Enterprise Apps Special :CRM Case Study

For Tata Teleservices, customer is always king

The telecom industry today is all about big numbers and volumes—read customer satisfaction. This spells good news for telecom service provider TTSL, which believes in top-of-class customer services, says Gaurav Patra

Tata Teleservices (TTSL), a part of the Tata Group—one of India’s largest business houses with more than 80 companies in the fold—is a premium telecom service provider. TTSL was established by Tata Industries to leverage the liberalised regime in the telecom sector and to provide quality telecom (data/voice) services to retail as well as corporate customers. TTSL provides basic telephony services and complements and competes with the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) in the circles it operates in. In the past two years the company has been successful in entering major towns in Andhra Pradesh. Around a year ago, it started providing basic and WLL-based services in New Delhi. TTSL has also applied for fresh basic and WLL licenses in eight more telecom circles.

TTSL has so far been able to provide approximately two lakh connections in Andhra Pradesh alone. In this circle, the number of subscribers is growing at more than 70 percent year-on-year. As part of its expansion plans, TTSL successfully bid to establish its high quality telecom infrastructure in five other circles (states). TTSL has already invested $400 million for rolling out services in Andhra Pradesh and plans to invest another $1.7 billion over the next five years to expand its services across the planned service areas. TTSL’s plans for service roll-out cover 56 percent of the incumbents’ (BSNL/MTNL) telephone subscriber base, and accounts for about 65 percent of the incumbents’ revenues. If estimates do work in the expected direction, the company is certain to have nearly five to six million customers over the next five years.

With a significant presence across the telecom value chain and the synergies after the acquisition of VSNL by the Tata group, TTSL is planning to expand the range of its coverage and services; advanced communication solutions now include seamless integration of voice, video, data and IP systems. As a basic telephone services provider, TTSL provides the backbone for India’s corporate leaders such as GE Capital, Wipro, Magnacom, Citicorp Overseas software (now called Orbitech), Dr Reddy’s Labs, Standard Chartered Bank, Motorola India Electronics, TCS and Satyam, in addition to servicing the telecom needs of retail customers.

But the entire telecom infrastructure was of little use until customers were serviced satisfactorily. After putting in place the required equipment and infrastructure, TTIL was committed to setting up a CRM solution that would cater to the varied needs of its vast customer base. “Oracle E- Business Suite has played an important role in helping TTSL meet its customer service needs, thereby making it a joy for customers to interact with our company,” says S Ramakrishnan, managing director, Tata Teleservices.

Catalyst for change

In order to build its customer base, the TTSL management understood the need to have robust infrastructure in place to ensure quality customer service. This was to be a key differentiator for TTSL in the competitive landscape it was operating in. This was also a compelling need for the private sector service provider, as customer expectations were very high.

The TTSL management had the foresight to realise the potential of leveraging customer interaction to attract, maintain and enhance the lifetime value of the customer. The growth and wide acceptance of the service presented TTSL with an excellent opportunity to use customer interaction to enhance customer relationships as well as leverage the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell new products and offerings. To meet the strategic objectives of the customer care experience there was a need to have integrated processes and systems in place to:

• Ensure that customers could access and get information about various services easily.
• Provide quick and accurate resolution of customer requests.
• Meet all the commitments.
• Get things right the first time, all the time.
• Constantly find ways to reduce costs and increase productivity to generate and safeguard company revenues and profitability.
• Ensure that every interaction with the customer results in delight, produces joy and enhances the customer’s relationship with TTSL.

Translating the corporate mission was a challenging task. TTSL realised very early that a CRM strategy required robust and scaleable tools. There was also a need to align all processes towards customer-centricity ethics and also to ensure that this got translated into faster, quicker and better service levels.

The solution

The way forward was a challenge by itself—there were plenty of tools providing point-solutions. The functional teams did not have a good understanding of technology. There were multiple CRM vendors to be considered. After establishing the fact that no single tools/vendors could provide a best-in-class, end-to-end solution, there arose the need to evaluate a credible systems integrator. The company was also not clear about the investment needed.

The evaluation by TTSL included getting multiple vendors to respond to detailed functional requirements, solution presentations, demonstrations and site visits. After a thorough techno-commercial evaluation, TTSL chose Oracle CRM tools. It was expected that Oracle CRM, part of the Oracle E- Business Suite, would accelerate the achievement of customer service objectives.

“The evaluation teams found the Oracle solution to be most integrated and with a clear growth path. This, coupled with the significant local presence of Oracle and excellent support for Oracle technology already in use at TTSL gave us the confidence to implement the Oracle CRM solution,” says Rajeev Nagpal, CIO, TTSL.

A successful implementation also called for a system integration partner who not only had vast experience on the solution but also industry experience to ensure a successful implementation. TTSL chose sister concern Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to implement Oracle CRM.

The implementation

The project team from TTSL along with TCS identified the processes that needed to be integrated. Scalability was key, as TTSL was clearly on a positive trajectory. Customer centricity and quality level adherence were the other two issues in this project. The completely integrated CRM solution also feeds information into the enterprise-wide deployment of Oracle Data Warehouse, which is used for all MIS reporting.

“The solution deployed was a complete CRM suite, integrating data warehousing and ERP. It was also important that the solution first addressed the most pressing and relevant needs,” says Nagpal. Thus, with the priority of business drivers in place, a modular implementation was worked out wherein data warehousing was followed by applications to streamline customer service operations integrated into the system. This was capped by a state-of-the-art computer telephony integration (CTI) application. Alongside, extensive user training and orientation was carried out, .

Lastly, the successful implementation and its enterprise-wide acceptance clearly justified why TTSL had chosen Oracle’s suite of offerings over vendors like Siebel, SAP and Clarify.

Benefits

For TTSL, the integrated CRM solution has proved to be very beneficial. Notwithstanding the challenges faced by the implementing team, the end magnificently echoed the means.

Some benefits quantified after the implementation are:

• Increase in call centre throughput by 15-20 percent.
• Increase in the first-time resolution of complaints.
• Reduction in the turnaround time for complaints to a maximum of 24 hours in extreme cases.

“TTSL has been able to provide better quality of service and faster response, and has seen greater employee confidence and greater customer delight because of transparency of operations. All this has led to a better business environment in TTSL,” says Nagpal. Says Kurivilla Markose, general manager, Customer Service, TTSL, “The solution has also contributed in lowering the costs of customer service, thus directly contributing to the bottomline of the company.” “The product was the most suitable one looking at the requirements of the company. Also, TCS leveraged on its experience to put all the pieces together elegantly,” he adds.

Oracle’s E-Business Suite has improved the interaction centre’s throughput. Faster query resolution, an improved learning curve for agents and visibility status for all users have been the significant benefits of the implementation.

The way forward

Encouraged by the successful implementation of CRM, TTSL now intends to run the whole mile and roll out the solution in all its new circles where it has recently bagged licenses to establish state-of-the-art communications infrastructure.

The company is looking at extending CRM to all parts of the TTSL back-office, geographies and channel partners and will also explore to possibility offering multiple CRM access points—Web, kiosk, franchise outlets and more.

gaurav@expresscomputeronline.com

Post-implementation scenario at TTSL

A single view of many pieces of data. Full 360-degree view of the customer across multiple touch points. Increased availability of information to leverage customer contacts for cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Single place to track all customers interactions. Increased productivity of Customer Service Representatives (CSRs). Automated workflows and escalation have been established for service request and customer complaints. Processes for handling trouble tickets, activation queries, etc., streamlined and automated. No service requests now fall through the cracks. CSRs are now able to provide online status for queries, thus reducing follow-up calls from customers and contributing to enriching the customer experience. Customer profiling is now possible. Enables TTSL to provide differential service based on customer segments as well as type of service. Marketing efficiency is improved through customisation and cross-selling as well as upselling opportunities.