Februari 12, 2011

Single Costumer View to Improve Indosat Customer Service

Indosat is one the big player in Indonesian cellular industry which has market share approximately 27 percent and ranked as the second largest operator after Telkomsel. Competition in the cellular communications industry is based principally on network coverage, technical quality, price, the availability of data services and special features, and quality and responsiveness of customer service. The last one has become so crucial in this tight competition and companies are putting more concern in this issue because they know the relationship between profitability and customer orientation.

For that reason Indosat has set up its customer service management to maintain lasting relationship with customer and streamlining all CRM activities. As a result in 2010, Indosat has been awarded as "The Best Customer Care Operator” from Cellular Mobile Award". This award is a tribute to customer service Indosat, which indicates recognition of Indosat's service quality customer service to all customers. If we look behind the strategy we can found it is related to what Accenture have done to help Indosat with its integrated customer care & inventory system just after Indosat had a merger. How the adoption of such a system had improved Indosat costumer service is the major analysis of my blog post.


I will start by trying to breakdown the complexity of the systems after the merger and to breakdown what have Accenture actually do to Indosat.

Deregulation, The Merger & Its Problems
The telecommunication sector deregulation has been started with the Telecommunication Law No. 36 Year 1999. After the this regulation the market is changing from monopoly to a competititve market. This regulation has forced Indosat to make some changes. The first step taken by Indosat it to define the vision and mission in accordance with market changes and demands in the national telecommunications industry. The next step is to review the company's management policy, including its subsidiaries such as PT Satelindo, PT IM3 (PT Indosat Multi Media Mobile) and PT Bimagraha Telekomindo. Through the merger of Satelindo, IM3 and Bimagraha to Indosat on November 20, 2003.

The process of merger between Satelindo's cellular network with IM3 was divided into three stages, namely the integration of networking, switching, and intelligent network. But, the major problem from this merger is the combination of several complex systems supporting its different types of products.

After the merger with Satelindo and IM3, Indosat several complex systems supporting its different types of products. The various systems include highly customized CRM systems and other supporting systems for the registration and activation of customers' services. In addition, this merger had also caused multiple cards and voucher inventory systems causing complication in reconciliation and reporting.

The complexity of the system after the merger of satelindo and IM3 had caused the customer data spread across many systems. It is fragmented and often inconsistent. This makes it difficult for organizations to understand the true value of customers, their likely behavior, their needs, and also the risks associated with them. This is why Indosat need to integrate their system

How Accenture Helped: The Adoption of Integrated Customer Care and Cards Inventory Management System
Using the Accenture Communication Solutions, based on telecommunication industry best practices, Accenture implemented an integrated customer care and cards inventory management systems that combined all the wireless products within Indosat Accenture managed the project by working closely with the users to understand the business concerns and practices.

In addition, the project was set-up with a combination of strong local resources combined skilled people from the region and skilled resources from Accenture's delivery center. As a result, the systems implemented had been stable, and had been able to provide better service level to the subscribers. In addition, the project also consolidated Indosat's products within a single system, which enabled the client to provide bundled services. Indosat in turn is able to effectively track its cards inventory and distribution, resulting in a higher accuracy of SIM cards inventory.

Toward Single Customer View

The integrated customer care and card inventory system implemented by Accenture within Indosat is a form of single customer view concept. The “single customer view" will make is easier for organization to understand the true value of customers, their likely behavior, their needs, and also the risks associated with them. Without a single view of those customers, organizations are in the dark and cannot effectively retain customers, cross-sell to them, deliver the right customer experience to them, or manage the risk associated with them. Some form of single customer view is, therefore, fundamental to managing customer relationships.” (Gartner, 2006)

With a single customer view, companies can improve customer service, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty while cutting IT inefficiencies today. They can also position themselves for higher growth and profitability in the future.

As explained by Gartner (2006), a single customer view helps improve communications with partners, leading to additional strategic opportunities such as joint selling through the partner ecosystem, customized offers and “package deals” involving products from multiple vendors, special discounts that apply to preferred partner products, and so on. In addition, a single customer view can be critical to meeting regulatory compliance and privacy management requirements.

This benefit can also be seen from Indosat case. After the implementation of Integrated Customer Care and Cards Inventory Management System, the systems implemented had been stable, and had been able to provide better service level to the subscribers. In addition, the project also consolidated Indosat's products within a single system, which enabled the client to provide bundled services. Indosat in turn is able to effectively track its cards inventory and distribution, resulting in a higher accuracy of SIM cards inventory.

The tight competition in the cellular communications had forces the player in this industry to focus on their customer. This was based on their believes that there is a strong relation between profitability and customer orientation which then made them innovate their customer relationship management with many complex system in gathering & maintaining customer information to respond to their needs. In that condition, company needs to find a system that make it easier for organization to understand the true value of customers, their likely behavior, their needs, and also the risks associated with them. This is why they need to view the customer in single view, just like what Accenture suggest to Indosat.


Refference:
Gartner, “Creating the Single Customer View with Customer Data Integration,” by John Radcliffe, 2006.
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Achieving A Single Customer View White Paper May 2008.
“Accenture Service Transformation-Rethink, Redefine, Reinvent Transforming customer service for high performance”, 2010 Accenture
Creating the Single Customer View, Hitachi Consulting, White Paper, 2010
Photo credit to Accenture

1 Comment:

Cheapermobiles said...

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