Tata Teleservices

Quality Management & Customer Service

The CompanyTata Teleservices Limited spearheads the Tata Group’s presence in the telecom sector. The Tata Group includes over 90 companies, over 350,000 employees worldwide and more than 3.5 million shareholders. Tata Teleservices Limited has also become the first Indian private telecom operator to launch 3G services in India under the brand name Tata DOCOMO, with its recent launch in all the nine telecom Circles where it bagged the 3G license. In association with its partner NTT DOCOMO, the Company finds itself favorably positioned to leverage this first-mover advantage. With 3G, Tata DOCOMO stands to redefine the very face of telecoms in India.

The Tata Teleservices Limited bouquet comprises four other brands as well—Virgin Mobile, Walky (which is the brand for fixed wireless phones), the Photon family (the company’s brand that provides a variety of options for wireless mobile broadband access, and T24. TTSL recently entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Indian retail giant Future Group to offer mobile telephony services under a new brand name—T24—on the GSM platform.

TTSL’s bouquet of telephony services includes mobile services, wireless desktop phones, public booth telephony, wireline services and enterprise solutions.

Objective of StudyThe objective of our study was primarily two-fold:

To gain a deeper understanding of the quality management practices employed by TTSL in customer service

To evaluate and make appropriate recommendations on the practices followed, and any improvements thereof.

Tata Teleservices – The Evolution of Customer Service

Initially, Tata Teleservices (TTSL) followed a circle-based customer care model. But with the company acquiring a pan-Indian presence, this model became obsolete. The need was for a centralised call centre that would provide them with cost efficiencies, especially in the training and technology department. They explored the options of either utilising the available call centre facilities or creating one of their own.

At that time, the outsourcing landscape consisted of vendors focusing on international or local clients. The large professional outfits that managed international outsourcing were more in sync with their vision; they were scalable as well as technologically advanced and robust. The only deterrent was their high price point. The smaller vendors handling local outsourcing were essentially one-time paging operators who had converted their defunct facilities into call centres. They were disorganised and unable to support more than 100-200 seats in one location.

Hence, Tata decided to create their own facility, one that that would bridge the existing gap in the market and become a profit centre for the Group. Simultaneously, they discovered that the Tata Strategic Management Group (TSMG) was also evaluating the opportunities in the BPO space for the Group. The two threads came together quite uniquely.

Thus, E2E SerWiz Solutions (or SerWizSol) was started in March 2004 to exclusively focus on the contact centre and BPO business and while it has chosen not to be a subsidiary to TTSL, though a major portion of TTSL’s customer service requirement is met by it.

Studying the processTo achieve the objective it was necessary to first understand how the customer service processes are defined in the company. This involved studying what standards are in place and how deviations, if any, are handled.

TOUCH POINTSA customer comes in direct contact with the company employee through 4 different touch points which can be categorized into inbound and outbound touch points.

Inbound touch points: Customer makes efforts to contact company,Outbound touch points: Company makes efforts to contact customer.

When do customers reach a touchpoint?A customer makes effort to reach a touchpoint under 3 conditions:

Request Complaint Query

When a customer has a request to be made or a query to clear, he/she moves in to any of the inbound touchpoints and gets it resolved. Hence, request and query falls under FIRST TIME RESOLUTION category.

The complaint falls under SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT, and follows a defined process to get resolved.

Inbound Touchpoints

Call CenterWalkin customer

Outbound Touchpoints

Calls out-calledField visit to customers

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)Under S.L.A. the customer complaints are entered into the system by the touchpoint agent and based on the query type CRM tool automatically routes the complaint to the concerned department. If the problem requires the expertise of more than one department, then in such cases it is manual routed to the other department.

While the problem is being solved, the core reason of the problem is found and corrected. The problem may be because of the following 3 reasons:

1. TECHNICAL issues: In such cases problem measures are taken by the technical team and ensured that it wound arise again.

2. PROCESS GAP: If the processes being followed are not capable of handling an issue, immediate steps are taken by the concerned authority.

3. HUMAN RELATED ISSUES: For example, lack of human resource or misplacement of the expert skills is the problem then people with the required skills are employed at the required place. Company believes in practice of Right people at Right place.

Managing quality at touchpoints

Customer comes in direct contact with the company whenever he/she walks in to any of the company stores or makes a call to customer care executives. At all these touchpoints the company employee is the face of the company and has the responsibility of satisfying that customer.

TATA Teleservices follows the practice of continuous improvement (KAIZEN) to deliver quality services to its customers.

RECRUITMENT Quality of these touchpoints is kept in mind since the time of recruitment. At recruitment the interest of the individual in certain function is given preference. Also proper training is given to the employee before he/she comes in contact with the customer.

TRAININGAfter recruitment each front-end agent has to go through training called GURUKUL session. Under this training, the agents are given a comprehensive knowledge about the company product and the policies/system in place. Training goes on for certain period followed by mock session.

Under mock sessions, agents are given dummy calls to handle and their responses are recorded. The errors made and improvements are told. Ones an agent is prepared to take the calls, the real customer calls are given to him but are continuously monitored by the BUDDY assigned.

If the Buddy assigned is satisfied by the quality of responses of the new agent, he/she is certified to handle the customer queries independently.

QUALITY SHEETSThe responses of each customer care employee are monitored at regular intervals by the audit team and quality sheets of each employee are maintained. Each employee is rated (from A+ to D) based on the percentage of times the customer is satisfied by the response.

If the employee is found lacking in knowledge on certain aspect or in case of FATAL ERROR (i.e. when most of the responses are unsatisfactory) OFI is raised. Under OFI (Opportunity For Improvement) he/she is given a proper training in that aspect so as to improve upon the responses and improve customer satisfaction.

CALL TRANSFER & ESCALATIONCall transfer and escalations generally takes place in case of lack of knowledge of the agents. To provide customer with a satisfactory response, each employee is empowered to transfer the call to another agent or special team if he/she is not able to answer the customer query.

Also if the customer issue requires special consideration then the customer call can be forwarded to upper level where it is handled by the supervisor. A total of 4 levels of escalations can take place and can reach upto the level of TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) or NCH (National Consumer Helpline).

VOC (Voice of Customer)Customer is always right.

Third party agencies like Ernst & Young or IMRB conduct independent customer satisfaction surveys on large scale. Such agencies rate the companies based on the perception of general public and their level of satisfaction.

Companies like TATA teleservices take these ratings in serious manner and work on to improve their processes for better rating. This also helps in new customer acquisition for the company.

RecommendationsTATA Teleservices is committed to continuous improvement of processes to provide excellent and quality services to its customers. The group would like to make following recommendations for further improvement.

Though the system of call escalation is in place for customer satisfaction but in some cases this may create frustration and hence dissatisfaction to customer. So, the company can have the system in place for recording all such escalated issues and providing the agents with proper solution to any such

situation. Under this condition, no further escalation will take place regarding that issue and the agent knowledge will also increase.