The Indian telecom industry, especially the mobile, is one of the fastest growing across the globe, with growth from a one million subscriber base in 1998 to 400 million plus in 2009! This unprecedented growth has been witnessed with ever changing market dynamics.
This unprecedented growth has been with ever changing market dynamics. Consider the following key challenges in the industry:

* The next 100 million subscribers will come from tier 2/3/4 towns and rural India.
* Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is already low, will come down further.
* The cost of servicing has to decline further too.
* Thus more pressure on the cost of service in tier 1 and 2 cities.

The conventional customer service set-up today just cannot scale up to meet the requirements as growth goes decidedly semi-rural/ rural. This is why:

* Available spend budgets dropping consistently
* The cost of servicing from tier 1 and 2 cities exclusively is becoming more prohibitive year on year with the consistent drop in ARPU.
* Accent diversity management: the market shifting towards tier 2, 3 and 4 towns is inducing accent and dialect related difficulties in customer service!
* Disaster Recovery (DR)/ Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
* A pure-play metro or a purely rural delivery model hinging on one or two centers brings with it serious DR, BCP challenges.

The Approach
Aditya Birla Minacs has pioneered an innovative proactive response to this evolving business scenario. Based on our deep engagement with the telecom industry, the CRM insight and domestic experience we have created a solution which is Connect India - a robust customer service platform leveraging technology that will power Indian telecom’s growth thrust in the coming years.

Service Delivery Model: Connect India is designed as a hub-and-spoke based service delivery model, the typical hub is a state of the art facility with 800 plus production seats located out of a major metro to cater to the urban mass with high Revenue Per User (RPU).

Hub: Command Center: The hub is the command center supporting all spokes, and will also cater to 20-25 percent of the volumes. The remaining is smartly distributed to the spokes to ensure buffer rationalization. All critical delivery activities like Train the Trainer (TTT), Quality Monitoring, MIS, reviews and overall control will be located at the hub.

Spokes: Satellite Center The spokes or the satellite centre is a highly functional, but minimal infrastructure 100-seat (approx.) operation, running a strictly two-shift operation, located at a 3-4 hour distance from the hub.

More than a Call Center: A typical spoke facility is envisioned to transform into a contact center. But going further with the infrastructure, each spoke will house a full fledged retail center to enable the company to offer sales and other retail, showroom-centric activities.

Ready to Implement: Minacs has done extensive research across Indian states and is fully ready with a detailed template and plans to implement and transition the operation quickly.

Strategy: Our location strategy is based on our research, on infrastructure availability (fiber, last mile, etc), political sensitivities, resource catchment areas and other such feasibility parameters.

Go-live: The hub will go operational first (within 60-90 days of LOI) with one spoke going live every 30 days thereafter.

The Connect India model from Minacs is based on ‘control panel’ framework, which is customizable for meeting specific telecom requirements. This framework comprises of critical delivery elements which are well researched and measurable under our Six Sigma approach. Minacs approach to deploying the Connect India model follows a well-knit flow integrating people, process and technology. Critical functions like hiring, training, quality, transition, on the job training (OJT), floor operations are customized to suit to suit the business needs of the customer. Each of these critical success factors are well thought-through with the help of our proprietary framework to factor in location based challenges. We come up with a best-fit solution for you, leveraging the optimal hub and spoke locations, based on the client requirements.

In a nutshell, Connect India from Minacs ensures no major capex investment to the clients and a robust built-in DR and BCP framework. It is a blend of service functions to drive customer satisfaction across your metro and rural subscriber bases.

The evolved pricing model featuring highly competitive per call pricing and our commitment to move to an ‘effort plus output’ model in a pre-defined period is one of the key highlights. As part of the inclusive national and increasingly corporate agenda, together we would like to contribute to creating employment across semi-rural and rural India.

The author is President - Asia Pacific, Aditya Birla Minacs