Customer Relationship Magic

When Airtel created a macro vision of CRM, it aspired to provide a single-window of service throughout the 23 circles across the country. Centralized and integrated were definitely two pillars they were looking for.  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."

As Airtel grew a national footprint, it cobbled together a number of local players, spreading into new circles (23 today), 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. It was evident that without an integrated and a centralized CRM system it would be impossible to process data and manage Airtel's humongous customer base.

Airtel went on to make that possible. But before that, a system that kept records of a customer's portfolio, profile, payment history, etcetera, had to be created. Airtel also made a crucial decision at this stage, it chose to take an interest in the lives of its customers. And that, it found, made all the difference.

Airtel sought to integrate all its processes across multiple functions with a centralized CRM. 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.  CRM analytics is used to generate accurate leads from a customer database.  The CRM also serves to segment customers, thereby helping Airtel proactively identify the needs of its customers.

Among the first successes of Airtel's IT team was finding a business sponsor. CRM was sponsored by the customer service department who recalls that aligning both IT and business was critical. So critical, in fact, that internal users were temporarily taken off their normal jobs and dedicated to the project till it was declared a successfully up.

A lot of the IT department's success came from a general consensus that CRM was mission critical to the company. 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. 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 CRM doesn't only reduce back-end traffic, it also regulates it. Service requests, like issuing a duplicate bill, are now sent to the back-end  have a cut-off time.

Almost all customer information is available online, enabling the company to answer queries 99 percent of the time. Data collected by the CRM also helps Airtel take defensive action against customers they suspect are either misusing Airtel's services or aren't planning to pay for them.

Since Airtel adopted CRM for its postpaid customers, they have experienced considerable savings in the form of fewer calls, a tremendous reduction in churn, increased productivity and further revenues from value-added services. Parashar claims that there's been a cross and up-selling revolution in Airtel.

The Person Behind It

Anurag Parashar

Head-Customer Service Delivery, Bharti Televentures

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.

Amrita Gangotra

Group Chief IT Solutions Engagement, Airtel

Few people harness the potential of CRM to cross-sell and up-sell. Market analytics of a ready customer database can do wonders in converting prospective customers into real ones.