The Cellular Industry in India, from being a top-end and premium service, has been transformed to a basic utility and even penetrated the lower rungs of economic strata. The average cellular customer today is quality conscious, price-sensitive and increasingly more demanding. The client, a leading cellular service provider, has partnered with CSMM to conduct a Customer Relationship Assessment (CRA) programme on a regular basis, in order to keep pace with the changing needs of customers. The programme has been highly actionable and is aligned to the client’s internal quality management practices that would finally benefit the customer.

The objectives of the CRA programme were to:

• Reassess the customer needs and expectations in the face of changing market realities;
• Find out areas that impact customer commitment most;
• Identify strengths and weakness vis-a-vis competition;
• Provide strategic direction for improvement in critical areas and identify leverageable opportunities.

The survey highlighted the following customer-felt issues. The client analysed these further through a deployment session facilitated by CSMM and arrived at the final action plan.

Finding: Network experience impacted customer commitment the most. In simple terms, customers who were satisfied on network quality were more likely to be overall more committed to the service provider and vice versa.

Actions taken: Allocation of a higher budget on network expansion and improvement of network quality. New cell sites were to be identified where signal strength was weak.

Finding: Customer care was the next key driver. Customers expected to get through quickly and get their problems solved at the first instance.

Actions taken:

• Introduction of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system. This would scan the queries to the call cen-tre and route only the more complex problems to the executives.
• An audit programme to monitor executive performance at call centre and assess their individual training needs.

Finding: Overall, the heavy users were more critical in their rating. They expected a differential level of service, which they deserved because of their revenue contribution.

Actions taken: The client had already started a different service plan for its high-end customers. The findings reinforced the need for such a plan.

The client has reiterated its conviction in the CRA programme and its benefits by moving to quarterly tracks from a semi-annual assessment. The client has also linked the employee KRA’s and performance incentives to the Customer Satisfaction Index. These are positive steps towards getting closer to the customer. The future is certainly bright for the company whose major strategies are based on “the Voice of Customer”.