Summary:
Every minute of CRM downtime cost Vodafone India over 6,500 customers. In a fiercely competitive industry, that’s a number its CIO knew the company couldn’t afford.
Highlights:
Every minute of CRM downtime cost Vodafone India over 6,500 customers.There are 40,000 users on the CRM system with 12,000 concurrent users logged in at any given point of time, 24 hours a dayReader ROI:
The Organization: In a country that’s home to one of the world’s largest mobile subscriber bases (881 million as of October 2011), Vodafone India holds the distinction of being the second largest mobile operator.
Today, the company serves more than 150 million customers in India.
The Problem: There’s no doubt that the telecom industry is a victim of fierce competition. “With most competitors offering similar products and competitive prices, services is something that will provide any organization an edge in this industry,” says Manoj Nigam, VP, CS-IT at Vodafone.
And you can’t provide better services without a robust CRM system. That was something Vodafone couldn’t boast of. The company’s Oracle CRM system wasn’t built to handle its growing customer base and users. “There are 40,000 users on the CRM system with 12,000 concurrent users logged in at any given point of time, 24 hours a day,” says Nigam.
As the company introduced new service channels like an IVR, downtime became routine. That was something Vodafone couldn’t afford.
With a little more than 10 million interactions a day, a minute of downtime cost 6,944 interactions. That’s 6,944 lost opportunities to retain customers.
This increased repeat calls to customer service centers, increasing the company’s expenses. Mostly outsourced, these partners are usually paid on a per call received basis, and Vodafone has to pay for every call attended—even if the customer care executive is unable to help due to downtime.
The Solution: Nigam knew that he needed to build something that could share the increasing load on the existing CRM.
Like a body double for the existing CRM, Nigam launched a Web CRM. Based on Java J3, this lighter version would step into the shoes of the Oracle CRM whenever there is planned or unplanned downtime—automatically.
So whenever there’s downtime, the Web application pulls out information from the master database (used for the Oracle CRM) when reading data. However, when a user writes something, the application stores it locally. As soon as the original CRM is up, the alternative database automatically synchronizes itself with the master database in the backend and updates the latest inputs.
User profiles have been pre-configured to alert them when the original CRM is down. “User experience remains unadulterated and users can seamlessly move from one app to another by using the same credentials to log in,” says Nigam.
The Benefits: The new system has made downtime inconsequential. On an average, the system has saved about Rs 5.3 crore since 2009 due to reduced calls to the call center. The repeat calls have fallen from about 28 percent in 2008 to 15 percent in 2011.
The Web CRM now acts as the primary CRM for mini Vodafone stores in tier 2 cities where bandwidth is an issue.
User experience remains unadulterated and users can seamlessly move from one app to another by using the same credentials to log in.
User experience remains unadulterated and users can seamlessly move from one app to another by using the same credentials to log in.
