Telecommunications is one of the prime support services needed for rapid growth of any developing country.

Telecommunications is one of the fastest developing sectors in India. The Indian government is concentrating more on this sector, especially in recent years because of the enormous growth of Information Technology (IT) and its significant impact on the rest of the economy.

Need for CRM in Telecom Sector The beneficiaries of the competition being consumers, the telecom players in todays environment are required to design and deploy customer-centric strategies not only to grab a share in the market but also to sustain in the market in the longrun. The players have realized the importance of constant service-quality delivery to the customers for long-run sustainability. Customer relationship signifies identifying the needs of the customers and stretching out ways and means to satisfy them. To be precise, it means achieving high customer profitability customer revenues over and above customer costs, which demands matching customer expectations with customer satisfaction. The high cost of customer acquisition is making todays businesses understand the importance of retaining the customers for long-run sustainability. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) aims at narrowing the gap between the company and its customers. In Telecom Sector, CRM plays a vital role in not only bringing the customers close to the company, but also in identifying the changing behavioral pattern of the customers. In technology-dynamic markets like telecom, an efficient CRM system is essential, since the customer attrition is high due to the presence of close substitutes and near-zero switching costs. The book aims at throwing light on the CRM practices commonly followed in the telecom sector and their applicability to several aspects of the service delivery process.

CRM signifies identifying the needs of the customers and stretching out ways and means to satisfy them. In this perspective CRM cannot be treated merely as a technology; it also has implications in the strategy formulation for companies. It focuses on the customers looking for value in all their transactions and is willing to pay for that value. In a way technology has brought the customers closer to the marketer. Knowledge about markets, segments and product usage can be made easily available to the organizations. Many companies thrive on this knowledge as it enables them to design the right kind of marketing and promotional strategies to capture the attention of the customers. Even capturing the attention of the customer has become challenging as media proliferation has led to increase in competition. A better equipped customer with knowledge about various alternatives available in the market is difficult to be convinced. Companies have to be alert in their approach to understand the customers definition of value

and accordingly position themselves on quality, service, performance, and efficiency perspective. It becomes imperative to create value for their customers; a value that is able to bind them to the company and stop them from switching to another companys product.

Customer Relationship Management from Vodafone

Introduction Customers are more demanding than ever before Increased choice and access to more information on alternatives make it harder than ever before to winnew customers and retain existing clients in the face of stiff competition.Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is al l about understanding people: what makes them talk to you, what makes them buy from you, wha t products and services they are most likely to be interested in, and what makes them come back to buy from you again and again.To satisfy customers and achieve commercialsuccess, organisations need to collect, organise andshare all the information they have about their customers throughout their business in a consistent,efficient way. Recognising that different solutions address different levels of organisational complexity and with extensive experience in delivering Oracle Siebel CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Vodafone throughits Applications Services Business Group, Aspective, is able to offer the right solution to meet the needsof every client, driving measurable improvements in business processes, enabling closer relationshipswith customers and supporting the achievement of new levels of profitability. Benefits Intuitive user interface that works the way your people do Flexibility to support your unique business processes Marketing obtain a clearer view of customers,make more informed investments, automate campaign management and increase campaign success Sales sales force automation, more informed real-time lead and opportunity management, shorter sales cycle, close more business Service call centre and field servicemanagement, job scheduling, service reportingand analysis

 Mobile access instant access to customer and activity data, increase productivity and efficiency,deliver more value to customers and improve win rates. Support/training Vodafone offers a uniquely flexible range of projectand support offerings to CRM clients. Our experienced business process experts assist clients in developingsystem strategies; extensive systems integration experience ensures the most efficient implementationtimescales whilst delivering maximum value.Vodafone provides a range of application managementsolutions from patching, enhancements and upgrades ;support desk and infrastructure services; through tofully outsourced hosted and managed applications,including disaster recovery.