Introduction

The current era is popularly known as the age of the customer. Companies have always, to an
extent, called themselves "customer-centric". But this time its different. It is not about customercentric thinking or taking the attitude that the customer is always right. Instead, the new power of
customers means that a focus on the customer now matters more than any other strategic
imperative. Competitive differentiation achieved through brand, manufacturing, distribution and IT
are all now only table stakes. The only source of competitive advantage is the one that can
survive technology-fuelled disruptionan obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting
with and serving customers. Effectively managing your company's relationships with those who
buy and use your company's products and services has never been more important.
Ultimately, executives don't get to decide how customer-centric their companies arecustomers
are the ultimate arbiters. Better customer experiences drive improvement in customer loyalty.
As a result, managing customer relationships has become a top priority for continued business
success. Tough economic conditions, the increasing cost of doing business, stiff competition, and
the need to support and personalize every customer interaction are forcing business and
technology leaders to think about the customer relationship management (CRM) life cycle
beyond legacy CRM tools.

CRM - Definition
Customer Relationship Management is defined as the business processes and supporting
technologies that support the key activities of targeting, acquiring, retaining, understanding and
collaborating with customers.
In layman terms, CRM can be just one or a mix of the below features

A database that gathers information about the customers.

A way to check the information in the database.
A strategy for implementing the analysis to meet the clients needs and explore potential
customers.
Gathering data to ensure your strategy is effective.
A database that makes the organisation customer centric

A software survey has shown that as of Q4 2012, nearly half (47 percent) of the North American
and European enterprises surveyed have already implemented a CRM solution in the form of a
marketing, sales or customer service application. Almost 25% of them are spending more to
upgrade their tool set. Thirteen percent plan to adopt a CRM solution within the next year, and
the rest indicate longer CRM implementation road maps.
Leading CRM solution vendors continue to invest in improving their solutions and make
acquisitions to fill out their solution portfolios to cater to the growing demand. However, they
continue their struggle to determine how to define the right CRM strategies, re-engineer
customer-facing business processes, effectively acquire and deploy the appropriate supporting
technology solutions, and lead and sustain the organizational changes required to transition to
new processes.

Customers today live in a world of increased expectations and options. A new breed of
companies that use digital tools and platforms to get closer to customers and engage with them
in deeper and novel ways have come up in recent times. Digital disruptors threaten to make your
organization irrelevant by delivering a more compelling product and service experience than you
can and at a lower cost. We have entered the age of the customer; the only source of
competitive advantage now is to focus on knowing and engaging with customers.

Primary Focus
The barriers to entry in industry are lower today. Empowered customers can easily find the
cheapest prices from suppliers, large or small, anywhere in the world. That severely weakens
traditional barriers to entry: Global outsourcing erodes economies of scale, online channels
render distribution strength impotent, and customer word of mouth reverses huge brand
investments.
Substitute products and channels gut profits. Digital substitution is collapsing value chains and
erasing profits across multiple industries. The customer is at the centre of this disruption,
because innovators targeting any business know that if they give the customer what she
perceives as value, she'll gladly substitute their product for what she's buying now.
Buyers have more knowledgeand therefore powerthan ever. With online reviews and mobile
Web access, your customers know more about your products, your services, your competitors
and pricing than you do. The more information a buyer has, the greater his bargaining power with
suppliers.
Employees have more clout with companies. In a knowledge economy, people are a key
ingredient of any product. If they don't get what they want, they can jump ship and go work for
someone elseand they're doing this more and more.
Competitors have instant access to others tactics and strategies. Customers share their
experiences online, search engines expose interest in keywords, and everything competition
wants to know is on company website and those of its best influencers. In short, customers
practically lay granular insight at competitors' feet.

Role of CRM in Indian Telecom Industry

The Indian Telecom Industry with an overall teledensity of 72.09% in April 2011 and the mobile
segment teledensity of 69.19%, finds it difficult to build sustainable and successful relationships
with a large customer base. It is not easy to accomplish and has a direct impact on many core
operational processes. It is about the interactions of the entire business with customers.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is about creating a competitive advantage by being
the best at understanding, communicating, delivering service and developing existing customer
relationships in addition to creating and keeping new customers.
In India, rapid diffusion of telecom, at least in the urban areas, has been progressing, thanks to
the hyper-competitive telecom markets with the post-liberalization entry of several Indian and
global players. For service providers, the pursuit of service quality is essential for

competitiveness and is gaining momentum. As a result, service quality has become an important
means of differentiation and is critical for achieving corporate success.
The challenge for todays organizations is not merely to reach the top, but to stay there. If that is
an organizations aim, its primary focus should be not merely to attract customers, but to obtain
their loyalty and, thus, their patronage, not only for the present, but also for the long term. This
loyalty, however, is the end result of an on-going, long-term relationship. Such relationships are
founded on an organizations ability to maintain and extend its relationships with customers.

Vodafone India - Enhancing Customer Experience

Vodafone India consciously works across three pillars Process, System and People to build
closer connect to customers. This enables Vodafone to understand their evolving needs better
and suitably address them with optimum products and solutions. Collectively, the 9800+ branded
retail stores welcome over 115 million customers and handle over 140mn transactions annually.
Process:

Fully Connected CRM: To connect with customers through any channel, location or
medium to fulfil their needs

Vodafone Red Box: A first-of-its kind, free of cost service that facilitates secure data
transfer from one mobile handset to another. This service is handset agnostic and is
popular for transferring important data including contacts, images, videos, apps etc. from
old handset to new handset.

24X7 assistance for customers to make bill payments or purchase recharge vouchers as
per their convenience at over 700 Self Service Kiosks

Customer Routing: An efficient token based system (industry first) which helps minimise
waiting time for customers in store

System:

Super-Fast Activation: Vodafone was the first in the industry to introduce Fastest
Activation of SIM card at the store in 2 hours time.

Smart Crew: for maximum fulfilment across counter

People:

Training & Skilling: Vodafone India is rated among the Top 20 Great Places to Work for
and is also No 1 in the telecommunications sector. Its retail business provides
employment to almost 15,000 people directly and indirectly, making it one of the largest
employers in the Indian retail sector.

Having made an early foray in the developing retail sector, Vodafone has made significant
contribution in raising the bar of the sector per se by skilling and training youth of the country. It
continues to invest over 1.5 million hours annually in further coaching and developing the talent
of its retail staff.

Conclusion Indian Scenario

The adoption of CRM solution in India still needs to be pushed in a big way as it offers various
opportunities to bring improvement in client experience. There are many companies that are
required to view CRM tool with the right frame of mind so that steps and initiatives can be taken.
Reasons for lack of effective usage of CRM tools in India among the smaller players or Small
and Medium Enterprises

Insufficient understanding of altering business processes into a more convenient and

usable system.
Costing of CRM solutions offered by market leaders.
Usage of CRM tool just as an address book.
Tracking of leads in spreadsheets.
Inability to devise effective follow up mechanisms to boost relationship with present
clients and potential customers both.
High expenditure on marketing initiatives

Analysts feel that a good CRM solution has the potential to save approximately 15% of the
overall sales and marketing costs, boost sales figure by 5%, client loyalty by 30% and also help
in the retention of customers by about 15%. If these figures are achievable by using CRM
solution, then profitability of any company will automatically go up.

References
https://telecomtalk.info/vodafone-is-now-one-of-indias-largest-retailers-with-over-9800-retailstores/142164/
http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News-Analysis/CRM-in-the-age-of-the-customer88481.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management
http://www.cscjournals.org/manuscript/Journals/IJBRM/Volume2/Issue3/IJBRM-50.pdf