Customer

Relationship

Management (CRM) in

Telecom Industry

IIT End term Project Report

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Prof. Deepali Bhardwaj Group 3

Abhisht Narain Sinha (08305)

Kushal Sthapak (08320)

Shagun Aggarwal (08343)

Shashank Singhal (08345)

Sunil Joshi (08348)

Tanisha Kalra (08351)

CRM in Telecom Industry 1

Table of Contents

Page No.

o Executive summary 1

o Telecomm industry 2

Introduction

Challenges

o What is CRM? 3

Introduction

Scope for Telecom industry

Benefits to Telecom industry

B2C

o Airtel 5

o Vodafone 8

B2B

o Fibcom 10

o Future Avenues 13

o References 14

Executive summary

The telecom industry in India has witnessed a transformation from a monolithic regime,

through an age of de-regulation and privatization; it has seen the rapid rise of market players

who offer innovative products and services. Faced with a growing market and increasing

competition, companies in the telecom business are adopting to new technological

imperatives in order to outperform their competitors. These companies adapt continuously to

the dynamic environment so as to survive competition. The emphasis here lies in identifying

critical value adding processes and redesigning them to become customer centric. IT is being

adopted to redefine the customer service parameters and for retaining customers. The

ultimate objective of technology consists in its applicability in targeting to right customers

and catering efficiently to their needs. One such practice which is being followed by the

telecom companies is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to help them compete

in the ever changing environment.

Thus in our IT project we have depicted use of customer relationship management in three

companies namely FIBCOM, Airtel & Vodafone.

FIBCOM depicting role of CRM in telecom industry considering B2B (business to business)

market whereas Airtel and Vodafone depicting role of CRM in B2C (business to customer)

market and how CRM helped them to survive in the competitive market.

CRM in Telecom Industry 1

Telecom industry

Introduction

Telecommunication is considered to be one of the prime support services needed for rapid

growth of any developing economy and is one of the fastest developing sectors in India.

This sector can be divided into two segments:

Fixed service providers : consist of basic services like national or domestic long

distance and international long distance services

Cellular service providers : It can be further divided into two categories:

Global system for mobile communication (GSM), &

Code division multiple access (CDMA).

In India, GSM sector is dominated by Airtel (Market leader 22% share, July 2013), Vodafone

and Idea Cellular, while CDMA sector is dominated by Reliance and Tata Indicom.

A decade ago, India was at the bottom of the pyramid in the world telecom market. But After

opening of the telecom sector for competition through liberalization, disinvestments, &

privatization initiatives adopted by the government of India, the industry, especially the

mobile segment is experiencing a tremendous growth and today we are the second largest

telecom market in the world.

Challenges

The glory of Indian telecom is unparalleled. Extraordinary growth, exemplary innovation in

technology as well as services offered, constantly dropping prices of services, and a booming

subscriber base are some of the characteristics that define dynamics of this market today.

The Indian telecom sector offers unprecedented opportunities in various areas, such as rural

telephony, 3G, virtual private network, value-added services, etc. The industry is expected to

continue to record good subscriber growth as a result of low penetration levels, heightened

competition; a sustained fall in minimum subscription cost and tariff that increase

affordability for lower-income rural users, expansion of coverage area by mobile operators,

and government support through schemes such as the rural infrastructure roll out funded by

subsidies from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund.

CRM in Telecom Industry 2

Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

Introduction

CRM is a system for managing a company’s interactions with Current and Future Customers.

It involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize sales, marketing,

customer service, and technical support. CRM addresses the Sales, Marketing and Service

activities of the organization. It is emerging as a critical strategy, since relationships are

coming to the forefront of competitive battlefield. The cost of acquiring a customer is six

times more than the cost of retaining them. Losing an existing customer is like losing a

fortune.

Cost of winning back lost customer

Cost of acquiring new customer

Cost of retaining current customer

0 40 80120

“Winning back a lost customer can cost up to 50-100 times

as much as keeping a current one satisfied.”

- Rob Yanker, Partner, McKinsey & Company

Treating customers like cattle is the antithesis of CRM, the goal of which is to recognize and

treat each customer as an individual. In competitive markets, where customers have a choice

between similar products and pricing, “70% decision making is based on how customers are

treated. Thus the embattled companies have now realized that without customers products

won’t sell and revenues won’t materialize and are thus becoming smarter about selling which

means smarter about who’s buying.

Scope for Telecom industry

With telecom industry nearing maturity, showing saturated growth, efficient CRM substitute

is essential, since customer attrition is high due to presence of close substitutes and near-zero

CRM in Telecom Industry 3

switching costs and service providers are trying to attract customers from competitors by

giving attractive offers. All this is making the switch-over process happen at the speed of

thought. The reasons for this switch over can be many:

Brand image

Numerous tariff options available to customers,

Billing disputes with a particular vendor,

Quality of service provided

Inadequate network coverage

The problem of switchover is very high in prepaid segment, which accounts for the vast

majority of Indian cellular users. The key to prevent such shifts is to adjust to the ever-

changing customer needs, his behaviour and certain other issues that could indicate a

potential defection, for example: change of address, cancelled direct debits (automated bill

settlement), complaints made, and usage of volume declines. CRM is thus evolving as an

important tool not only to sustain the market share, build relationships but also to retain it.

Benefits to Telecom industry

Customer relationship management (CRM) is rapidly becoming an integral part of many

organizations. Successful implementation of CRM requires a strategic approach which

involves developing customer centric processes, selecting and implementing technology

solution, customer information and knowledge generation capabilities to differentiate them

and ability to learn from best practices. Various key construction of CRM are:

Customer Value: Customer value is a strategic weapon in attracting and retaining

customers. Delivering superior customer value has become a matter of ongoing

concern in building and sustaining competitive advantage by driving customer-

relationship-management (CRM) performance.

Customer Satisfaction: At the basis of every long term relationship lays the customer

satisfaction. Evaluating customer satisfaction has become increasingly popular in the

last two decades. This popularity derives from the acceptance, that the satisfaction

construct is a predictor for repurchase intentions, word-of-mouth and loyalty.

Customer’s satisfaction is the base for business success.

Customer loyalty: Customer loyalty has always been valuable, but today it has

CRM in Telecom Industry 4

become more vital for success. Building customer loyalty is not a choice any longer

with businesses: it’s the only way of building sustainable competitive advantage.

CRM in Airtel:

In a telecom services company like Bharti, airtime is considered a product. “It is vital for us

to manage the expectations of our customers and provide them with innovative products and

services in a manner which makes them loyal,” explains Amrita Gangotra, Vice President of

Information Technology at Bharti. To achieve this, Bharti needed to have the appropriate

means. “To better serve our customers we needed a tool. It is this need that made us opt for a

CRM (customer relationship management) solution,” she says. Today Bharti is using the

Oracle CRM platform. “As part of our vision, we intend to provide Airtel services anywhere

and at any time. A customer should get the same quality of service no matter which of our

call centres he contacts. This has been our vision, and because of that we have gone in for a

centralised application like CRM,” Gangotra adds. The implementation of CRM also helped

Bharti in having a unified workflow and unified processes across the country.

Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated many options. It considered factors like

proper workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge sharing, and integration with the

billing system. After a thorough evaluation, it decided to go ahead with the Oracle CRM

platform.

Need for CRM

Initially, when Bharti started operations, the whole system was run manually. “At that point

of time only 40% of our customer issues were getting resolved-this has now gone up to about

90%,” reveals Gangotra.

“It is vital for us to manage the expectations of our customers and provide them with

innovative products and services in a manner which makes them loyal,” explains Gangotra.

To achieve this, Bharti needed the right tools. “It is this need that made us opt for a CRM

(customer relationship management) solution,” she says.

Benefits

Gangotra says it is important to understand and segregate customer needs depending on the

CRM in Telecom Industry 5

product and services he is buying. “One of the primary things that we have done in this

solution is the segmentation of customers. With this, Airtel is now able to give its customers

more value for money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are able to provide customers

different schemes and services depending on airtime usage. If the customer is a heavy user

then they have some specific schemes; for normal users they have other schemes. Apart from

this, they have also managed to segregate their workflow with the help of the CRM tool.

Initially, when Bharti started operations, the whole system was run manually. “At that point

of time only 40 percent of our customer issues were getting resolved—this has now gone up

to about 90 percent,” reveals Gangotra.

Strategy has also played a major role in improving customer service at Airtel. After

starting its services in Delhi, Bharti acquired lot of circles and sought new licences in

other circles; whenever they got a new licence, they implemented the CRM tool

immediately. But they had to put in a migration strategy in those acquired circles

which had an existing subscriber base. “The migration had to be done in such a

manner that the existing customer base did not suffer; we have already completed this

in 14 of the 15 circles that we operate in,” says Gangotra. All the circles will go live

by the first quarter of 2004.

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,” says Gangotra. “We

also had certain technical difficulties during implementation, but we were able to

overcome them.”

The CRM strategy at Airtel revolves around two aspects: operational CRM and

analytical CRM. The first is about helping their call centres in the workflow part,

helping them in their day-to-day activities. The second provides staff with the

required information on customers; this is used for business development activities.

Together they help Bharti provide better services to its customers.

Today Bharti is using the Oracle CRM platform. “As part of our vision, we intend to

provide Airtel services anywhere and at any time. A customer should get the same

quality of service no matter which of our call centres he/she contacts. This has been

our vision, and because of that we have gone in for a centralised application like

CRM, “Gangotra adds. Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated many options.

It considered factors like proper workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge

CRM in Telecom Industry 6

sharing, and integration with the billing system. After a thorough evaluation exercise,

it decided to go ahead with the Oracle CRM platform.

Gangotra says it is important to understand and segregate customer needs depending

on the product and services he is buying. “One of the primary things that we have

done in this solution is the segmentation of customers. With this, Airtel is now able to

give its customers more value for money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are

able to provide customers different schemes and services depending on airtime usage.

If the customer is a heavy user then they have some specific schemes; for normal

users they have other schemes. Apart from this, they have also managed to segregate

their workflow with the help of the CRM tool.

Results of implementing CRM:

The ultimate purpose of CRM, like any organizational initiative, is to increase profit. In the

case of CRM this is achieved mainly by providing a better service to your customers than

your competitors. CRM not only improves the service to customers though; a good CRM

capability will also reduce costs, wastage, and complaints. Effective CRM also reduces staff

stress, because attrition - a major cause of stress - reduces as services and relationships

improve.

CRM enables instant market research as well: opening the lines of communications with

customers gives direct constant market reaction to the products, services and performance, far

better than any market survey. Good CRM also helps to grow business: customers stay

longer; customer churn rates reduce; referrals to new customers increase from increasing

numbers of satisfied customers; demand reduces on fire-fighting and trouble-shooting staff,

and overall the organization’s service flows and teams work more efficiently and more

happily, as cited in the case of Airtel Magic at Bharti.

CRM in Telecom Industry 7

CRM in Vodafone:

Vodafone Group have a customer over 411 million. It operates over more than 30 countries

and in over 40 countries they are network partners.

It has a share of 45% of Verizon Wireless, which is the largest mobile phone company in the

United States has in terms of subscribers.

CRM has helped Vodafone in achieving the following tasks:

Customer Identification – Vodafone has been able to provide significance to their

customers, by determining their customer from different marketing channels, dealings

and time interactions.

Customer differentiation – They have been able to ascertain customer values of

different customers and understand the need of each buyer, their demands which are

unique and their different company requirements.

Customer Interaction - Customer wants change all over time. From a perspective of

CRM, the continuing profitability of customers and their relationship with the

company is very important. Vodafone has been able to know the client company

continuously and to track performance and customer needs.

Customization or Personalization - "Treat every customer differently" is the slogan

of the whole process of CRM. By personalizing the customer satisfaction, Vodafone

has achieved increased loyalty to their company

Use of E CRM:

E-CRM describes a wide variety of technologies used to maintain the CRM strategy. E-CRM

is also occasionally referred to as Web-enabled or e-CRM. It has been defined as “web

centric approach used to synchronize customer relationship between the communication

channels along with business functions and also for the public.

The objective of e-CRM systems is to improve service to customers, retain valued customers

and contribute to analysis capabilities within an organization. CRM applications take full

CRM in Telecom Industry 8

advantage of technological innovations to raise their capacity and analysis of data on the

habits of Internet users which helps to construe customer behaviour, grow predictive models

that respond in a timely and capable personalized communications and provide high quality

products and services to individual consumers. By using technology to increase the

interaction with business customers Vodafone has a full view of customer interactions from

the past to optimize future learning. E-CRM helped Vodafone in coordination of all

interactions with customers through multiple channels like telephone, Fax or email. It has

also enabled the business to improve productivity and maximize the capabilities of the

automation of workflow services revenue. E CRM allows to manage each call. Sales are now

connected automatically to the current and potential clients on the basis of knowledge of

services and the availability of the product. Customers can know the status of a call, or may

subscribe request information on the status of application.

E CRM helps to develop practices for individual analysis and personalized communication

interactions. Vodafone can identify segments of the relationship with the client to understand

the needs and preferences and create targeted marketing to provide special offers to certain

segments of customers. It also helps to monitor customer feedback and learn the lessons for

future campaigns and customers shopping behaviour. Needs of management processes and

existing methods are offered in the service changes and the quality of service for customers is

improved. This allows them to communicate properly with the client. Continuous interaction

with customers helps to continue the development of activities in the long term relationship.

Result of implementing CRM:

The main and overall result is that the new CRM solution has helped Vodafone to reduce

annual customer churn. CRM solution has helped Vodafone employees to synchronize &

coordinate all customer interactions across multiple channels, including telephone, e-mail,

face to face, post & fax. The CRM solution has also enabled employees to improve customer

service, increase productivity and maximize revenues.

The workflow automation capabilities of the CRM solution have enabled the company to

manage each and every one of these calls efficiently and professionally. Sales agents are now

automatically connected to customers and prospects based on product & service expertise,

named account, availability and geography. They can also check the status of a calling

subscribers’ request or inform him/her of the status of the request. Call scripting and profiling

further improved agent productivity.

CRM in Telecom Industry 9

CRM in Fibcom:

Fibcom India Limited is a part of the telecom ventures of the Suri Group. The company was

established in 1994 and is a leader in optical transmission products (SDH/DWDM),

integrated network solutions and telecom infrastructure development projects. Fibcom is

backed by a strong SDH / DWDM product portfolio, R&D center and manufacturing

infrastructure, located at Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The company also has sales and support

offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.

Their Business Domain Includes :

Sales & Services

Research & Development

Manufacturing

Infrastructure Projects

Problems and challenges

FIBCOM is a telecommunication equipment manufacturer dealing with optical multiplexers.

It was earlier having a tie‐up with Tellabs Inc., a global telecommunication company that

designs, develops and supports telecommunication networking products.

However, in 2010 FIBCOM and Tellabs Inc.’s technical collaboration terminated. FIBCOM

CRM in Telecom Industry 10

started working on indigenous technology and developed its very own software platform and

Implemented its firmware and network management system on all its new products. It started

Receiving complaints about Product stability issues during software up‐gradation, visibility

on

NMS (Craft Terminal & NMS). This increased the cost of operation for FIBCOM, as

multiple visits of the service engineers on the same location lead to a tremendous increase in

operating expense. New orders were drying up & sales funnel was squeezing. Soon it became

difficult to maintain a large number of technical managers and engineers locally in each

telecommunication circle because the engineers had to be paid salaries and in addition to this,

huge amounts for travelling bills were incurred by the company, which lead to a crisis.

Thus, to manage its interaction with current and future customers, FIBCOM implemented

Customer Relationship Management tool. It started using CRM to organize, automate and

Synchronize sales, marketing, customer service and technical support.

Implementation of CRM

To effectively capture and manage customer, partner, and employee data, FIBCOM had to

develop and communicate enterprise‐wide information strategy aligned with their corporate

strategy and implement a corresponding set of people, processes, and technological initiatives

along with a phased implementation strategy. Fibcom aligned the implementation strategy to

its corporate goals.

The next step was to identify the critical data fields that were both required as well as

strategic, developing the information repository or database by integrating into their legacy

CRM in Telecom Industry 11

align information strategy to

corporate goals

identify the critical data fields, both

required as well as strategic

develop the information

repository by integrating

legacy systems

train employees on data input requirements.

link employee performance to

data input requirements

re evaluate the ‐system on an ongoing basis and make any

system necessary requirements

systems, establishing appropriate information views for employees, train their employees on

the data input requirements, link the employee performance to ensure that they’re utilizing

that system effectively, and to, of course, go back and re‐evaluate the system to see how its

performing against the original goals and objectives that they developed before implementing

the system.

Apart from serving the customers in the best possible manner following are some major

reasons to implement CRM:

Memory is not perfect: With a CRM it was easy to store and manage hundreds of

clients and let a computer system handle the task of memory and recall.

Emails are decentralized: A customer relations management system puts all the

pertinent client information in one central location that was easy to update and easy to

see when other's updated. All communication can be kept in one spot, nothing gets

lost and can be seen and share with the rest of the team.

We need metrics: CRM gave instant metrics on dozens of aspects to the business.

Plus, with a CRM it can actually create custom reports to better track metrics and

reports specific to their needs.

History is important: Customer relations systems helped keep all the conversations

with customers in one place and made it easy for the organisation to quickly look

back in time and see how things have progressed.

Track our tasks and events: CRM not only helped in keeping track of every task and

every event but also related them to the appropriate customer or lead.

Results of implementing CRM

Improved Customer intimacy.

Timely resolution of issues. (Within the defined SLAs)

Reduced expenses (due to less manpower & less travelling required)

Single Point of Contact for customers.

Greater customer Satisfaction.

Enhanced customer loyalty.

Improved Feedback and controlling systems

CRM in Telecom Industry 12

Future Avenues:

Cloud is one of the 'in things', full of great promises, which looks set to bring significant

changes in the existing CRM landscape. Today, moving CRM systems to the 'cloud' is one of

the most important topics of interest for organizations using CRM. However, they are taking

cautious steps in this journey. An understandable approach when it involves a new

technology trend that brings a disruptive change to the existing working models. On one

hand, the idea of reduced/minimal accountability (of maintaining infrastructure that supports

CRM), ease of system provisioning and access, and lower TCO for CRM systems seem to be

strong pull factors for Cloud-based CRM solutions. Data security, especially in public clouds,

and amount of control and flexibility organizations can have in relation to their CRM

systems, more so in a multi-tenant setup, are the major concerns that cause organizations to

hesitate in choosing the cloud option. To arrive at an appropriate decision, it's important that

today's IT teams gather a clear understanding of the different cloud-based options available

for CRM.

Analysts forecast the Global Telecom Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market to

grow at a CAGR of 5.58% over the period 2012-2016. One of the key factors contributing to

this market growth is the increasing demand from small and medium-sized enterprises in the

Telecom sector. The Global Telecom CRM market has also been witnessing an increasing

demand for customized telecom CRM solutions. However, the presence of complex tools and

workflows in CRM software could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

The key vendors dominating this space include Amdocs Systems Inc., Avaya Inc., Infor

Global Solutions, Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Salesforce.com Inc., and SAP AG.

To cultivate continued, profitable business among the best customers - an organization needs

to know how to reward them. It is also important to understand which segments of customers

are dormant and will come back later.

CRM solutions provide this transparency for customer information in an organized and

efficient way. Escalations, enforcement rules and alerts ensure alignment with business

CRM in Telecom Industry 13

strategies and an ongoing process to remain updated on customer details and specific needs.

Collaborative products and services are the future for mutually profitable relationships

between enterprises and their customers.

References:

1. http://www.crmnext.com/industries/telecom/

2. http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/manuscript/Journals/IJBRM/volume2/Issue3/IJBRM-

50.pdf

3. http://www.vsrdjournals.com/MBA/Issue/2014_01_January/Web/

4_Saurav_Kumar_2965_Research_Communication_VSRDIJBMR_January_2014.pdf

4. http://www.chimc.in/vol-4_sep/RESEARCH%20PAPER-6.pdf

5. http://www.vsrdjournals.com/MBA/Issue/2013_04_April/Web/

6_Meera_Arora_1730_Review_Article_VSRDIJBMR_April_2013.pdf

6. http://www.fibcom.com/ (Company’s official website)

7. http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/03/sap‐acquires‐successfactors‐for‐3‐4‐billion/

8. http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/oracle‐buys‐cloud‐based‐customer‐service‐companyrightnow‐for‐1‐5‐billion/

9. Kenneth C Laudon & Jane Laudon, Management Information Systems‐Managing the digital firm, 12th edition.

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