Case Study: Telecom

Supporting scale and improving efficiency for a major telecom provider

Indian telco expedites billing preparation and reduces fraud during a rapid-growth phase

Overview

An India-based telecom provider originally engaged HGS to provide basic voice support with 200 agents. Over the years, the relationship expanded to 7,900 agents as well as into other strategic service areas, such as billing summaries, product usage increases, and process corrections. After realizing that major billing delays were due to excessive manual intervention, the client consented to using HGS’s applied automation expertise and technology to reduce bill generation turnaround time (TAT). HGS also increased usage of the client’s prepaid gift cards through self-serve channels. This resulted in higher revenue while creating a foolproof process to curtail the financial impact caused by the misuse of the faulty recharge, coupon fulfilment process.

6-dayreduction in billing preparation TAT

99.9%reduction in process-specific complaints

140Mvoice calls per year

Client background

This client is the world’s second largest mobile telecommunications company, with more than 275 million subscribers. Operations are located in 20 countries across South Asia, Africa, and the Channel Islands.

Business challenge

This client was growing rapidly and needed a partner that understood the market and could grow in parallel. Meanwhile, the client was experiencing issues and delays within certain processes that needed to be addressed to facilitate that growth. The client came to HGS with a vision and goal to make marked improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and product usage while providing high caliber customer service.

The solution

Scale to support growth

This was the client’s first major outsourcing decision on a pan-India scale. HGS started with 200 FTEs, which grew to more than 7,900 people handling approximately 140.5 million voice calls per year. To support the growth, HGS designed a system that catered to the client through a host of channels: inbound voice, outbound voice, back office, email, and premium voice. HGS also made significant investments in physical infrastructure and talent to support growing volumes.

Reduce bill summary preparation turnaround time (TAT)

HGS’s automation technology and expertise were applied to the bill generation process to reduce manual intervention required and facilitate a drop in the bill generation time. Reduced bill generation TATs contributed greatly to enhanced customer experience and, for the client, drove faster dispatch of bills and cost savings. From the end-customer’s perspective, quicker receipt of bills made it easier to plan bill payments.

Decrease customer complaints

This client’s advance talk time/gifting service is offered to customers when their main account balances are exhausted. Customers can dial a self-help number and request a loan, allowing them to use the services and pay back the next day. A majority of the prepaid subscribers in India are from rural areas, with less infrastructure and experience with these services. For this reason, customers were unable to avail the services using USSD and SMS.

On day-to-day calls, agents found that most customers preferred to use IVR-based self-care. The IVR allows customers to make their selections in the regional language they prefer. Moving the product interface to IVR also helped increase product use and revenue while reducing the number of customers calling and the number of repeat calls for product queries and service. The IVR made it easier for customers by presenting them with all the options required at their fingertips and reduced product usage-related customer complaints by 16%.

Reduce prepaid card fraud

Prepaid customers can visit any dealer/retailer/relationship center and request a refill for prepaid accounts. The refill happens in multiple ways: through LAPU (mobile-to-mobile transaction), physical recharge, and online.

The physical recharge cards require the customer to scratch the card to reveal a 16-digit secret access code. However, because these cards were made of cardboard, they were easily subjected to damage when scratched, and often the numbers would be removed. These customers then called in to have an agent verify the serial number and check the denomination and status of the card. Based on the agent’s authentication, customers were able to access the desired amount in their account.

Although agents could verify these cards, they could not block the card from further misuse. HGS observed a sudden spurt in such cases reported and after analyzing the data, the team found that some customers were repeatedly contacting us and using the same recharge card multiple times. Consequently, we redirected these customers back to the dealer to hand over the physical card for replacement, thus avoiding the misuse of cards. The number of customer complaints on the faulty recharge card fulfillment process was reduced to 40 from the initial 38,000, which is a 99.9% reduction.

Results

The client trusted HGS with multiple levels of brand support and with achieving crucial goals such as process correction and boosting product use while also improving customer experience.

6-dayreduction in bill summary preparation TAT

140M voice calls per year

40Xgrowth in contact center size
to support growth in customers

99.9%reduction in process-specific complaints

16% reduction in product-related complaints

Reduction in live calls due to strategic usage of a self-serve IVR

Leader in Nelson Hall’s Customer Management Services for Telecommunications, Cable, and Satellite ranking

Global locations

USA • UK • Canada • UAE • India • Philippines • Jamaica