By Jyoti Banthia

Copyright thehindubusinessline

When Bengaluru-based marketing professional Nisha tried to resolve a bungled quick commerce order recently, she found herself stuck in an endless loop with a chatbot. The option to speak to a human was missing, until she discovered it was now a premium feature bundled into subscription plans. What was once free is quietly being paywalled.

E-commerce and food delivery platforms like Flipkart, Zomato and Swiggy are recasting loyalty by putting human support behind subscription walls, while pushing AI as the default frontline.

According to Praveen Govindu, Partner at Deloitte India, this is more than a cost-saving move. “Bringing human support back as a loyalty benefit is a powerful signal. It tells customers that the brand values reassurance and accountability enough to make it part of the premium experience. Instead of being anchored only in points or discounts, loyalty now extends into the emotional space of trust and recognition,” he said.

Govindu added that companies must tread carefully: “Charging for human interactions can be contentious. The risk emerges when baseline service is weak and customers feel forced to pay simply to receive acceptable support. That can create resentment, erode trust and accelerate churn.”

deliberate move

Analysts say the move is deliberate. “Food delivery pricing is already high because of commissions, packaging and extra charges. That’s why frequency of ordering is not increasing,” said Satish Meena, adviser at Datum Intelligence. “This looks like the case of degrading service quality first and then charging premium for basic things.”

According to him, platforms are essentially filtering requests — letting AI handle the bulk while nudging customers to pay if they want the certainty of human help. “For companies, this is the way to filter out the requests, which can be solved by AI and push the customer to upgrade to premium subscriptions for access to these services. But this is unfair on the customer,” said Meena.

He compared it to the telecom playbook. “It is like telecom, where earlier you had unlimited incoming and outgoing, but gradually companies created tiers for services which used to be standard. Now, e-commerce and food delivery firms are doing the same with customer care,” he noted.

Flipkart’s new Flipkart Black membership (₹1,499 annually, ₹990 for early adopters) offers YouTube Premium, shopping cashback and travel perks via Cleartrip — framed as an elevated experience for “affluent, digitally entrenched users”. Swiggy has gone one step further with its invite-only One Blck tier, layered above Swiggy One, promising faster deliveries, on-time guarantees and dining perks such as complimentary cocktails.

“Most of the regular customer care work has been automated by AI, which has also led to cost effectiveness for the platforms,” noted a executive of a quick commerce platform.

As platforms chase profitability and higher spending cohorts, the human touch has been recast as a luxury. In India’s subscription economy, real conversations are no longer free, they’re reserved for those who can pay.

Published on September 16, 2025