not comfortable with. Moreover the Airtel customer care 121 IVR does not give an option to switch the language the next time. In fact it never will as the IVR has been set by default.
I prefer English, though I can understand Marathi for some reason the Airtel IVR set itself to Marathi and I found it really annoying not been able to get the option to switch to English language immediately after the greeting. Also most services do not work in Marathi mode. For example when I tried to use the deactivate GPRS using 121 (IVR Marathi) it told me to send an SMS.
After going through various options (Voice in Marathi) I finally found one option where you can easily change the IVR to your language preference.
How to change the Airtel IVR to your preferred language
- Call 121 ( Airtel Customer Care)
- As soon as you hear the greeting you press 43.
- Then for Marathi press 1, for English press 2, for Hindi press 3
- You will then be asked for confirmation so press 1
- Now close the call and try calling 121 again ( you may hear the greeting, announcement in local language, but later on your preferred language will take over.)
Say if you want to use English as preferred IVR language dial 121 and then press 4321.
Now when I tried to deactivate GPRS using English IVR, I could do it with a simple key press selection without having to send an SMS.