India is one of the fastest growing and fiercely competitive mobile phone markets in the world. Therefore there is pressure on mobile tariffs and as a result, on average revenue per user (ARPU). In addition, the country has an extremely diverse and fragmented user base. To succeed, companies have to constantly launch innovative products and tariff plans, provide value added services and excellent customer service.

The client is the Indian arm of the world's leading mobile telecommunications company, and has over 49 million subscribers in India. The client is expanding organically by launching new products & services at a fast pace and also through a series of acquisitions across the country.

To stay ahead of its competition, the client wanted to support its growth as well as its product portfolio with exceptional customer service. Firstsource has worked with some of the world’s largest telecom companies. It used its global experience to design a multi-faceted solution which addressed client’s unique business needs and market challenges. Firstsource consistently exceeded client targets and delivered significant value through process excellence and innovation.

Delivery center setup

• Firstsource did a thorough analysis to choose the right locations for the new centers, for which availability of skilled resources and the quality of infrastructure were the key parameters. Firstsource deployed i-Kit , its proprietary transition methodology, to build four out of five customer service centers for client operations within 120 days. It also recruited over 3000 individuals in 90 days at different locations
• Robust Business Continuity Planning (BCP) was implemented to ensure customer service operations are not affected during a crisis situation

Customer Service Management

• Detailed analysis of repeat calls, escalations and quality scores was done to identify training needs of agents, leading to a reduction in repetitive errors
• Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) – Multiple dashboards were developed and implemented to track and manage daily performance of agents
• Firstsource established Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to ensure that knowledge and information about new products and product/process changes were quickly disseminated from the client to Firstsource’s customer service teams
• Multilingual support - Customer service was provided in ten languages and each agent had proficiency in atleast two languages
• Key people from Firstsource as well as client’s team were put through a structured Six Sigma and Quality tools training to identify gaps and eliminate redundancies across processes. Best practices and key learnings from these projects were replicated across centers
• Call fluctuations were handled by effective shift management (multiple shifts, part-time shifts, split shifts, etc)

Value addition

• Firstsource analyzed the historical call volumes based on which it designed and implemented a robust planning and forecasting model
• The customer service operations was further streamlined by the following value added activities – systematic Voice of Customer (VOC) feedback sharing and in-depth analysis of network related and billing related issues

The project went live in February 2007 and Firstsource currently runs five full-fledged centers with over 3500 agents and 1600 seats. This engagement has delivered significant benefits to the client:

• Rapid scale
  Firstsource helped the client quickly ramp up customer service operations to support its aggressive organic and inorganic growth
• Improved Customer Service
  Firstsource exceeded Customer satisfaction (CSAT) goals for every skill set where CSAT increased from a range 4% -10% across skill sets
• Predictability of Cost
  Firstsource helped the client streamline its planning and forecasting of call volumes, which is now being deployed across other service partners of the client

Firstsource’s process excellence initiatives and value added activities has also helped the client speed up time-to-market their products and services and hence helped them stay competitive in the market.