Page 93 - DMGT510_SERVICES_MARKETING

Services Marketing

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SOCLEENS – Seeking to Exploit the Customer Asset Base
Case Study
ocleens Utilities Ltd – part of ADAE Group – provides its approximately 70,000,000
customers in five bustling Indian states with electricity, gas, water, and heating.
SSocleens operates 32 branch offices in order to be physically close to customers scattered
in their municipalities. With the 2000 deregulation of the Indian utilities market, utility
providers suddenly realized that they had little knowledge about their customer base. Socleens
situation was no different; however, Socleens moved quickly on a CRM implementation,
understanding the importance of customers and the necessity to keep them loyal.
The deregulation of the market meant that Indian households could now choose providers.
Facing competition, India’s utility providers had to rethink business processes and redefine
the way they dealt with customers. Socleens, one of India’s largest regional power suppliers
operating in the North of the country, was facing these issues when it decided to implement
a CRM system. Socleens had to undergo major changes to shift its business model from a
public sector monopoly to a customer-centric player in a competitive market.

Preparing for the new system, Socleens reviewed and documented its internal workflow
and business processes. Key elements of the new system went live after only five months
of implementation work, thanks to Socleens thorough pre-implementation review process.
Socleens created a new Service Centre providing its private customers with around-the-
clock service by having them dial one central phone number. The key to Socleens’ successful
CRM system is the integration into its mainframe billing system.
Key Business Challenges

Socleens billing and services were centred on the electricity and gas meter and not on the
actual person or household receiving electricity or gas via that meter. For example, if a
person’s residence and vacation home both received electricity, Socleens system was unable
to connect the two meters to one customer profile. Furthermore, Socleens had no way of
tracking customers that moved because it had focused both its services and data on the
meter that would remain in the apartment or building.
Additionally, Socleens could not track customer inquiries centrally and had no way of
linking its 32 branch offices, which provided field and customer service. As a result,
customers had to call a local branch office to request meter readings, inquire about bills,
and report outages and emergencies. Socleens felt that it could provide its private customers
with better service by streamlining its customer service and providing customers with
one central phone number for all inquiries regardless of a customer’s location.
CRM Solution Approach
Socleens first purchased an application that provided professional and call-centre solutions.
Implementation of a three-tier service model was spearheaded in the first phase by a call
centre with escalation functionality for 24x7 service and emergency requests such as gas
leakage and a power outage. It took two months for Socleens to understand and define its
business processes. It then mapped out all business processes and before it went on to
develop and implement a system that allowed integration with its existing applications.
In the first phase, Socleens focused on getting a basic system operational while analyzing,
redesigning and mapping communications structures and business processes to meet the
basic demands of a customer-centric business, and optimizing the contact staff’s workload.
Subsequently, Socleens developed a central database of its customers and using customer-
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