CRM in Telecommunication (Mobile Service Providers)

R.Sumathi, Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Management Studies, Noorul Islam University.

Abstract
Telecommunication in India became liberalized and privatized in the year 1995 with the New Telecom policy (NTP). Foreign direct Investment of about 49% of total equity was permitted in the area of Basic (fixed line and wire line telephony) and the new mobile sectors. Innovative products and services entered the market and the industry experienced a rapid growth and reached fifth position in International Market. Mobile service providers faced a tough competition and started to adopt new technological imperatives to survive in the dynamic market environment. This led to the evolution of a new practice called Customer Relationship Management (CRM)to help them compete and protect themselves in the ever changing environment. This study concentrates on the basics of CRM strategies and the practices prevailing in Mobile Service Providers Sector. It also compares the CRM system existing in two companies and has discussed the key factors for the success of the leading company. Key words: CRM strategies , technological imperatives.

Introduction
The CRM practices brought the customer close to the marketer and the customers have developed knowledge about, alternatives available in market. The mobile service providers had to redesign their marketing and promotional strategies to capture the attention of customers companies were forced to be alert in understanding the customer's definition of 'value' and accordingly position themselves on quality, service, performance and efficiency. This value helps them to bind them to the company and stop them from switching to another company's product. Advertising and promotion policies were found instrumental in influencing the purchase decision concerning the product launch in the market. Mobile service providers had to build long-term 1

relationship with their customers who include the distributors, retailers and end users. A new business model was designed to enhance quality and improve interaction with their customers leading to more satisfied and loyal customers. The Mobile Service Providers have been interested to retain their customers for the long run. They have initiated different strategies to keep the customers. In order to maintain the customers both the public sector and private sectors have been followed customer relationship management. This management is somewhat different from the traditional type of management. The market share of the provider depends on customer relationship management. This article tries to explore the factors that are responsible for the success of the leading Mobile Service Providers. TO focus the study two companies Airtel and Aircel are compared with respect to their CRM strategies and policies and the success factors are discussed.

Literature Review
Customer relationship management is defined as a strategy directed to understand, anticipate and respond to the needs of an enterprise's current and potential customers in order to grow the relationship value. CRM is a journey of continuous learning, process improvement and customer relationship evolution.CRM is an approach to interact with customers and prospects to provide a seamless flow of information and service to the customer from marketing, through sales and customer service for the entire customer life cycle. CRM in telecom industry is built upon a central customer data base that integrates data from every form of interaction with customers to enhance relationships. Functions of CRM includes Campaign management, Contract

management ,Customer contact and lead management, Offer creation and delivery, Customer complaint care, After sales service and Retention management.

CRM forms and Process

The objective of process is to form customers perceptions of an organization and its products through identifying customers, creating customer knowledge and building customer relationships.CRM processes are categorized as vertical and horizontal process, front office and back office processes, primary and secondary processes. CRM process has different levels which includes t he customer facing level, the functional level, the company wide level .

Fig 1.CRM forms and process

Customer facing level

This level can he defined as a systematic process to manage customer relationship initiation, maintenance and termination across all customer contact points to maximize the value of the relationship portfolio. The customer facing level CRM process includes building of a single view of the customer across all contact channels and the distribution of customer intelligence to all customers facing functions.

Customer oriented CRM Process

Customer oriented process includes the activities performed to satisfy a need or to solve a problem. This process can be classified into three categories namely CRM delivery process, CRM support process ,CRM analysis process.

Cross functional CRM Process

CRM function can be classified into strategic, operational and analytical process. Different processes included are (i) the strategy development process, (ii) the value creation process, (iii) the multi channel strategic CRM process (iv) the information management process (v) the performance assessment process. The strategic CRM process focuses on the strategic development process and the value creation process. The strategy development process encompasses the business strategy and

customer strategy. These processes have to be combined at various degrees by the Mobile service providers to ensure efficient system performance and successful operation. CRM Process model This model starts with the development of customer strategy to identify the target market to deal with different customer segments based on that profitability. Differentiated strategies are used to handle different customer segments.

Fig . 2. CRM process model

Customer objectives are decided to aim for achieving customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer value. The organizational readiness is checked by making the organization customer centric than product centric, achieving the managements commitment and support and proper planning for the implementation of CRM system. The organization is aligned to the CRM goals by making changes in organization culture, and change in the organization foundational process. CRM programs are executed by providing specific programmed for each customer segments.

List of Mobile Network Operators in India

S.No. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Airtel Reliance Communication GSM,HSPA,WIMAX Vodafone Idea BSNL CdmaOne,EVDOWiMax WiFi GSM,EDGE,HSPA GSM,EDGE,HSPA GSM,EDGE,HSPDA, 92.56 147.74 106.38 Operator Technology GSM,EDGE,HSPA Cdma one,EVDO 148.11 Subscribers in millions 175.65

GSM CDMACDMA EVDO 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Tata Docomo Virgin mobile HSPA Aircel Uninor MTS VIDEOCON EDGE GSM, HSDPA 11. MTML CDMA 5.44 GSM, EDGE,HSPDA GSM, EDGE CDMN,EXDO GSM, GPRS 5.44 61.64 36.30 14.01 87.83

Table .1 . source: Wikipedia Encyclopaedia

CRM in Airtel
India is divided in to 22 telecom circles. Airtel is operating at GSM in the 1800 MHz band. Airtel is having about 175.65 million subscribers. Airtel with its network spread almost all over India found its defect of not satisfying their customer issues using manual CRM and emerged out with oracle CRM platform and found it successful in providing the same quality of services to all customers irrespective of the call centers they contact. Internal facing applications like Oracle financial and Oracle HRMS are also implemented.

Evolution of CRM in Airtel

The entire CRM system was manual, only 40% of the customer issues were getting resolved. Oracle CRM platform, is used to provide Airtel services anywhere and at anytime. The aim of the platform is to provide the same quality of services no matter which call centre he contacts. Proper workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge sharing, integration with the billing system was finalized to carry on with Oracle platform.

Implementation of CRM Tools

The CRM tool was first implemented and used for service in Delhi in 1995, the operation was planned to be migrated to other circles through proper licensing. The migration was done is such a manner that the existing customer base did not suffer. The entire operation was divided into 15 circles and implemented successfully. 5

The challenge that the Organization was facing was to provide a unified process in place, and then importing training was another challenge. In this large scale implementation many technical difficulties were faced, finding solutions for this problem made them to shape their CRM strategy towards customers.

CRM Strategy in Airtel

CRM strategy in Airtel revolves around two aspects. Operational CRM and Analytical CRM. Operational CRM helps the call centers in the work flow pattern and to carry on day to day activities. Analytical CRM provides the staff with the required information on customers, which is

used for the business development schemes. There two aspects help them to provide better services to customers.

Segmentation of Customers
The customer needs are segregated depending on the product and services he is buying. The customers are classified into heavy user and normal user. Specific schemes were introduced to satisfy the heavy users and other schemes for the normal users. Now Airtel has succeeded in providing their customers with more money value. According to Dec.2011 report on group company wise % market share (Subscribers) report. Bharati Airtel is the topper with the total 175,652,816 subscribers and new additions were 960,143 and the market share was 27.46% and with the growth of 0.55% over the previous month.

CRM in Aircel
Aircel started its operation in 1999 as a regional player and later extended its GSM mobile services to eight telecom service circles, within a short period of four months in 2009. Multiple circle applications were selected to launch its service operations in the new circles, to provide a platform to offer a range of newer services and build stronger brands. Oracle applications were implemented based on the components of Oracle communication service fulfillment suite, Oracle fusion middle ware, Siebel CRM Oracle database and Oracle real application clusters. generation telecom services. 6 This was done to reach the market faster and to provide next

Evolution of CRM system

Aircel has been running disparate be-spoke systems in individual telecom circle which only catered to the needs of those regional circles. This quasi CRM system did not meet the CRM industry standard. Aircel wanted to reach out to a wider area to provide attention to customer related activities, for acquiring new subscribers or retaining and servicing the existing ones. Differentiated customer service is the solution for this need, so CRM system was planned to be a Master data Management or Master data source for the company. To provide order, product catalogue, campaign, leads and prospects etc.

CRM functionalities
Aircel chose functions to manage the prepaid subscribers, postpaid subscribers, service managements, order Entry, Master subscriber data source, campaign management, customer analytics, and loyalty programs.

Challenges faced in the implementation

Business requirement, rationalization and product adaptation to those requirements included the following area to be concentrated. A thorough discussion for understanding the requirement, Insights of how Siebel implemented it, Pros and cons of not implementing the way the product has been designed helped to rationalize the requirement.

Business gains of Aircel

1. Service is the backbone of telecom business and a business enact Siebel CRM enabled the business expansion goals in terms of launching the services in new circles and integrating the erst while regional telecom circle systems and processes onto a single platform with uniform services. 2. Aircel has integrated the internal business and customer facing processes for delivering better customer service. The customer data is shared across all channels and its customer facing departments to manage sales, service, call centre or marketing.

3.

A unified customer experience helped the company to retain customers across various lines of business.

4.

A cloud of CRM instances is yet to be created to reduce the call centre costs creating self services models for the customers are also under the discussion loyalty programs and promo activities. CRM investment is the only way to achieve these goals.

Airtel was capable of achieving the first position in the Indian Mobile servicers list Why not Aircel and others?
Customer oriented strategies both operational and analytical were found advantageous. Step up by step implementation of Oracle CRM Base in all its 15 circles of operations by the first quarter of 2004 and by proper licensing without altering the existing customer base made the organization to capture the market share to a higher extend. Effective CRM strategy handling helped the organization to withstand with large scale technical implementation. Customer segregation based on their needs (heavy users and normal users) has helped the organization to provide the customers with more value for money. Operational CRM Strategies followed by Airtel has helped to effective handling day to day activities, to provide better service to customers. Centralized application of CRM has enhanced the success of the entire network. The company is investing in its operation in 1, 20,000 to 1, 60,000 small villages every year. It sees that less well off consumers may only be able to afford a few tens of Rupees per call, and so that the business benefits are scalable - using "Matchbox strategy" Airtel was forced to outsource much of its technical operations in the early days, has improved to work from its own blank sheet of proper for (e.g.) Revenue per customer model was replaced with a Revenue per minute model, which is better suited to India, as the company moved into small and remote villages and towns.

Aircel on the other hand, emerging into the market from 1999 was more interested in regional play of south and north eastern circle. The decision to become a nation telecom operator with GSM mobile service was planned to be in only eight telecom circles which is a less area when compared to Airtel coverage, the customer had to pay more (roaming charges) for the usage of other circles. The infrastructure needed for extensive service was less rendered comparing to Airtel's network. Siebel CRM has enabled Aircel to launch their services in new circles, by integrating the erstwhile regional telecom circle systems and processes on to a single platform with uniform services across India, and found to be an expensive investment when compared to Airtel. Bharti Airtel is a supportive basis for the implementation of new strategies in Airtel Limited but Aircel is planning to create a cloud for CRM instances for enhancing performance and reducing call centre costs, which is more when compared to Airtel.

CONCLUSION
Telecom industry dominated by the mobile service providers has to align the organizations mission and purpose, with the CRM applications to achieve profitable customer relationship. CRM strategies must be customer focused to articulate the positioning, evolvement and objectives of the customer relationship. Mobile service providers have to adopt the creation and communication of customer oriented culture within the organization. In order to reduce the operational costs Mobile service providers have to implement customer based strategies, to enhance the performance at low cost of investment cloud computing can be recommended which reduces call centre costs. Customer satisfaction must be considered as the key factor in customer acquisition and customer retention. The success of Airtel comparing to Aircel has proved that the key for the survival or success of mobile service providers is to understand the specific needs, requirements and preferences of different customer segments and to implemented specific strategies which must be customer centric than product centric. Customer Satisfaction to a great extends leads to the development and positioning of the organization in the market. 9

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