WHITE PAPER SERIES - Reliance Communications

WHITE PAPER SERIES
Reliance Toll Free Services

INDEX
Executive Summary Page 3
Till today you needed to Page 4
Existing scenario & general offering in market
Existing solutions Page 5
Product detail
Features, benefits, limitations
New remedy for new needs Page 6
Product brief
How it adds value to existing infrastructure/
helps in changing scenarios
Solution details Page 7
Product in detail
Challenges it may face in implementation
RCOM role & support
Business Benefits Page 10
Summary Page 11
About RCOM Page 11
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY & EXISITING SCENARIO
There is no level playing field. Success belongs to
those who carve an edge for themselves. An edge
created through innovation, operational excellence,
cost leadership, effective communication or a
delightful customer experience. Reliance Toll Free
Service (RTFS) can contribute significantly towards
creation of this edge with a holistic package of
path-breaking features and benefits. This
document details out the evolution of the service in
last couple of years, the service architecture, the
intelligent features that it offers and the application
of these features to specific business needs to get
maximum benefits. The document will be a useful
reference for all the marketers and the customerservice
professionals who are planning to attract a
sizeable audience.
Till today you needed to….
The teledensitiy in India is showing a monthly
growth rate of about 3.7%. With more than 545
million telephone subscribers, majority of them on
mobiles, every segmentation approach of
marketing in India just cannot overlook this specific
target; the size of which is continuously increasing.
Is your organization equipped to attract a sizeable
share of this segment? Sure, there are websites
and certain percentage of this segment can
probably reach the “URL” through intelligent
search options on the internet. However, the
number of PC and internet users in India are far
less than those with a phone; and these being
mutually inclusive, phone users is obviously the
more logical target segment.
All said and done, making a phone call is far easier
and user-friendly than searching the internet. More
so, if the call is toll free.
The word “toll” has a reference to the caller, hence,
in this context, a toll free call is “free of toll” call to
the caller.
Being a reverse charging mechanism, the charges
of the calls are borne by the subscriber of the toll
free service. This capability makes the service a
very powerful lead generation /marketing /
customer service tool.
The service, also called as 1800 number, is a
virtual number which is translated to a real phone
number on which the calls are answered. The toll
free number typically looks likes 1800 XYZ ABCD.
The calling person does not pay for the call made
on this number, the charges are borne by the
subscriber of the service. The 1860 number is
another service for which the caller pays for the
local call charges and the subscriber pays for the
STD leg of the call charges. The structure of this
number is 1860 XYZ ABCD.
Some learning from the history
Later part of the last decade provided an excellent
market environment in India for proliferation of this
service. This was the time when liberalization
benefits were being felt by the consumers, and
India as a country moved from license raj to the
open market policy. You had a choice for almost
everything – right from a two wheeler, a car, a
pizza, an airline, so on. The choices multiplied with
passing time.
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EXISTING SOLUTIONS
As the liberalization was impacting many areas, it
took a while before it actually hit the telecom
sector. Until then, the incumbents had the service,
but the same was never marketed. Most of the
subscribers of the toll free service were essentially
those MNCs who had understood and appreciated
the service benefits by availing the service in the
other parts of the world. With mobile services
getting launched, the concept of “Off-net” call was
introduced. A premium customer using a premium
handset and paying premium rates for calls
“incoming” to his mobile suddenly realized that he
cannot call a toll free number…
Consider a case where “A” is a phone subscriber of
service provider “X” and “B” is a toll free service
subscriber of service provider “Y”. For any call to
the toll free number from “A”, the service provider
“X” cannot bill “A” despite part of the network of
“X” getting used to complete the call. On the other
hand, service provider “Y” gets the revenue from
the subscriber of the Toll Free service.
Product Details
It was only expected that the service would be
launched with limited accessibility. The telephone
users of the same service provider who is providing
the toll free service would be able to access the toll
free number. Thus, the available product was
essentially with “on-net”access and obviously had
the limited acceptance.
Features & Benefits
The basic feature was the reverse charging
capability i.e. the subscriber of the toll free number
pays for the call and not the caller. For the caller,
there are no charges.
The IN based features such routing of the calls on
the basis of the time or the originating location
were also used depending on the user needs.
Limitations
As a purely “on-net” service, the marketers could
not promote the number effectively. An average
caller shied away from attempting a call on this
number, especially if he had faced accessibility
issue in the past. Even those aware about this
limitation, would struggle to relate a particular toll
free number to a particular operator.
With more operators entering the market and with
more customers demanding toll free service, it was
essential to arrive at an interconnect agreement
across service providers. This was easier said than
done as there were no specific guidelines on the
same.
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NEW REMEDY FOR NEW NEEDS
With a lot of effort from service providers, a proper toll free service was launched in India which was
accessible from all types of phones (mobiles / landlines ) of all major operators. Reliance
Communications took a major lead in ensuring that a truly world-class toll free service is made available
to the market.
Over last few quarters, the toll free service has matured and thanks to few good ad-campaigns, the
prospects are not “shying away” from this number. It is well reported that some savvy consumers are
now regularly updating the data of all toll free numbers and circulating the same rapidly using orkuts and
facebooks of the internet world, among other ways and means.
How it adds value to existing infrastructure/ helps in changing scenarios?
Ease of recall
The sooner you avail a Toll Free number service to
reach out to your prospects, the more time and
opportunities you will have to publish the same.
The exacting competition out there further
emphasizes the recall – “READ & CALL” – value.
With so many distractions for the eye-share and
mind-share of your prospects, the least that can be
done is to quickly offer a toll free service for them
to contact you. Needless to say, almost every such
call is a “filtered” and “very-easily-convertible” lead
for you……
Measure the effectiveness of marketing
campaign
One of the key features of a toll-free number, also
known as 1800 number, is the ability to use it as a
dip-stick or to gauge the effectiveness of
marketing. Toll free number’s call history can tell us
things like how many customers called, where they
called from, and what time of day they called. One
can take this information and use it to create, edit,
and launch innovative and effective marketing
campaigns. For example, one can send out two
different direct mail marketing pieces, each
containing different offers and different toll-free
numbers. The responses obtained will provide
invaluable analysis of the marketing efforts. One
can find out which offer performs better, which
areas of the country express more interest in a
particular offer, and the times of day people
respond to the advertisement.
Value Adds of the service
Allow the prospects reach to you on phone
without any charges to them.
Give regional flavor to your callers….direct the
calls to agents speaking different languages
Direct the calls to different locations based on the
time of the call
Generate MIS – Time &Region wise distribution
of calling numbers, area wise effectiveness of the
campaigns as explained earlier.
The service is enabled by using an Intelligent
Network (IN) platform which is a high end switch
that stores, retrieves and acts upon specific
information about behavior of call termination. The
IN platform enables the product with some unique
features that make this service a desirable tool for
every marketer.
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SOLUTION DETAILS
Some of the features mentioned above are explained here with the help of simple schematics
for better understanding:
Origin Dependent Routing
This feature enable the calls on the toll free number get terminated on different destination
numbers based on the location of the caller. The destination number could be anywhere in
India.
Time Dependent Routing
This feature enable the calls on the toll free number get terminated on different destination
numbers based on the time of the call. The destination number could be anywhere in India.
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SOLUTION DETAILS
Load Balancing
This feature enable the load calls on the toll free number get distributed among different
destination numbers. The destination numbers could be anywhere in India.
Call Distribution Call Centre A:B::70:30
Black, White and Grey Listing
The specific phone numbers can be blocked the access to the toll free number. Alternatively,
only specific phone numbers can be allowed to access the toll free number. A combination of
the two is also possible.
Number being independent of location
Toll free number does not change even if the call center location is shifted anywhere in India.
Single number across the nation
Because of this, a uniform communication is possible and hence can give a much better recall
value to the toll free number.
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PROBABLE CHALLENGES
The service provider needs to have an Intelligent Network platform capable of supporting the
features mentioned above. An error-free reverse billing capability should be available in the
billing system. Above all, the service provider has to have the necessary agreements with other
service providers for accessibility.
Since toll free is a virtual number, basic telephony service needs to be in place at the user’s
end. Because of the regulatory requirements, it is mandatory to have both, basic as well as toll
free service from the same service provider. Generally, the toll free number is mapped to a E1
PRI number to support multiple simultaneous calls; however, depending on the expected call
volume, the mapping can also be done on a set of fixed (wire line / wireless) or mobile phones.
Multiple phones are part of a single hunt group to support simultaneous calls. The call flow of a
Mumbai caller using non-Reliance phone to reach a Toll Free number of Reliance terminated in
Delhi is shown below:
Accessibility from all service providers can sometimes be a challenge as new service codes
(SCP codes) are getting added and new operators are also getting introduced in India. The
service provider must have the necessary resources to carry out the accessibility testing (codewise
and operator-wise) at regular intervals.
For the user, correct sizing of the set up is crucial. For effective campaigns, there could be a
sudden surge of calls on the toll free. It is the last thing to expect that the toll free number is
engaged. The user can also take the help of the load balancing feature available from the
service provider to manage this problem. Geographical and time based distribution of calls can
further help to overcome this challenge.
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RCOM SUPPORT IN DELIVERING TRUE BUSINESS BENEFITS
As a leader in this product segment, Reliance
Communications offers some unique features. The
Reliance Communications’ subscriber can
independently exercise the Route@ option of
changing the termination number of the toll free
service. E.g. if there is any emergency at primary
contact center location, the subscriber can quickly
change the routing of the toll free calls such that all
the call would then terminate on the secondary
location. The entire control of the routing change is
with the subscriber, thus enabling him complete
protection against unfortunate scenario of calls
remaining unanswered.
Reliance Communications also offers PIN based
authentication for the service so that only genuine
callers access the service. This is especially useful
for internal services such as on line trainings, audio
bridging etc. As a basic service provider, Reliance
can offer multiple options for destination number
such as PRI (Primary Rate Service), Direct
Exchange Lines in hunting, Fixed Wireless Phones
in hunting etc. Finally with Reliance expertise in the
Hosted Contact Center domain, the toll free service
is also capable of getting bundled with customized
IVR capabilities.
Business Benefits
Effective Target Marketing & Personalized
experience-As a marketer, a location independent
nation-wide-single-number can be made available
to the target segment. This number can be
accessed from any phone free of charges. The
calls can mature at different locations or on
different phones in the same location depending on
the originating telecom circle. E.g. a call originating
in Gujarat can be answered in Ahmadabad, a call
originating from Punjab can be answered in
Amritsar. Alternatively, the Gujarat and Punjab
calls can be answered by different persons
knowing the respective language and both the
agents could be in Mumbai. The caller will not know
about the physical location of the agent and the
language interface option will give him a highly
personalized call experience.
Manage you Opex-Organizations can reduce the
call center operation costs by intelligently routing
the calls to different cities depending on the time of
the call. E.g. during office hours, the calls could be
answered by highly professional ,expensive agents
in Mumbai, while other time, they could be
answered by not-so-expensive-agents at other
locations.
Decide who can call you-The toll free subscriber
can also choose to block certain phone numbers
from reaching the toll free number, can allow only
specific phone number to reach the toll free
number or can combine both these options. All
these options make the toll free service an
indispensible ingredient of the MARCOM tools of
any market facing organization.
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SUMMARY
While the use of toll free service is on the rise for last few quarters, there are multiple segments in the
market who are yet to acknowledge its full potential. Many subscribers implement this service as one of
the marketing initiative and can do much better by effectively deploying all the relevant features. It is
high time that the marketer categorizes this service as a “promotion budget” rather than “telecom
expenditure”. This change of outlook can open many more avenues of fresh opportunities in the
marketplace!
About Reliance Communications
Reliance Communications Limited founded by the late Shri Dhirubhai H. Ambani (1932-2002) is the flagship
company of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group currently has a
net worth in excess of Rs. 64,000 crore (US$ 13.6 billion), cash flows of Rs. 13,000 crore (US$ 2.8 billion), net profit
of Rs. 8,400 crore (US$ 1.8 billion).
Reliance Communications is India's foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider. The
Company, with a customer base of 105 million including over 2.5 million individual overseas retail customers and
nearly 3 million DTH customers, ranks among the Top 5 Telecom companies in the world by number of customers in
a single country. Reliance Communications corporate clientele includes 2,100 Indian and multinational corporations,
and over 800 global, regional and domestic carriers.
Reliance Communications has established a pan-India, next generation, integrated (wireless and wireline),
convergent (voice, data and video) digital network that is capable of supporting best-of-class services spanning the
entire communications value chain, covering over 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages. Reliance Communications
owns and operates the world's largest next generation IP enabled connectivity infrastructure, comprising over
190,000 route kilometers of fibre optic cable systems in India, USA, Europe, Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.
For further information please write to broadband@relianceada.com OR
Reliance Communications Limited, H Block, 1 st Floor, DAKC, Navi Mumbai 400710.
For further details visit us at www.rcom.co.in OR www.relianceglobalcom.com
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