In 1994, as per the objectives laid down in the telecom policy, the Indian government liberalized the Telecom sector by allowing private sector participation for both basic and value-added services. Change in economic thinking coupled with lack of resources to upgrade and invest in infrastructure forced this policy change. As an initial and immediate result of privatization, the private players were given licenses to provide Cellular Services initially in four metro cities and subsequently, they were given licenses to operate in 19 cities apart from the four metros. As for the Basic Services, the government in the beginning, decided to adopt a duopoly strategy, by allowing only two players to operate in a telecom circle, of whom one is the private player other than the existing government owned service provider. Despite the government making several concentrated efforts through the Five-year plans, to provide good communication system to the people of the country, due to increasing population, non-accessibility to remote rural areas and non-availability of adequate resources, the national tele-density stood at 1.1 in 1995-96, which was far from the global average of 12 at the same period.

The change of government paved way for reforms in the sector and the New Telecom Policy (NTP) of 1999 was initiated to overcome the flaws in the telecom policy announced in 1994, and to go with the Supreme Court recommendations to allow unrestricted entry in the telecom sector. The primary objective of the NTP was to increase the national tele-density to 15 by the year 2010. This meant installation of 130 mn more lines at an estimated expenditure of about Rs.5000 bn from the year 2000 to 2010. This investment requirement could not have been met by DoT alone. In order to meet the investment targets, it was imperative that multiple players be allowed to compete in the market.

Entry of Private Players
During the monopoly service provider regime, where only one government owned telecom service provider existed, the market forces of demand and supply were controlled by the monopoly service provider. The demand was very high, not adequately matched by the supply of telephone lines. Telephones were not given on demand and people had to wait for a telephone connection for years. Reports reveal that the waiting time in the pre-privatisation era was more than a year, in some areas the waiting time was more than 5 years. Lack of adequate investments in capacity improvement and exchange automation also contributed to this long waiting time. Another factor that contributed to this was the huge demand for telephone service in a 100-crore populated country. For one telephone service provider to cater to the communications requirement of the entire country was an uphill task.

Subsequent to the announcement made in the NTP 1999, the government started issuing licenses to multiple private service providers to provide services in each telecom circle. The private service providers started their operations in the year 2000. Thus, the sector that was characterized by a monopoly market structure slowly moved into a competitive environment, with multiple players offering a variety of services. The competitive environment is also witnessing a change in the preference patterns of the consumers, which is evident from their acceptance of private products in the last four years. Thanks to privatisation, the telecom industry of India is now witnessing a gradual and steady shift from a monopoly market to a competitive market. The market witnesses multiple service providers, providing the basic as well as value-added services to the subscribers. Privatisation of the sector and the subsequent multiple entry of private service providers into the market, have made the state owned telecom players wake up to reality and realize the importance of satisfying a customer. BSNL and MTNL had lost 2 million fixed line subscribers as on December 2003, and the PSUs are pulling up their sleeves to fight the competition.

The industry is experiencing a transformation from being a monopoly market to a competitive market. When there is monopoly, the customers are left with no choice but to accept whatever is given by the monopoly service provider, but in a competitive environment, consumers can exert their preferences and the service providers need to map the consumer expectations and match them with their product and service delivery in order to sustain in the market. The market, now with private players and a competitive environment, has necessitated the re-structuring of the functions of players. With liberalization and subsequent demonopolisation in the telephone segment, the scene has changed. The competitive environment has stolen a big share of subscribers from DoT. With privatisation in the Indian Telecom industry, the most excited are the consumers, who are emerging as kings in the market, as is the case with any market in a competitive environment.

Need for CRM in Telecom Sector
The beneficiaries of the competition being consumers, the telecom players in today’s environment are required to design and deploy customer-centric strategies not only to grab a share in the market but also to sustain in the market in the long-run. The players have realized the importance of constant service-quality delivery to the customers for long-run sustainability. Customer relationship signifies identifying the needs of the customers and stretching out ways and means to satisfy them. To be precise, it means achieving high customer profitability—customer revenues over and above customer costs, which demands matching customer expectations with customer satisfaction. The high cost of customer acquisition is making today’s businesses understand the importance of retaining the customers for long-run sustainability.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) aims at narrowing the gap between the company and its customers. In Telecom Sector, CRM plays a vital role in not only bringing the customers close to the company, but also in identifying the changing behavioral pattern of the customers. In technology-dynamic markets like telecom, an efficient CRM system is essential, since the customer attrition is high due to the presence of close substitutes and near-zero switching costs. The book aims at throwing light on the CRM practices commonly followed in the telecom sector and their applicability to several aspects of the service delivery process.

Section I
Indian Telecom Industry: A Prospective View
This section consists of three articles that comprehensively cover the past, present and future of the Indian Telecom Industry. The first article, “Indian Telecom: Growth and Transition” is by N M Shanthi. The article presents a comprehensive note on the path of growth and trends and transitions in the Indian Telecommunication scenario. It provides a picture of the important events that transformed the Indian Telecom Sector dating from 1851 to 2004. It analyses the status of Indian telecom industry by providing vital figures and statistics on various economic indicators in the telecom segment—pre and post privatization. It provides an insight into the sector under five headings: Telephone Network, Teledensity, Village Telephones, Foreign Direct Investment and Role of Private Players. It also presents an overview on global telecom scenario and India's position.

The second article, “Seven Telecom Trends for 2005” is by Kushan Mitra. The article throws light on the growth prospects of the industry for the year 2005. The emphasis given to the value-added services as an important revenue earner for the service providers is also analysed in the article. It presents an analytical insight into the segments that will experience growth, like mobile telephony, mobile instruments, wire lines, WLL services & broadband. It also covers the trends in regulations and a note on state Access Deficit Charges (ADC) in 2005.

The last article in this section, “The Changing Phase of Indian Telecom Industry: What Lies Ahead” is by Krishna Chaitanya V and N Madhuri. The article maps out the future of Indian Telecom Industry. It provides an insight into the Indian telecom industry, in comparison with 13 countries around the world in terms of number of subscribers, in figures and graph. It also analyses the regulatory developments in the segment, the demand supply gap and also the competitive scenario in the industry. The future growth opportunities and challenges are discussed under separate headings. In the concluding remarks, the prospective picture of the Indian Telecom for the year 2010 is also analyzed.

Section II
CRM in Telecom: Concepts
The section covers the CRM concepts for Telecom Sector through 10 articles, which talk about the need and effectiveness of CRM in Telecom sector and also throws light on contemporary concepts like Churn Management.

The first article, “Successful CRM: Turning Customer Loyalty into Profitability” is by Bob Thomson. The article emphasizes the importance of CRM and effectiveness of CRM as a profitability booster. It also explains the most-valid considerations for CRM through a series of cases from the service industry in USA. It further analyses the causes for shortfalls in the CRM success and suggests a successful deployment option.

The next article, “Building Successful CRM” is by Prof. R K Gupta. The author suggests a customer-driven business model for CRM by iterating to think the model as a “Loyalty Machine”. The article throws light on 17 key issues governing customer loyalty.

The next article, “Customer Retention and Acquisition for Telecommunications” is by Michael Meltzer. The article explains as to why customer retention is more important than customer acquisition. The author states how billing acts as an essential part of CRM, how smarter acquisitions help in saving costs and how problems with pre-pay phones are solved through effectively managing the marketing mix.

The next article, “Essentials of a Good CRM Model for Telecom Industry” is by Prof. Sriram Rajan. The article examines the pointers for a good CRM Model and a CRM Model suiting the organizational and market requirements is also discussed in detail. It then moves on to study the present scenario of the mobile telephony in India, and also presents an overview on churn and reasons for churn in the telecom segment.

The next article, “CRM in Telecom: Best Practices in Action!” is by N Chandra Kumar. The article discusses the best practices adopted by leading vendors in the process of designing a CRM solution, addressing specific problems faced by the Telcos.

The next article, “Churn Management Solutions Key to Telecom Bottom Lines” is sourced from Express Computer. The article discusses the Churn management imperatives for Indian telcos. It presents a comparison between the churn rates in various countries in the Asia-Pacific. It explains the factors influencing churn and also the impact of churn on profitability motives of the telcos.

The next article, “Predictive Churn Management Solutions for Customer Retention in Telecom” is by N M Shanthi. The article presents an overview on the state of hyper-competition in the mobile segment that is leading to churn and need for CRM to control churn. It discusses the Impact of CRM and Churn management solutions on relationship management in Cellos. It recommends Predictive Churn Models to control Churn and a review on the success of the same when adopted by some telcos in India.

The next article, “The Changing Role of Billing” is by David Stark. The article deals with both vendor and customer perspective, discusses the impact of reorganization, specifically in telecom industry, in the context of billing and CRM. It also analyses the need for responding to customer demands and the challenges faced by the vendors while attempting the same.

The next article, “A Framework for Measuring Effectiveness of CRM” is by
Dr. K Elangchezhian and D Malmarugan. The article talks about two approaches for measuring the effectiveness of CRM- Planned and Event-driven approaches. It throws light on the quantitative methodology to be adopted for measuring effectiveness of CRM, by selecting internal metrics, and arriving at a regression model of best fit.

The last article in this section, “Status of CRM in India: Findings of a Survey of Service Firms” is by Dr. G Shainesh and Ramneesh Mohan. The article presents the results of a survey done on the status of CRM in four service industries in India: Finance, Hospitality IT and Telecom. The broad objectives of the survey were to determine the approach that is adopted by Indian Service Firms for Relationship marketing, focusing on the beliefs of managers of the service firms as regards the CRM methodologies adopted by their firms. The parameters like Quality Assurance, Customer-centric Business, Employee empowerment, Collection of customer Information are analyzed to understand the process of implementation of CRM among the different sectors.

Section III: Cases
The section pertains to successful application of CRM in the Telecom sector. It documents a total of 6 case studies, out of which three pertain to Telecom companies operating in India and three telcos from around the globe.