Cover Story |CRM

Amrita Gangotra, Group Chief,

IT Solution Engagement, Bharti
Tele-ventures, built a CRM system
that ensures both customer loyatly
and growth.

Airtel, a telephony superbrand, is well on its way to mastering the

art of managing customers. The journey has been evolutionary and
CRM now gives them the power to study the lives of its customers
and offer them personalized services.

By Rahul Neel Mani

& SUnil shah

S
waminathan Iyer, a jet-setting
executive from Chennai, is in New
Delhi for a critical board meeting.
Atypically, it is an eleventh hour call
and it’s going to be a couple of days
before he can get back and lasso his project out
of bureaucratic quagmire. Snowed in with work,
subconsciously he knows that this is Airtel’s
moment of truth. If he doesn’t get what he wants
he’ll switch to a competitor; it's a test being
replicated, in one form or another, in the hectic
lives of millions of Airtel’s customers. Urgency
was the norm in their lives and Airtel would do
well to keep up.

Photos by S ri vatsa Shandi lya

he has completely forgotten about an overdue
cellphone bill—until his boss reminds him that
it's imperative he be reachable on his phone. He
has spent a restless night imagining the telling-
off he’ll receive when his service disconnects him.
As he drives to the meeting he works himself into
a tizzy, taking for granted that
Airtel’s gargantuan operations Reader ROI:
Five minutes and much button-punching later,
Iyer’s found a way to make his payment. Airtel’s
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
not only allows him to make a payment in Chennai,
but also to locate an Airtel outlet nearby.
CRM's more than a test for Airtel, India’s
largest mobile service provider—
it’s a lifeline. Airtel’s CRM is

I
Imaging by b in esh sreedharan
will not stop to help one person.
As a last resort, Iyer makes a
frantic call to Airtel’s helpline—
121. As an Interactive Voice
Response (IVR) leads him
through a maze of possibilities,
his impatience builds and
Why it's critical to involve
end-users in CRM design
Why getting business
sponsers pays dividends
Why CRM ob jectives have to
translate into measureable
business goals
roping in more business in a game
that's getting hard, everyday,
just to stay in. CRM, mere jargon
for most until recently, is now
bandied in junior management
conversation and has become
crucial for many businesses. From

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managing customer transactions to cross-selling, up-selling
and preventive security, CRM does it all. And, at Airtel,
executives struggle less as they fight customer churn, build
loyalty and find new avenues to sell value.
I Don’t Want Excuses
Wise maxims like ‘The customer is king’ and ‘Customer service
is critical’ have created who want solutions pronto.
But ‘right-away’ solutions weren’t always something Airtel
could provide admits Amrita Gangotra, Group Chief, IT
Solution Engagement, Bharti Tele-ventures, who led the
CRM initiative at the company.
As Airtel grew a national footprint, it cobbled together
a number of local players, spreading into new circles (23
today), and accumulating a number of different systems. In
the resultant chaos, it was hard to service customers across
circles, let alone implement an idea pan-Airtel. Delays in
service, or worse a lack of it, were fraying the image Airtel’s
brand managers were busy creating. In the time between a
first call to the resolution of a query or a problem, Airtel’s
Infographics: Vikas Kapoor
“When we created Airtel’s macro vision of CRM, we aspired
to provide a single-window of service throughout the 23
circles across the country. Centralized and integrated were
definitely two pillars we were looking for,” Gangotra says.
Today it’s integration and centralization distinguishes
Airtel’s CRM from other run-of-the-mill deployments,
adds Gangotra.
Manoj Kohli, President Mobility, Bharti Televentures,
Airtel’s holding company, believes CRM was not built
merely as a tool but to be part of Airtel’s culture. “It reflects
Airtel’s brand message: Think fresh, deliver more.”
Delivering more was the driving force when Airtel made
a call to deploy a composite tool that would serve millions
of its customers. Anurag Parashar, Head of Customer
Service Delivery, Bharti Televentures, says it was essential
for them to have a standard platform. “Why shouldn’t a
person from Assam, holidaying in Kashmir, be able to
make payments?” he asks rhetorically.
Airtel would make that possible and it would be among
mobile telephony’s pioneers to make it the norm. But before
it could achieve this, it had to create a system that kept
ExpressYourself
When Iyer dialed into Airtel’s CRM, he set off a chain
reaction that activated one of the CRM’s two modules.
Airtel’s CRM consists of two parts explains Gangotra:
Analytical and operational. The operational CRM makes
sure everyday customer transactions hum along efficiently
and the analytical module pieces together data based on
customer habits that can help market a variety of services.
The analytical module sits on a data warehouse, which
contains customer profiles, usage patterns, demographics,
revenue per customer, and other information. After Iyer’s
frantic call, for instance, Airtel offered to bump up his
credit limit but also urged him to move to a talk plan that
involved a higher monthly rental, cheaper talk time and
smarter roaming rates.
In the main, however, CRM is associated with retaining
and servicing customers.
“Few people harness the potential of CRM to cross-
sell and up-sell,” says Gangotra. “Market analytics of a
ready customer database can do wonders in converting
Feeds from different areas within the company made sense,
especially when business intelligence (BI) was applied to
the data. Identifying prospective customers was made
easier and BI ensured that whenever a customer interacted
with one or multiple touch points, an auto alert was sent
to a customer service representative who then made an
up-sell or cross-sell bid.
And customer relations has to make every contact count.
Airtel’s customer privacy policy forbids them to solicit a
customer beyond a fixed number of times. Thanks to CRM,
up-selling is now both more focused and accurate. “With
such a narrow window, we have to make sure we score
every time. We use CRM analytics to generate accurate
leads from a customer database. If, for example, someone
uses ten minutes worth of international dialing a month,
we’re going to try and capitalize on that information and
make a cross-sell that will allow him to use the service
more. It’s win-win,” says Parashar.
The CRM also serves to segment customers, thereby
helping Airtel proactively identify the needs of its
customers. “There are well-established events or stages

brand image grew clumsier. It was evident that without records of a customer’s portfolio, profile, payment history, prospective customers into real ones.” in customer’s lifecycle that clue us into his or her needs.
an integrated and a centralized CRM system it would etcetera. Airtel also made a crucial decision at this stage. Understanding what a prospect is looking for is key. It was For example, the aspirations of a corporate customer are
be impossible to process data and manage Airtel’s It chose to take an interest in the lives of its customers. towards that end that Airtel sought to integrate all its processes very different from those of a retail customer. The former
humongous customer base. And that , it found, made all the difference. across multiple functions with a centralized CRM. segment is attracted to our Blackberry offer and the

CRM's Road to Activation Happy Clients

Activation Final Bill
WELCO Bil Disconnection
ME l n
ANDI Collectio
NG
BR

Welcome Process
Churn
Prospecting Acquisition Base Management Retention

Operations
Pegging Their Clients
Airtel's ability to chart out an average lifecycle
allows it to market additional services. The
CRM is divided into operations and analytical.
Operations deals with bill tracking, etc
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2 3 4 5
analytics
INviting them into the fold Garlands and Bouquets CRM gets into its element A slippery slope conquered
This stage combines provisioning and Airtel's well-planned welcome process includes Airtel makes its first collection. It marks the start of This stage may see an Airtel client wishing to leave. To keep churn
verification. Airtel activates a customer's a visit from a service representative and a call up-selling and cross-selling. The analytical module, down, Airtel uses retention policies and loyalty processes to bring
account and makes a first rating of him or informing clients of the Airtel help line: 121. At the which forms the basis of marketing, steps in. CRM clients back to the fold. Many clients are won back.
her based on their application. end of this stage, their first bill is generated. has to make every attempt count since clients can
be approached only a fixed number of times.
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Cover Story | CRM Cover Story |CRM

latter can’t get enough Hello tunes. One segment could be
happier with an eBill, while another likes regular paper
invoices. But we couldn’t have differentiated one group
from the other without CRM,” Kohli says.
From the company’s standpoint, it is also hard to
overstate how far a little CRM can go in addressing an
exchange of information between Airtel and its millions
of customers. Its power to trigger off an SMS to large
defined chunks of users is formidable—something even
law enforcement agencies have picked up on.
the doors have access to a customer’s file which makes it
possible for them to field queries of varying natures.
If an agent is able to help a customer in the first go, it is called
a ‘first time resolution’ and the call is closed. Calls that require
specialized help are escalated, by the CRM, to appropriate
departments. Given that the CRM is centralized and supports
workflows specific to queries, problems are fixed fast. But it
has meant a lot of scripting on the CRM system.
“The beauty of this solution lies in the amount of automation
that is built into the CRM system,” says Parashar.
Automation has also made self-service possible. The e-
helps Airtel take defensive action against customers they
suspect are either misusing Airtel's services or aren’t
planning to pay for them.
Airtel, however, apprently lives by the saying, offense is
the best form of defense. CRM is at its best saving Airtel from
defecting customers. Frustrated clients are likely to make a
last call and give the call centre a piece of their mind before
announcing (sometimes triumphantly) that they’re switching
to another operator. This is where the CRM steps in. “We use
the CRM tool to intelligently suggest appropriate products to
them so that they continue with us,” says Parashar.
Press One for Acceptance
With any technology worth its acronym, IT managers
realize that implementation is less important than getting
the user community to adopt it and Airtel’s CRM was no
exception. Given that users are forced to work harder to
create processes and reengineer systems around the new
implementation, chances are user bodies aren’t going to
initially accept an IT implant.
Gangotra backed her chances with groundwork in the
form of a vision. She says that a broader vision is required

‘Your Anytime, Anywhere
Customer Service'
Iyer's frantic call didn't raise an eyebrow at Airtel, which
receives thousands of queries everyday, many in the we
hours of the night.
Airtel’s CRM system is closely linked to a host of other
back-end systems. Once a customer is acquired, information
to serve him better is available with the front-end (help
desk)—the doorway to the CRM system. The people manning
How Airtel Chooses
its Wands
If you thought they were taught how to select
technology at Hogwarts, think again.
Airtel follows a standard procedure for all technology deployment
decisions. In order to decide on commercially-available, off-the-
shelf packages, the company’s technology team has to first
select the top-three products that have success stories in the
telecom vertical.
It then looks at parameters such as the financial viability of a
vendor, their support network, a track record of problem-
resolution times and the technology’s future.
Last but not the least, the product’s features and functionalities
are taken into consideration. Then, the matter is referred to what
Airtel calls an architectural board.
The board evaluates the product in a simulated architectural set-up
and watches closely for the products ability to integrate with other
products and applications. It is also tested for its open standards.
In this process, the company also looks at scalability issues. It’s
only at this stage that an agreement is sent for a final sign off by
the architectural review board.
— R. M.
CRM allows customers to access some information and is
moving towards making interaction possible, doing away
Since Airtel adopted CRM for its postpaid customers, they
have experienced considerable savings in the form of fewer calls,
before implementing new technologies. The vision includes
a blueprint of how different lines of business and ranges
completely with a human interface. a tremendous reduction in churn, increased productivity and of products, across various phases, will react to change.
“We are trying to give the IVR more intelligence to make further revenues from value-added services. Parashar claims She came up with a three-step program to implement new
information available as a self service. Some of our work that there’s been a cross and up-selling revolution in Airtel. “The technologies, one which she applied to the CRM system.
includes speech recognition, which will enable the IVR to efficiency is enormous. We would have collapsed without the First, technology, equipment and technical evaluation must
take on more natural languages,” says Gangotra. system,” says Kohli. be driven firmly into the ground, she says. Without these, gap
It’s hard for Airtel’s customers, both internal and external,
to wrap their minds around the worth of the CRM. They
envisage a morning when they awake without the CRM and
stop dead in their tracks. That’s because the CRM crunches
millions of transactions, all of which generate data that
“With such a narrow window, we have to
has a specific place in the system. Some of the areas where
the system has brought change include customized and
make sure we score every time. We use
simplified bill formats, payment collection centers, network
deployments, and the activation process. CRM analytics to generate accurate leads
Now, its just as hard to remember the days when
customers agreed to wait or call back for an answer to
from a customer database. We’re going to
their queries. Whether customers need to increase their try and capitalize on information.”
credit limits or merely check the status of an additional
offering like voicemail, agents manning the call centers — Anurag Parashar, Head,
Customer Service Delivery, Bharti Televentures
and hooked on the CRM react quicker because they have
customer history and credentials ready.
Parashar, like his colleagues, cannot imagine life with
the CRM. “Ultimately, it boils down to an ability to attend
to millions of customers. Ninety-nine percent of complaints
that find their way into the CRM can be resolved in a first
call.” he says.
The CRM doesn’t only reduce back-end traffic, it also
regulates it. Service requests, like issuing a duplicate bill,
that are sent to the back-end now have a cut-off time. If
a request is not attended to and breaches a pre-set time
limit, it is automatically escalated to a superior authority.
According to Parashar, neither networking issues nor
problems related to coverage area are referred to the back-
end anymore. Customers, of course, benefit the most.
“Customers moving between circles,” reveals Gangotra,
“best show up the advantages of CRM. Immaterial of where
they are, they can dial a number and access the CRM or speak
to a call center agent who is logged on the system.”
According to her, almost all customer information is
available online, enabling the company to answer queries
99 percent of the time. Data collected by the CRM also

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Nine Neat Spells for

analysis is impossible and hordes The best buy-in in the world,
of ill-fitting customizations will
lay siege to the implementation.
“Few people harness the though, won’t cure teething
problems and Gangotra’s
Once a blockade
constructed, internal re-
structuring can begin. During
ispotential of CRM to cross-sell
and up-sell. Market analytics
team saw their blueprint to
the end by training users.
Continuous training, they
CRM Success
the process of reengineering, the of a ready customer database realized, was among the most
IT department looked carefully can do wonders in converting direct ways to ensure that the It looks magical, and you doubt you can replicate it. Worry not, here’s how to do it.
at issues surrounding scalability, CRM was used. At that point,
business growth and market prospective customers into more focus was placed on the Define your vision. will lead you absolutely nowhere. Don’t to understand how CRM will change
and regulatory environments. real ones.” quality of training. Even best- You must develop a clear vision of railroad them, individual departments processes they are used to. It is a good
Feedback was received at the in-class products have been how you want to manage customer are going to suffer disruptions and idea to remind yourself that, often, a
— Amrita Gangotra, Group Chief IT Solutions
end of every major pilot when known to fail graduation relationships, and then cultivate inconvenience as their workflows are CRM program will make many processes
users registered their problems Engagement, Airtel because of poor training. strategies which translate to definable changed. Convince them instead of the explicit for the first time. If end-users do
and suggestions. These were A lot of the IT department’s and measurable action. benefits of the program. Note: Buy-in not know how to use a solution properly
rolled into Airtel’s strategic success came from a general needs to be maintained over the life of or feel that they can’t keep up with it,
roadmap. Once the processes consensus that CRM was Spell measurable the program. they have a tendency not to use it as
were reengineered with the mission critical to the business goals. much. Consequently, the solution will
new changes, user validation company. “The kind of Corporate vision and strategy, Involve end-users in CRM fail to deliver its true potential and that
was sought. virtualization that’s required once defined, result in specific and design. affects you.
“ The commitment to is humongous. We realized measurable goals that help you track It’s important to ensure active
reengineer has to come from we couldn’t afford to have where you are in your plan, and how well participation of end-users while you’re Take a phased approach.
users—not really the information a few front-end agents and your strategy is working. designing the CRM. No program or A big bang opening might be good for
technology community. It’s self- a few sales guys attached solution implementation can succeed if movie premiers but they can live with
evident that buy-in has to come to number of customers.” Get support from those on the front-line refuse to accept it. creative license—you can’t. Complete
from users. And they must also says Gangotra. management. the CRM process in multiple steps.
understand that they have to Before embarking on a CRM program, Talk in their tongue. Let each step be guided by business
build efficient processes around
that product,” says Gangotra.
Customer make sure you have the full support
of the company’s top executives.
Business goals drive solution
functionality. Clearly define functionality
priorities, financial constraints, your
people and the maturity of your
Fortunately Parashar, who Freedom Fleshing out clear objectives that can be requirements based on business needs, processes, and—most important of
represents customer service The CRM mission at Airtel achieved from CRM will further your bid rather than technical interests. Keep in all—what you learnt from the last step.
delivery, agrees with her. Among is far from over. According for general consensus. Remember the mind, however, that while a technological
the first successes of Airtel’s IT to the company, another successful execution of your strategy implementation is built around business Measure results.
team was finding a business underutilized area of interest, will need the alignment and integration needs, a cost effective program will also Set benchmarks and targets and
sponsor. CRM was sponsored by which they have their eyes of multiple departments. allow for changing work practices to suit measure your progress against them.
the customer service department on is customer profile and the capabilities of you technology. The metrics should focus on business
who recalls that aligning both history management. Stop at nothing to get value or placeholders for value.
IT and business was critical. “There’s a lot I can do if I end- user buy-in. Train and communicate
So critical, in fact, that internal know that my customer is in a Implementing a CRM program without Effective CRM is about people,
users were temporarily taken off specific age group, belongs to buy-in from all concerned departments process, and technology. People need — R. M.
their normal jobs and dedicated to certain economic strata, likes
the project till it was declared a successful implementation. to listen to music and has a precise usage pattern. It’s possible to
These embedded staffers started a process of osmosis and customize service according to his or her taste,” says Parashar.
as a result, Parashar’s team realized that they needed to And Airtel would like to offer its customers personalized
reengineer their processes to accommodate the CRM. “It was services like never before. Especially clubbed with 18.4 lakh subscribers in Delhi alone. Airtel aspir es to to empower their customers by enabling them to interact
the user department that took a call,” says Parashar. research—an example of which Parashar shares. He provide personal service to crores of its customers through with Airtel in a way they want. “If the customer wants to
“We’ve had success because internal users demanded says studies have noted how older people have a higher CRM analytics. “Without a CRM, we can’t even think of deactivate a certain service at 2 AM, we’re going to facilitate
the automated channels from us. They figured that IVRs propensity to churn if they live with younger people. It’s attempting this,” says Gangotra. that process. We want the CRM to be intelligent enough to
were more accepted in many markets. They even asked us the sort of insight that can save Airtel a lot of money and Another front is integrating mobility, landline and interact with our customers,” says Gangotra.
for more automated processes,” Gangotra concurs. With heartburn if it’s tied in with the CRM. broadband customers and serving them through a It’s the sort of intelligence and service the Iyers of the world
each circle required to sign off before the deployment could Personalized service, it is hoped, will also help the centralized CRM. Today, landline customers aren’t in the would have once called magic. CIO
go live, the project could have been grounded a number of company retain more customers for a longer period. loop about the other services Airtel offers. “Integration of
times. But, once again, the business sponsor took charge Unlike the hotel industry, which handles small numbers, these three areas is vital,” says Parashar. Airtel would also
and lined up the 23 circles. it is tougher for Airtel to offer personalized services with like to see the CRM help them with self-service. They want Bureau Head North Rahul Neel Mani can be reached at rahul_m@cio.in

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