CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

MANAGEMENT
AT
AIRTEL

Submitted By:
Navya Sardana
Roll
Session 2015-17
MFM 1st Semester

INTRODUCTION

Bharti Airtel Limited ,usually referred to simply as "airtel", is a Indian

telecommunications company that operates in 19 countries across South Asia, Africa and
the Channel Islands. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G
services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel is the fifth largest telecom
operator in the world with over 200 million subscribers as of October 2010. It is the
largest cellular service provider in India, with over 143 million subscribers as of
September 30, 2010. Airtel is the 3rd largest in-country mobile operator by subscriber
base, behind Mobile and China Unicom. It has a 29.00% market share of the GSM mobile
service in India.
Airtel also offers fixed line services and broadband services. It offers its telecom services
under the Airtel brand and is headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal. Bharti Airtel is the first
Indian telecom service provider to achieve this Cisco Gold Certification. To earn Gold
Certification, Bharti Airtel had to meet rigorous standards for networking competency,
service, support and customer satisfaction set forth by Cisco. The company also provides
land-line telephone services and broadband Internet access (DSL) in over 96 cities in
India. It also acts as a carrier for national and international long distance communication
services. The company has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects
the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore.
It is known for being the first mobile phone company in the world to outsource
everything except marketing and sales and finance. Its network (base stations, microwave
links, etc.) is maintained by Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Network and Huawei., business
support by IBM and transmission towers by another company (Bharti Infratel Ltd. In
India) Ericsson agreed for the first time, to be paid by the minute for installation and
maintenance of their equipment rather than being paid up front. This enabled the
company to provide pan-India phone call rates of Rs. 1/minute (U$0.02/minute). Call
rates have come down much further. During the last financial year [2009-10], Bharti has
roped in a strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the
Telemedia Business.
The company is structured into four strategic business units - Mobile, Telemedia,
Enterprise and Digital TV. The Telemedia business provides broadband, IPTV and
telephone services in 89 Indian cities. The Digital TV business provides Direct-to-Home
TV services across India. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions
to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to telcos.

VISION
To be globally admired for telecom services that delight customers.

MISSION
We will meet global standards for telecom services that delight
customers through:
Customer Service Focus

 Empowered Employees
Innovative Services
Cost Efficiency

SELECTING AND MEASURING THE RIGHT COMPONENTS

FOR A SUCCESSFUL CRM STRATEGY
Examine the role of Data mining to create differentiators
Determine how CRM is applied in a prepaid business
Using Call Center technologies for one to one relationships
The role of the Front line in CRM success
Measuring the Return on Investment of CRM after its
implementation

BEST PRACTICES FOR ANALYTICAL APPLICATIONS IN

THE TELECOM INDUSTRY

Designing your analytical applications to facilitate:

Useful segmentation methodology and techniques
Effective churn analysis and prediction
Successful cross and up-selling
Targeted acquisition
Accurate price plan analysis

STRATEGIES ADOPTED
Focus on maximising revenues and margins;
Capture maximum telecommunications revenue potential with
minimum
geographical coverage;
Offer multiple telecommunications services to provide customers
with a "one-stop
shop" solution;
Position itself to tap data transmission opportunities and offer
advanced mobile
data services;
Focus on satisfying and retaining customers by ensuring high level
of customer
satisfaction;
Leverage strengths of its strategic and financial partners; and
Emphasize on human resource development to achieve operational
efficiencies.

TECHNOLOGY FROM WORLD LEADERS

The company has partnered with telecom majors like Siemens, ECI,
Lucent and Duraline for its network. While Siemens has provided the
digital switching system (Siemens EWSD) with CCS-7, a signaling
protocol for faster connectivity, the billing software (Keenan Arbor) has

been sourced from Lucent. The Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)

equipment is sourced from ECI.

SERVICE GUARANTEE
Service guarantee is a first-of-its-kind scheme and underlines Airtels
commitment to
provide error free services Services right the first time and every
time. The service
guarantee scheme entails:
Repair of any dead phones within 8 working hours of receiving a
complaint
Error Free billing.
The scheme is a culmination of Airtels efforts in continuously setting
new benchmarks inquality by adhering to best quality practices
including SIX-SIGMA. In the unlikely event of any failure in this
promise, the company will give STD/ISD pre paid calling card worth Rs.
100/- to the customers.

VALUE ADDED SERVICES

Besides providing world-class voice products and data services, Airtel
Broadband &
Telephone Services also provides a host of value added services to its
customers. These services, which add a whole new dimension to the
meaning of fixed line telephony, include services like Voice Mail
Service, Directory Assistance, Call Completion Busy Subscriber,
Delayed Hotline, Centrex and the like. The company also provides a
host of customized premium services to its customers such as live
astrologers, cricket updates, sending jokes and greeting in celebrity
voices, music messaging service etc.

WORLD CLASS CUSTOMER CARE

Apart from the state-of-the-art infrastructure, Airtel - Broadband &
Telephone Services is the first to provide a dedicated 24-hour call
centre. The company is planning to have a 250 seater call center
equipped with the best ACDs, IVRs and Call loggers to provide
world class after sales support.

Customer Relationship
Management
Customer Relationship Management is a comprehensive
strategy and process of
acquiring, retaining and partnering with selective customers to
create superior value for the company and the customer.

Several factors have contributed to the rapid

development and evaluation of CRM. These include :
1. 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 endcustomers. For example, in many industries such as airlines, banks,
insurance, computer program software, or household appliances and

even consumables, the de-intermediation process is fast changing the

nature of marketing and consequently making relationship marketing
more popular.
2. The de-intermediation process and consequent prevalence of CRM is
also due to the growth of the service economy. Since services are
typically produced and delivered at the same institution, it minimizes
the role of the middlemen. A greater emotional bond between the
services provider and the service user also develops the need for
maintaining and enhancing the relationship.
3. Another force driving the adoption of CRM has been the total
quality movement. When companies embraced Total Quality
Management (TQM) philosophy to improve quality and reduce costs, it
became necessary to involve suppliers and customers in implementing
the program at all levels of the value chain. This needed close working
relationships with customers, suppliers, and other members of the
marketing infrastructure.
4. With the advent of the digital technology and complex
products, systems selling approach became common. This approach
emphasized the integration of parts, supplies, and the sale of services
along with the individual capital equipment. Customers liked the idea
of systems integration and sellers were able to sell augmented
products and services to customers. These measures created intimacy
and cooperation in the buyer-sellers relationships. Instead of
purchasing a product or service, customers were more interested in
buying a relationship with a vendor.
5. In the current era of hyper-competition, marketers are forced to be
more concerned with customers retention and loyalty (Dick and
Basu 1994; Reicheld 1996). As several studies have indicated, retaining
customers is less expensive and perhaps a more sustainable
competitive advantage than acquiring new ones. Marketers are
realizing that it costs less to retain customers than to compete for new
ones. There is greater opportunity for cross-selling and up-selling to a
customer who is loyal and committed to the firm and its offerings.
6. Customer expectations have rapidly changed over the last two
decades. Fueled by new technology and growing availability of
advanced product features and services, customer expectations are
changing almost on a daily basis. Consumers are less willing to make
compromises or trade-off in product and service quality.
7. Today, many large internationally oriented companies are trying to
become global by integrating their worldwide operations. To
achieve this they are seeking cooperative and collaborative solutions
for global operations from their vendors instead of merely engaging in
transactional activities with them.

A CRM PROCESS FRAMEWORK

We develop a four-stage CRM process framework. The broad framework
suggests that CRM process comprise of the following four sub-process:
customer relationship formation process; relationship management and
governance; relational performance evaluation process; and CRM
evolution or enhancement process.
I. CRM FORMATION PROCESS
The formation process of CRM refers to decisions regarding initiation of
relational
activities for a firm with respect to a specific group of customers or with
respect to an
individual customer with whom the company wishes to engage in a
cooperative or
collaborative relationship. Hence, it is important that a company is able
to identify and
differentiate individual customers. In the formation process, three
important decision
relate to defining the purpose (or objectives) of engaging in CRM,
selecting parties (or
customer partners) for appropriate CRM programs; and developing
programs (or
relational activity schemes) for relationship engagement with the
customers.
II. CRM Purpose : The overall purpose of CRM is to improve marketing

productivity and enhance mutual value for the parties involved in the
relationship. CRM has the potential to improve marketing productivity
and create mutual value by increasing marketing efficiencies and/or
enhancing marketing effectiveness. By seeking and achieving
operation goals, such as lower distribution costs, streamlining order
processing and inventory management, reducing the burden of
excessive customer acquisition costs, and through customer retention
economics, firms could achieve greater marketing
efficiencies. Thus, stating objectives and defining the purpose of CRM
in a company helps clarify the nature of CRM programs and activities
that ought to be performed by the partners. Defining the purpose
would also help in identifying suitable relationship partner who have
the necessary expectations and capabilities to fulfill mutual goals.
III. CRM Programs : A careful review of literature and observation of
corporate
practices suggests that there are three types of CRM programs :
continuity marketing; one-to-one marketing; and, partnering programs.
These take different forms depending on whether they are meant for
end-consumers, distributors customers, or business-to-business
customers.
a) Continuity Marketing Programs: Given the growing concern to
retain customers as well as emerging the knowledge about

customers retention economics have led many companies to

develop continuity marketing programs that are aimed at both
retaining customers and increasing their loyalty (Bhattacharya
1998, Payne 1995). For consumers in mass markets, these
programs usually take the shape of membership and loyalty
card programs where consumers are often rewarded for their
members and loyalty relationships with the marketers. For
distributor customers, continuity marketing programs are in the
form of continuous replenishment programs ranging anywhere
from just-in-time inventory management programs to
efficient consumer response initiatives that include electronic
order processing and material resource planning. In business-to
business markets these may be in the form of preferred customer
programs or in special sourcing arrangements including single
sourcing, dual sourcing, and network sourcing, as well as just-intime sourcing arrangements. The basic premise of continuity
marketing programs is to retain customers and increase loyalty
through long-term special services that has a potential to
increase mutual value through learning about each other.
b) One-to-one Marketing: One-to-one or individual marketing
approach is based on the concept of account-based
marketing. Such a program is aimed at meeting and satisfying
each customer's need uniquely and individually (Peppers and
Rogers 1995). In the mass market individualized information on
customers is now possible at low costs due to the rapid
development in information technology and due to the
availability of scalable data warehouses and data mining
products. By using online information and databases on
individual customer interactions, marketers aim to fulfill the
unique needs of each mass-market customer. Information on
individual customers is utilized to develop frequency marketing,
interactive marketing, and after marketing programs in order to
develop relationship with high yielding customers. For distributor
customers these individual marketing programs take the shape of
customer business development. In the context of business-tobusiness markets, individual marketing has been in place for
quite sometime. Known as key account management
program, here marketers appoint customer teams to husband
the company resources according to individual customers needs.
Often times such programs require extensive resource allocation
and joint planning with customers.
c) c) Partnering Programs: The third type of CRM programs is
partneringrelationships customers and marketers to serve end
users needs. In the mass markets,two types of partnering
programs are most common: co-branding and
affinitypartnering. In co-branding, two marketers combine their
resources and skills to offer advanced products and services to
mass-market customers. Affinity partnering program is similar to
co-branding except that the marketers do not create a new brand
rather use endorsement strategies. Usually affinity-partnering
programs try to take advantage of customer memberships in one
group for cross-selling other products and services.

d) In the case of distributor customers, logistics partnering and

cooperative marketing efforts are how partnering programs are
implemented. In such partnerships the marketer and the
distributor customers cooperate and collaborate to manage
inventory and supply logistics and sometimes engage in joint
marketing efforts. For business-to-business customers, partnering
programs involving co-design, co-development and co-marketing
activities are not uncommon today .

KEY RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Relationships are not built and sustained with direct e-mails themselves
but rather
through the types of programs that are available for which e-mail may
be a delivery
mechanism. The overall goal of relationship programs is to deliver a
higher level of
customer satisfaction than competing firms deliver. Managers today
realize that
customers match realizations and expectations of product
performance, and that it is
critical for them to deliver such performance at higher and higher
levels as expectations
increase due to competition, marketing communications, and changing
customer needs.
In addition, there is a strong, positive relationship between customer
satisfaction and
profits. Thus, managers must constantly measure satisfaction levels
and develop
programs that help to deliver performance beyond targeted customer
expectations.
A comprehensive set of relationship programs includes

Customer service
Frequency/loyalty programs
Customization
Rewards programs
Community building.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
Because customers have more choices today and the targeted
customers are ost valuable to the company, customer service must
receive a high priority within the company. In a general sense, any
contact or touch points that a customer has with a firm is a customer
service encounter and has the potential to gain repeat business and
help CRM or have the opposite effect. Programs designed to enhance
customer service are normally of two types. Reactive service is where
the customer has a problem (product failure, question about a bill,
product return) and contacts the company to solve it. Airtel CALL
CENTRE have established infrastructures to deal with reactive service

situations through 800 telephone numbers, faxback systems, e-mail

addresses, and a variety of other solutions. Proactive service is a
different matter; this is a situation where the manager has decided not
to wait for customers to contact the firm but to rather be aggressive in
establishing a dialogue with customers prior to complaining or other
behavior sparking a reactive solution. This is more a matter of good
account management where the sales force or other people dealing
with specific customers are trained to reach out and anticipate
customers needs.
LOYALTY/FREQUENCY PROGRAMS

Loyalty programs (also called frequency programs) provide rewards to

customers for repeat purchasing. Such programs have become a competitive
necessity.
CUSTOMIZATION
The notion of mass customization goes beyond 1-to-1 marketing as it implies
the creation of products and services for individual customers, not simply
communicating to them. The idea is that it has turned customers into
product makers rather than simply product takers.
COMMUNITY
One of the major uses of the Web for both online and offline businesses is to
build a network of customers for exchanging product-related information and
to create relationships between the customers and the company or brand.
These networks and relationships are called communities. The goal is to take
a prospective relationship with a product and turn it into something more
personal. In this way, the manager can build an environment which makes it
more difficult for the customer to leave the family of other people who also
purchase from the company.

LIFETIME VALUE
What you use to measure your success often defines your vision and your
strategy. According to AIRTEL , if the companys goal is more customers,
one can get them, but they may not be profitable. Airtel are not believing in
the idea that sales and discounts are the road to success. They knows that
all these may actually be the road to ruin.
Lifetime value is the net present value of the profit to be realized on the
average new customer during a given number of years. Airtel firmly believes
LTV is a wonderful concept, and can be an excellent guide to profitable
strategy. The steps they are going through are these:
Get the customers to give the data, and build it into a database complete
with purchase history.
Use the data to segment your customers by profitability.
The goal of their marketing programs should be to build a relationship with
customers whose behavior can be modified, to convert them over time into
long run loyal and profitable customers. The process can be measured and
tracked by using a lifetime value chart.

CUSTOMER LOYALTY / CHURN ANALYSIS

The goal of this analysis is to identify customers that are likely to leave
company and join the competition, what is especially critical in highly
competitive market of telecommunication sector, where profit is directly
related to number of customers and loosing a customer means he/she will
most probably use the competitor's offer. Churn modeling helps to increase
the loyalty of customers towards your company in several ways. Discovering
the factors causing a churn enables a company to address them properly.
Additionally, separating the particular group with high churn likeliness allows
to focus more on your loyal customers.
SURVIVAL TIME ANALYSIS OF A CUSTOMER
Survival analysis estimates life time value of a customer and his/her churn
hazard over a time (a churn means a customer is turning to different product
provider). The analysis describes distribution of the survival time for

individuals in a given population, investigates the strength of parameter

influence on expected survival time and allows to compare survival time
distributions among different subpopulations. By using this method the
company can get valuable insight into customer behavior and find ways to
increase his/her survival time.
Especially within telecommunication companies, the survival time analysis
finds a wide set of applications e.g. deciding when is the best time to update
a contract with customer, designing new contract duration and other
conditions customized to specific client.

TAILOR MADE SCHEMES

SEGMENTATION OF CUSTOMERS - AirTel is now able to give its
customers more value for money.
Able to provide customers different schemes and services depending on
airtime usage.
Customer is a heavy user then they have some specific schemes; for normal
users they have other schemes.
They have also managed to segregate their workflow with the help of the
CRM tool.
CHALLENGES - Roll it
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, .
They also had certain technical difficulties during implementation, but were
able to overcome them.