The blueprint of telecommunication industry

(Backstage)

Service Encounters/Moments of truth in telecommunication

industry:

Types of Service
Encounters
 Remote Phone Face-to-Face
Encounters Encounters Encounters

It is a critical point of contact by which a customer will judge the quality of an organization. For
a telecommunication industry there are various points of contact for a customer with the
company. They are:

1. Customer care: When the customer faces some difficulties in terms of service provided or
need some help they call to customer care. The response given by the company has a lot
of impact.
2. Retail outlets: There is lots of retail outlets where customers go to get SIM, recharge etc
which becomes a touch point for the customers. There are several organized and
unorganized retail outlets in this segment. The type and quality of customer service the
retailers provide makes a sort of perception in the mind of customers.
3. Market research: When an employee goes for a market research he sometimes needs to
make the customers what the product is so while the employees do this type of research
along with it also creates brand awareness, brand recall also influences the consumer
sometimes.
4. Service calls: During service calls the service provider tries to influence the customers
with the attractive service plans, tariffs etc. The experience of delivery and interest in
products can sometimes be considered as a moment of truth

Pricing Strategy:
 The Indian Telecom story has caught everyone’s attention the world over. The
number of subscribers in India has crossed
the half a billion mark, next only to China 1.
Along with the subscribers, the number of The pricing in
operators in India has also increased. The the Indian
entry of new service providers, with MTS &
Uninor being the most recent and the operators’
mobile service
pursuit for a stronghold in the telecom market providers’
has led to tariff based price wars for attracting
industry evolved
new customers.
over three
Evolution of Pricing in the Indian
phases, with call
Telecom Industry
charges steadily
Indian service providers’ pricing evolved over three
falling through
phases. The first phase was an introduction phase,
from 1995 to 2000. The incoming and outgoing calls the phases
were priced around Rs 14/minute, which made the
service a luxury, attracting significant snob appeal. Eventually the outgoing call prices
dropped to Rs 9/ minute and incoming to Re 1/minute (towards the end of this phase),
attracting a greater segment of the population.

Thereafter, in the Growth phase which lasted from 2000-2005, the outgoing call rates dropped
to Rs 2/minute while the incoming calls became free of charge. Many new players entered the
market during this period, such as Reliance, which set new benchmarks for pricing. Following
an aggressive strategy to attract a huge customer base, Reliance forced other operators to
change their plans according to its offerings.

Interestingly, what followed is the maturity phase where Tata Docomo used the 1p/second
billing to gain entry into the crowded market. Tata Docomo’s strategy is reminiscent of
Reliance’s pricing strategy from the growth phase. The other operators reluctantly followed
suit and added per-second billing plans to their existing product portfolio. This is one of the
 reasons for the crowding seen in Airtel’s postpaid plans, among others, as it continues to offer
per-minute billing options also.

Price Plans
The biggest driver of growth in telecom industry is the development of pricing plans catering
to individual needs and requirements of people at the prices they are willing to pay. A plethora
of price plans are available today such as prepaid, postpaid, lifetime validity, Closed User
Groups, corporate plans or some combination of these. We will restrict our analysis to the
postpaid plans as they exhibit individual usage patterns and preferences, which govern the
prepaid and Closed User Group plans.

We consider the price plans of two service providers at the extreme ends of evolution, Airtel
& Tata Docomo. We analyze the prepaid plans of these two subscribers in Mumbai Circle for
product line structure, difference across products for different usages and then compare them
to international players AT&T and Verizon for positioning.

Employee role in service delivery:

Employees play a very important role in service delivery in telecom sector. One of the reasons
for selecting a particular service provider is customer service. The service does not involve
only solving technical issues but also involves talking properly and delivery of service in
minimum waiting time. Also the product till it reaches to customer has to deal with different
types and levels of employees in different terms like retailers, dealers, managers, customer
care etc.

Marketing Strategy in telecommunication Industry:

Telecommunication industry companies have the following characteristics: 

1. Intangible nature. Service is invisible. Services being purchased previously seen or touched,
hear and smell not to. The buyers can not touch this nature in order to reduce the uncertainty
caused; they must seek to sign or evidence of the quality of service. They will see the place,
personnel, equipment, communication materials, symbols and prices, etc., to determine the
quality of service. Therefore, the service provider's mission is "management of evidence", of
the intangible tangible. "and services are subject to the challenge of marketing is to ask them
to increase physical evidence. If we want to make our service fast and efficient corporate look,
we should try the following tools to make this tangible positioning strategy. 

2. Inseparability. Both production and consumption of services is generally the same time.
Because the customer was present when the service provided and customer interaction is a
feature of services marketing, both provider and customer service results are affected. 

3. Variability. Service of great variability because the service provided depends on who, when
and where available. For control of the quality of services can take two steps: first, investment
in staff and excellent selection training. The training of service providers, it appears the
customer can make the appropriate response to various situations, thus reducing the variability
of services, the second step, through customer suggestions and complaints systems, customer
surveys and contrast purchase customer satisfaction tracking to understand the situation. In
this way, the poor quality of service and can be detected out to be correct. 

4. Perishable nature. Service does not have to storability. Its production process itself is the
process of consumption, and thus easily lost. Because service companies have the above
characteristics, in the service of enterprises, Customer service quality is not the face of
stability and a more varied service providers, and service providers not only by the impact, but
also by "private" production process. and therefore the marketing services business requires
not only the traditional markets marketing, but also inserted two other marketing, the internal
marketing and interactive marketing. Internal marketing and interactive marketing constitute
the modern marketing - full marketing i.e. the focus of marketing is full of marketing.