Description
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the case of CRM this is achieved mainly by providing a better service to your customers than your competitors. CRM not only improves the service to customers though; a good CRM capability will also reduce costs, wastage, and complaints Effective CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a major cause of stress - reduces as services and relationships improve.
105
* Women’s College, A.M.U. Aligarh-202002
Abstract
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the case of CRM this
is achieved mainly by providing a better service to your customers than your competitors. CRM not only
improves the service to customers though; a good CRM capability will also reduce costs, wastage, and
complaints Effective CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a major cause of stress - reduces
as services and relationships improve. CRM enables instant market research as well: opening the lines of
communications with customers gives direct constant market reaction to the products, services and
performance, far better than any market survey. Good CRM also helps to grow business: customers stay
longer; customer churn rates reduce; referrals to new customers increase from increasing numbers of
satisfied customers; demand reduces on fire-fighting and trouble-shooting staff, and overall the
organization’s service flows and teams work more efficiently and more happily, as cited the case of Airtel
Magic at Bharti in this study.
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
* Dr B B Mansuri
I ntroduction
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one
of the newest innovations in customer service today.
CRM stands for customer relationship
management and helps the management and
customer service staff scope with customer
concerns and issues. CRM involves gathering a lot
of data about the customer. The data is then used
to facilitate customer service transactions by
making the information needed to resolve the issue
or concern readily available to those dealing with
the customers. This results in more satisfied
customers, a more profitable business and more
resources available to the support staff.
Furthermore, CRM Customer Relationship
Management systems are a great help to the
management in deciding on the future course of
the company.
As mentioned, there is much data needed for the
CRM system to work. These fields include the
customer name, address, date of transactions,
pending and finished transactions, issues and
complaints, status of order, shipping and fulfillment
dates, account information, demographic data and
106
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT
January - March, 2009
many more. This information is important in
providing the customer the answer that he or she
needs to resolve the issue without having to wait
for a long time and without going to several
departments. With just a few mouse clicks, a
customer support representative for example can
track the location of the customer’s package or
order. This is infinitely better than the cumbersome
process of tracking shipments previously.
Furthermore, the customer service representative
will also be able to see the previous concerns of the
customer. This is a great help especially if the
customer is calling about the same issue since he
or she will not have to repeat the story all over again.
This results in less time in resolving the issue, thus,
higher productivity of the support staff.
Customer Relationship Management systems are
also important to the top management because it
provides crucial data like customer satisfaction and
efficiency of service by the frontline crews. A piece
of customer relationship management software will
also be able to generate the needed reports for
product development or new concepts.
Furthermore, this system will also be a great help
for the top management in deciding the company’s
future course of action, whether it involves phasing
out one of the products on the shelves or making
adjustments to one of the products sold.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can be
widely defined as company activities related to
developing and retaining customers. It is a blend of
internal business processes: sales, marketing and
customer support with technology and data
capturing techniques. Customer Relationship
Management is all about building long-term
business relationships with customers.
CRM is an alignment of strategy, processes and
technology to manage customers and all customer-
facing departments and partners. CRM initiative is
and has the potential of providing strategic
advantages to the organization, if handled right.
Most CRM initiatives begin with a strategic need to
manage the process of handling customer related
information more effectively. For beginners it could
simply mean better lead management capabilities
or sales pipeline visibility. However, as organizations
mature in their CRM initiatives, they begin to look
at CRM as tool to acquire strategic differentiators.
Despite the immense benefits that the CRM
solutions can deliver, they are not entirely without
their share of problems.
In recent years however, several factors have
contributed to the rapid development and evolution
of CRM. The growing de-intermediation process in
many industries due to the advent of sophisticated
computer and telecommunication technologies that
allow producers to directly interact with end
cutomers . for example, in many industries such as
airlines, bamks, insurance, software, or houseland
appliances and even consumables, the de-
intermediation process is fast changing the nature
of marketing and consequently making relationship
marketing more popular. Databases and direct
marketing tools give them the means to
individualize their marketing efforts. Advances in
information technology, networking and
manufacturing technology have helped companies
to quickly match competition. As a result product
107
quality and cost are no longer significant competitive
advantages.
The growth in service economy, since services are
typically produced and delivered at the same
institution, it minimizes the role of the middlemen.
Another force driving the adoption of CRM has been
the total quality movement. When companies
embraced TQM it became necessary to involve
customers and suppliers in implementing the
program at all levels of the value chain. This needed
close working relationships with the customers.
Thus several companies such as Motorola, IBM,
General Motors, Xerox, Ford, Toyota, etc formed
partnering relations with suppliers and customers
to practice TQM. Other programs such as JIT and
MRP also made use of interdependent relationships
between suppliers and customers. Customer
expectations are changing almost on a daily basis.
Newly Empowered customers who choose how to
communicate with the companies across various
available channels. Also nowadays consumers
expect a hi gh degree of personal i zati on.
Emerging real time, interactive channels, e-mail,
ATMs and call centre that must be synchronized
with customer’s non-electronic activities. The speed
of business change, requiring flexibility and rapid
adoption to technologies.
In the present era of hyper competition, marketers
are forced to be more concerned with customer
retention and customer loyalty. As several
researches have found out retaining customers is
less expensive and more sustainable competitive
advantage than acquiring new ones. On the supply
side it pays more to develop closer relationships
with a few suppliers than to develop more vendors.
In addition several marketers are concerned with
keeping customers for life than making one time
sale. There is a greater opportunity for up selling
and cross selling. The globalization of world
marketplace makes it necessary to have global
account management for the customers.
Key Principles of CRM
The following are key principles of CRM:
Differentiate Customers
All customers are not equal; recognize and reward
best customers disproportionately. Understanding
each customer becomes particularly important. And
the same customers’ reaction to a cellular company
operator may be quite different as compared to a
car dealer. Besides for the same product or the
service not all customers can be treated alike and
CRM needs to differentiate between a high value
customer and a low value customer.
Maximizing Life Time Value
Exploit up-selling and cross-selling potential. By
identifying life stage and life event trigger points by
customer, marketers can maximize share of
purchase potential. Thus the single adults shall
require a new car stereo and as he grows into a
married couple his needs grow into appliances.
I ncrease Loyalty
Loyal customers are more profitable. Any company
will like its mindshare status to improve from being
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
108
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT
January - March, 2009
a suspect to being an advocate. Company has to
invest in terms of its product and service offerings
to its customers. It has to innovate and meet the
very needs of its clients/ customers so that they
remain as advocates on the loyalty curve.
A Case Study of Airtel Magic At Bharti
Bharti Tele-Ventures is one of India’s leading private
sector telecom operators. Its cellular business,
Airtel, is a leading mobile telephony brand. Like any
Telco, Bharti considers information technology a key
business enabler. “For telecom, IT is like bread and
butter. We believe it plays two significant roles-it
works as a support system, and it can also be a
business driver. Thus IT is very important to us,” says
Amrita Gangotra, Vice President of Information
Technology at Bharti. It had a WAN in place with a
mix of leased lines and E1 and E3 lines. The
company also has an extranet in place through
which it extends different applications to its dealers
and partners. “We have an extremely large
infrastructure based on products from multiple
vendors,” says Gangotra. This includes a range of
high-end servers from Sun and HP. “In the telecom
business volumes are very large. We have millions
of records and we process them everyday, so for us
storage is in tera bytes, “she adds. Bharti also has
a storage area network (SAN) in place. The main
data centre is located in Gurgaon, Haryana. As far
as software is concerned, some of the applications
that are running on its network are billing, fraud
management, revenue assurance and data
warehousing. They also have some internal-facing
applications like Oracle Financial and Oracle HRMS.
Need of CRM
In a telecom services company like Bharti, airtime
is considered a product. “It is vital for us to manage
the expectations of our customers and provide
them with innovative products and services in a
manner which makes them loyal,” explains
Gangotra. To achieve this, Bharti needed to have
the appropriate means. “To better serve our
customers we needed a tool. It is this need that
made us opt for a CRM (customer relationship
management) solution,” she says. Today Bharti is
using the Oracle CRM platform. “As part of our vision,
we intend to provide AirTel services anywhere and
at any time. A customer should get the same quality
of service no matter which of our call centres he
contacts. This has been our vision, and because of
that we have gone in for a centralised application
like CRM,” Gangotra adds. The implementation of
CRM also helped Bharti in having a unified workflow
and unified processes across the country.
Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated
many options. It considered factors like proper
workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge
sharing, and integration with the billing system. After
a thorough evaluation, it decided to go ahead with
the Oracle CRM platform.
Network I nfrastructure
Like any other telecom service provider, Bharti also
considers information technology a key driver of its
business. “For telecom, IT is like bread and butter.
We believe it plays two significant roles—it works as
a support system, and it can also be a business
driver. Thus IT is very important to us,” says Amrita
109
Gangotra, vice president of Information Technology
at Bharti.
The service provider has a WAN set-up in place, it
has a mix of leased lines and E1 and E3 lines for
wide area connectivity. The company also has an
extranet in place through which it extends different
applications to its dealers and partners. “We have
an extremely large infrastructure based on products
from multiple vendors,” says Gangotra. This includes
a range of high-end servers from Sun and HP. “In the
telecom business volumes are very large. We have
millions of records and we process them everyday,
so for us storage is in terabytes,” she adds.
Bharti also has a storage area network (SAN) in place,
and has selected EMC as the storage provider for
the SAN. The main data centre is located in Gurgaon,
Haryana. The company uses high-end routers from
Cisco, and is in the process of implementing a
disaster recovery (DR) set-up. As far as software is
concerned, some of the applications that are running
on its network are billing, fraud management,
revenue assurance and data warehousing. They also
have some internal-facing applications like Oracle
Financial and Oracle HRMS.
Benefits
Gangotra says it is important to understand and
segregate customer needs depending on the
product and services he is buying. “One of the
primary things that we have done in this solution is
the segmentation of customers. With this, AirTel is
now able to give its customers more value for
money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are
able to provide customers different schemes and
services depending on airtime usage. If the
customer is a heavy user then they have some
specific schemes; for normal users they have other
schemes. Apart from this, they have also managed
to segregate their workflow with the help of the CRM
tool. Initially, when Bharti started operations, the
whole system was run manually. “At that point of
time only 40 percent of our customer issues were
getting resolved—this has now gone up to about 90
percent,” reveals Gangotra.
Strategy has also played a major role in improving
customer service at AirTel. After starting its services
in Delhi, Bharti acquired lot of circles and sought
new licences in other circles; whenever they got a
new licence, they implemented the CRM tool
immediately. But they had to put in a migration
strategy in those acquired circles which had an
existing subscriber base. “The migration had to be
done in such a manner that the existing customer
base did not suffer; we have already completed this
in 14 of the 15 circles that we operate in,” says
Gangotra. All the circles will go live bythe first quarter
of 2004.
The biggest challenge for Bharti was to have a
unified process in place. Once this was done they
faced the challenge of imparting training. “When
you go in for such a large-scale implementation you
will definitely have problems,” says Gangotra. “We
also had certain technical difficulties during
implementation, but we were able to overcome
them.”
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
110
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT
January - March, 2009
The CRM strategy at Airtel revolves around two
aspects: operational CRM and analytical CRM. The
first is about helping their call centres in the workflow
part, helping them in their day-to-day activities. The
second provides staff with the required information
on customers; this is used for business development
activities. Together they help Bharti provide better
services to its customers.
The Case for CRM
Initially, when Bharti started operations, the whole
system was run manually. “At that point of time only
40 percent of our customer issues were getting
resolved-this has now gone up to about 90 percent,”
reveals Gangotra.
“It is vital for us to manage the expectations of our
customers and provide them with innovative
products and services in a manner which makes
them loyal,” explains Gangotra. To achieve this,
Bharti needed the right tools. “It is this need that
made us opt for a CRM (customer relationship
management) solution,” she says.
Cherry Picking a Solution
Today Bharti is using the Oracle CRM platform. “As
part of our vision, we intend to provide AirTel services
anywhere and at any time. A customer should get
the same quality of service no matter which of our
call centers he contacts. This has been our vision,
and because of that we have gone in for a
centralised application like CRM, “Gangotra adds.
Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated
many options. It considered factors like proper
workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge
sharing, and integration with the billing system. After
a thorough evaluation exercise, it decided to go
ahead with the Oracle CRM platform.
Roll I t
After starting its services in Delhi, Bharti acquired
many circles and sought new licences in other
circles; whenever they got a new licence, they
implemented the CRM tool immediately. But they
had to put in a migration strategy in those acquired
circles which had an existing subscriber base. “The
migration had to be done in such a manner that the
existing customer base did not suffer; we have
already completed this in 14 of the 15 circles that
we operate in,” says Gangotra. The goal was that all
the circles would go live by the first quarter of 2004.
The biggest challenge for Bharti was to have a
unified process in place. Once this was done they
faced the challenge of imparting training. “When
you go in for such a large-scale implementation you
will definitely have problems,” says Gangotra. “We
also had certain technical difficulties during
implementation, but we were able to over come them.”
The CRM strategy at Airtel revolves around two
aspects: operational CRM and analytical CRM. The
first is about helping their call centres in the workflow
part, helping them in their day-to-day activities. The
second provides staff with the required information
on customers; this is used for business development
activities. Together they help Bharti provide better
services to its customers.
111
Tailor-Made Schemes
Gangotra says it is important to understand and
segregate customer needs depending on the
product and services he is buying. “One of the
primary things that we have done in this solution is
the segmentation of customers. With this, AirTel is
now able to give its customers more value for
money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are
able to provide customers different schemes and
services depending on airtime usage. If the
customer is a heavy user then they have some
specific schemes; for normal users they have other
schemes. Apart from this, they have also managed
to segregate their workflow with the help of the CRM
tool.
Conclusion
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any
organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the
case of CRM this is achieved mainly by providing a
better service to your customers than your
competitors. CRM not only improves the service to
customers though; a good CRM capability will also
reduce costs, wastage, and complaints Effective
CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a
major cause of stress - reduces as services and
relationships improve.
CRM enables instant market research as well:
opening the lines of communications with
customers gives direct constant market reaction to
the products, services and performance, far better
than any market survey. Good CRM also helps to
grow business: customers stay longer; customer
churn rates reduce; referrals to new customers
increase from increasing numbers of satisfied
customers; demand reduces on fire-fighting and
trouble-shooting staff, and overall the organization’s
service flows and teams work more efficiently and
more happily, as cited the case of Airtel Magic at
Bharti in this study.
Reference
• Achrol, R.S.(1997).Change in the theory of
Inter-organisational Relations in Marketing
:Toward a Network Paradigm, Journal of the
Accounting of Marketing Science,
25(Winter),56-76.
• Greenberg, P. (2001),CRM at the Speed of
Light, Berkeley, CA: Osborne / McGraw-Hill.
• Sheth, J.N. (1996).Relationship Marketing in
Paradigm Shift or Shaft? Paper presented at
the Annual meeting of the Academy of
Marketing Science, Miami(May).
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
doc_228902117.pdf
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the case of CRM this is achieved mainly by providing a better service to your customers than your competitors. CRM not only improves the service to customers though; a good CRM capability will also reduce costs, wastage, and complaints Effective CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a major cause of stress - reduces as services and relationships improve.
105
* Women’s College, A.M.U. Aligarh-202002
Abstract
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the case of CRM this
is achieved mainly by providing a better service to your customers than your competitors. CRM not only
improves the service to customers though; a good CRM capability will also reduce costs, wastage, and
complaints Effective CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a major cause of stress - reduces
as services and relationships improve. CRM enables instant market research as well: opening the lines of
communications with customers gives direct constant market reaction to the products, services and
performance, far better than any market survey. Good CRM also helps to grow business: customers stay
longer; customer churn rates reduce; referrals to new customers increase from increasing numbers of
satisfied customers; demand reduces on fire-fighting and trouble-shooting staff, and overall the
organization’s service flows and teams work more efficiently and more happily, as cited the case of Airtel
Magic at Bharti in this study.
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
* Dr B B Mansuri
I ntroduction
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one
of the newest innovations in customer service today.
CRM stands for customer relationship
management and helps the management and
customer service staff scope with customer
concerns and issues. CRM involves gathering a lot
of data about the customer. The data is then used
to facilitate customer service transactions by
making the information needed to resolve the issue
or concern readily available to those dealing with
the customers. This results in more satisfied
customers, a more profitable business and more
resources available to the support staff.
Furthermore, CRM Customer Relationship
Management systems are a great help to the
management in deciding on the future course of
the company.
As mentioned, there is much data needed for the
CRM system to work. These fields include the
customer name, address, date of transactions,
pending and finished transactions, issues and
complaints, status of order, shipping and fulfillment
dates, account information, demographic data and
106
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT
January - March, 2009
many more. This information is important in
providing the customer the answer that he or she
needs to resolve the issue without having to wait
for a long time and without going to several
departments. With just a few mouse clicks, a
customer support representative for example can
track the location of the customer’s package or
order. This is infinitely better than the cumbersome
process of tracking shipments previously.
Furthermore, the customer service representative
will also be able to see the previous concerns of the
customer. This is a great help especially if the
customer is calling about the same issue since he
or she will not have to repeat the story all over again.
This results in less time in resolving the issue, thus,
higher productivity of the support staff.
Customer Relationship Management systems are
also important to the top management because it
provides crucial data like customer satisfaction and
efficiency of service by the frontline crews. A piece
of customer relationship management software will
also be able to generate the needed reports for
product development or new concepts.
Furthermore, this system will also be a great help
for the top management in deciding the company’s
future course of action, whether it involves phasing
out one of the products on the shelves or making
adjustments to one of the products sold.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can be
widely defined as company activities related to
developing and retaining customers. It is a blend of
internal business processes: sales, marketing and
customer support with technology and data
capturing techniques. Customer Relationship
Management is all about building long-term
business relationships with customers.
CRM is an alignment of strategy, processes and
technology to manage customers and all customer-
facing departments and partners. CRM initiative is
and has the potential of providing strategic
advantages to the organization, if handled right.
Most CRM initiatives begin with a strategic need to
manage the process of handling customer related
information more effectively. For beginners it could
simply mean better lead management capabilities
or sales pipeline visibility. However, as organizations
mature in their CRM initiatives, they begin to look
at CRM as tool to acquire strategic differentiators.
Despite the immense benefits that the CRM
solutions can deliver, they are not entirely without
their share of problems.
In recent years however, several factors have
contributed to the rapid development and evolution
of CRM. The growing de-intermediation process in
many industries due to the advent of sophisticated
computer and telecommunication technologies that
allow producers to directly interact with end
cutomers . for example, in many industries such as
airlines, bamks, insurance, software, or houseland
appliances and even consumables, the de-
intermediation process is fast changing the nature
of marketing and consequently making relationship
marketing more popular. Databases and direct
marketing tools give them the means to
individualize their marketing efforts. Advances in
information technology, networking and
manufacturing technology have helped companies
to quickly match competition. As a result product
107
quality and cost are no longer significant competitive
advantages.
The growth in service economy, since services are
typically produced and delivered at the same
institution, it minimizes the role of the middlemen.
Another force driving the adoption of CRM has been
the total quality movement. When companies
embraced TQM it became necessary to involve
customers and suppliers in implementing the
program at all levels of the value chain. This needed
close working relationships with the customers.
Thus several companies such as Motorola, IBM,
General Motors, Xerox, Ford, Toyota, etc formed
partnering relations with suppliers and customers
to practice TQM. Other programs such as JIT and
MRP also made use of interdependent relationships
between suppliers and customers. Customer
expectations are changing almost on a daily basis.
Newly Empowered customers who choose how to
communicate with the companies across various
available channels. Also nowadays consumers
expect a hi gh degree of personal i zati on.
Emerging real time, interactive channels, e-mail,
ATMs and call centre that must be synchronized
with customer’s non-electronic activities. The speed
of business change, requiring flexibility and rapid
adoption to technologies.
In the present era of hyper competition, marketers
are forced to be more concerned with customer
retention and customer loyalty. As several
researches have found out retaining customers is
less expensive and more sustainable competitive
advantage than acquiring new ones. On the supply
side it pays more to develop closer relationships
with a few suppliers than to develop more vendors.
In addition several marketers are concerned with
keeping customers for life than making one time
sale. There is a greater opportunity for up selling
and cross selling. The globalization of world
marketplace makes it necessary to have global
account management for the customers.
Key Principles of CRM
The following are key principles of CRM:
Differentiate Customers
All customers are not equal; recognize and reward
best customers disproportionately. Understanding
each customer becomes particularly important. And
the same customers’ reaction to a cellular company
operator may be quite different as compared to a
car dealer. Besides for the same product or the
service not all customers can be treated alike and
CRM needs to differentiate between a high value
customer and a low value customer.
Maximizing Life Time Value
Exploit up-selling and cross-selling potential. By
identifying life stage and life event trigger points by
customer, marketers can maximize share of
purchase potential. Thus the single adults shall
require a new car stereo and as he grows into a
married couple his needs grow into appliances.
I ncrease Loyalty
Loyal customers are more profitable. Any company
will like its mindshare status to improve from being
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
108
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT
January - March, 2009
a suspect to being an advocate. Company has to
invest in terms of its product and service offerings
to its customers. It has to innovate and meet the
very needs of its clients/ customers so that they
remain as advocates on the loyalty curve.
A Case Study of Airtel Magic At Bharti
Bharti Tele-Ventures is one of India’s leading private
sector telecom operators. Its cellular business,
Airtel, is a leading mobile telephony brand. Like any
Telco, Bharti considers information technology a key
business enabler. “For telecom, IT is like bread and
butter. We believe it plays two significant roles-it
works as a support system, and it can also be a
business driver. Thus IT is very important to us,” says
Amrita Gangotra, Vice President of Information
Technology at Bharti. It had a WAN in place with a
mix of leased lines and E1 and E3 lines. The
company also has an extranet in place through
which it extends different applications to its dealers
and partners. “We have an extremely large
infrastructure based on products from multiple
vendors,” says Gangotra. This includes a range of
high-end servers from Sun and HP. “In the telecom
business volumes are very large. We have millions
of records and we process them everyday, so for us
storage is in tera bytes, “she adds. Bharti also has
a storage area network (SAN) in place. The main
data centre is located in Gurgaon, Haryana. As far
as software is concerned, some of the applications
that are running on its network are billing, fraud
management, revenue assurance and data
warehousing. They also have some internal-facing
applications like Oracle Financial and Oracle HRMS.
Need of CRM
In a telecom services company like Bharti, airtime
is considered a product. “It is vital for us to manage
the expectations of our customers and provide
them with innovative products and services in a
manner which makes them loyal,” explains
Gangotra. To achieve this, Bharti needed to have
the appropriate means. “To better serve our
customers we needed a tool. It is this need that
made us opt for a CRM (customer relationship
management) solution,” she says. Today Bharti is
using the Oracle CRM platform. “As part of our vision,
we intend to provide AirTel services anywhere and
at any time. A customer should get the same quality
of service no matter which of our call centres he
contacts. This has been our vision, and because of
that we have gone in for a centralised application
like CRM,” Gangotra adds. The implementation of
CRM also helped Bharti in having a unified workflow
and unified processes across the country.
Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated
many options. It considered factors like proper
workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge
sharing, and integration with the billing system. After
a thorough evaluation, it decided to go ahead with
the Oracle CRM platform.
Network I nfrastructure
Like any other telecom service provider, Bharti also
considers information technology a key driver of its
business. “For telecom, IT is like bread and butter.
We believe it plays two significant roles—it works as
a support system, and it can also be a business
driver. Thus IT is very important to us,” says Amrita
109
Gangotra, vice president of Information Technology
at Bharti.
The service provider has a WAN set-up in place, it
has a mix of leased lines and E1 and E3 lines for
wide area connectivity. The company also has an
extranet in place through which it extends different
applications to its dealers and partners. “We have
an extremely large infrastructure based on products
from multiple vendors,” says Gangotra. This includes
a range of high-end servers from Sun and HP. “In the
telecom business volumes are very large. We have
millions of records and we process them everyday,
so for us storage is in terabytes,” she adds.
Bharti also has a storage area network (SAN) in place,
and has selected EMC as the storage provider for
the SAN. The main data centre is located in Gurgaon,
Haryana. The company uses high-end routers from
Cisco, and is in the process of implementing a
disaster recovery (DR) set-up. As far as software is
concerned, some of the applications that are running
on its network are billing, fraud management,
revenue assurance and data warehousing. They also
have some internal-facing applications like Oracle
Financial and Oracle HRMS.
Benefits
Gangotra says it is important to understand and
segregate customer needs depending on the
product and services he is buying. “One of the
primary things that we have done in this solution is
the segmentation of customers. With this, AirTel is
now able to give its customers more value for
money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are
able to provide customers different schemes and
services depending on airtime usage. If the
customer is a heavy user then they have some
specific schemes; for normal users they have other
schemes. Apart from this, they have also managed
to segregate their workflow with the help of the CRM
tool. Initially, when Bharti started operations, the
whole system was run manually. “At that point of
time only 40 percent of our customer issues were
getting resolved—this has now gone up to about 90
percent,” reveals Gangotra.
Strategy has also played a major role in improving
customer service at AirTel. After starting its services
in Delhi, Bharti acquired lot of circles and sought
new licences in other circles; whenever they got a
new licence, they implemented the CRM tool
immediately. But they had to put in a migration
strategy in those acquired circles which had an
existing subscriber base. “The migration had to be
done in such a manner that the existing customer
base did not suffer; we have already completed this
in 14 of the 15 circles that we operate in,” says
Gangotra. All the circles will go live bythe first quarter
of 2004.
The biggest challenge for Bharti was to have a
unified process in place. Once this was done they
faced the challenge of imparting training. “When
you go in for such a large-scale implementation you
will definitely have problems,” says Gangotra. “We
also had certain technical difficulties during
implementation, but we were able to overcome
them.”
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
110
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT
January - March, 2009
The CRM strategy at Airtel revolves around two
aspects: operational CRM and analytical CRM. The
first is about helping their call centres in the workflow
part, helping them in their day-to-day activities. The
second provides staff with the required information
on customers; this is used for business development
activities. Together they help Bharti provide better
services to its customers.
The Case for CRM
Initially, when Bharti started operations, the whole
system was run manually. “At that point of time only
40 percent of our customer issues were getting
resolved-this has now gone up to about 90 percent,”
reveals Gangotra.
“It is vital for us to manage the expectations of our
customers and provide them with innovative
products and services in a manner which makes
them loyal,” explains Gangotra. To achieve this,
Bharti needed the right tools. “It is this need that
made us opt for a CRM (customer relationship
management) solution,” she says.
Cherry Picking a Solution
Today Bharti is using the Oracle CRM platform. “As
part of our vision, we intend to provide AirTel services
anywhere and at any time. A customer should get
the same quality of service no matter which of our
call centers he contacts. This has been our vision,
and because of that we have gone in for a
centralised application like CRM, “Gangotra adds.
Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated
many options. It considered factors like proper
workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge
sharing, and integration with the billing system. After
a thorough evaluation exercise, it decided to go
ahead with the Oracle CRM platform.
Roll I t
After starting its services in Delhi, Bharti acquired
many circles and sought new licences in other
circles; whenever they got a new licence, they
implemented the CRM tool immediately. But they
had to put in a migration strategy in those acquired
circles which had an existing subscriber base. “The
migration had to be done in such a manner that the
existing customer base did not suffer; we have
already completed this in 14 of the 15 circles that
we operate in,” says Gangotra. The goal was that all
the circles would go live by the first quarter of 2004.
The biggest challenge for Bharti was to have a
unified process in place. Once this was done they
faced the challenge of imparting training. “When
you go in for such a large-scale implementation you
will definitely have problems,” says Gangotra. “We
also had certain technical difficulties during
implementation, but we were able to over come them.”
The CRM strategy at Airtel revolves around two
aspects: operational CRM and analytical CRM. The
first is about helping their call centres in the workflow
part, helping them in their day-to-day activities. The
second provides staff with the required information
on customers; this is used for business development
activities. Together they help Bharti provide better
services to its customers.
111
Tailor-Made Schemes
Gangotra says it is important to understand and
segregate customer needs depending on the
product and services he is buying. “One of the
primary things that we have done in this solution is
the segmentation of customers. With this, AirTel is
now able to give its customers more value for
money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are
able to provide customers different schemes and
services depending on airtime usage. If the
customer is a heavy user then they have some
specific schemes; for normal users they have other
schemes. Apart from this, they have also managed
to segregate their workflow with the help of the CRM
tool.
Conclusion
The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any
organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the
case of CRM this is achieved mainly by providing a
better service to your customers than your
competitors. CRM not only improves the service to
customers though; a good CRM capability will also
reduce costs, wastage, and complaints Effective
CRM also reduces staff stress, because attrition - a
major cause of stress - reduces as services and
relationships improve.
CRM enables instant market research as well:
opening the lines of communications with
customers gives direct constant market reaction to
the products, services and performance, far better
than any market survey. Good CRM also helps to
grow business: customers stay longer; customer
churn rates reduce; referrals to new customers
increase from increasing numbers of satisfied
customers; demand reduces on fire-fighting and
trouble-shooting staff, and overall the organization’s
service flows and teams work more efficiently and
more happily, as cited the case of Airtel Magic at
Bharti in this study.
Reference
• Achrol, R.S.(1997).Change in the theory of
Inter-organisational Relations in Marketing
:Toward a Network Paradigm, Journal of the
Accounting of Marketing Science,
25(Winter),56-76.
• Greenberg, P. (2001),CRM at the Speed of
Light, Berkeley, CA: Osborne / McGraw-Hill.
• Sheth, J.N. (1996).Relationship Marketing in
Paradigm Shift or Shaft? Paper presented at
the Annual meeting of the Academy of
Marketing Science, Miami(May).
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- A Case Study of Airtel
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