Aircel partners with Akosha for Mobile Sewa Kendra

NEW DELHI: Telecom operator Aircel has partnered with Akosha, a mobile messaging platform for all consumer-to-business interactions, to launch Aircel Mobile Sewa Kendra, a mobile app that provides customer service solutions across segments.

It has been deployed across 2,000 retailers in rural areas and through the use of smart application of Akosha OneDirect suite to manage online interactions, Aircel has been able to significantly enhance customer experience and satisfaction across geographies in a span of just eight months, a relese said.

To achieve this, Aircel divided its subscriber base into three tiers, forming a pyramid. The upper two tiers represented premium customers, who have started to embrace social media to resolve issues while the third tier, one of the fastest growing segments, comprised customers from rural areas.

The two-fold challenge accepted by Aircel was first, to ensure that the prime customer segment received superior customer service across all channels including social media and second, to deliver a stellar customer service experience to the rural and semi-urban subscriber base, despite logistical barriers such as lack of on-ground customer support in most of these places.

Akosha and Aircel formed a Joint Action Team to address these issues. To cater to the premium customer segment, Akosha provided the requisite infrastructure to Aircel in the form of Akosha OneDirect suite so that the organisation could listen to all its customers, through social media platforms, 24x7 and empower itself with actionable customer data to achieve the desired customer-centricity.

On the other hand, to cater to the needs of the semi-urban and rural subscriber base, the Joint Action Team roped in neighbourhood corner shops and empowered the local retailers to help customers with their queries by using a smartphone. This led to the development of ‘Mobile Sewa Kendra’ -a mobile-based customer service app that became a game changer in this domain.

Vishrut Chalsani, VP, Enterprise Solutions and Co-founder, Akosha, said, “The rural subscribers of Aircel sought more personalised attention while the more net savvy customers from urban geographies demanded a quick and responsive social media management. Through an intelligent API integration of Akosha OneDirect with the Aircel internal CRM, we were able to achieve both goals. With the Mobile Sewa Kendra, Aircel and Akosha have been able to tremendously improve customer experience across segments such that our combined success has become a veritable case study for superb CRM, specific to the Indian context.”

Alok Kumar, Chief Service Delivery Officer, Aircel, said, “A highly effective customer-centric organization has to be tuned to serve its market in the best possible way. An ‘internet savvy’ customer needs a responsive social media management, while a customer in semi urban/rural area needs a personalized ‘high touch’ handling at the front end. We are glad to have got Akosha as our ‘Customer Experience’ partner, who have brought in their technology offerings, combined with a young, energetic and enthusiastic team, who were willing to learn and innovate with us, to deploy creative solutions for serving both these segments.”