The company has also set up a toll-free call centre at its Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi branch offices to ensure prompt and least-cost service to customers. ``Over the past one year we have connected all our dealers, contractors, branch offices and the manufacturing facility with the help of national networking through IT and VSAT,'' says Voltas' vice-president, air-conditioning business group, R Srinivasan.

The total cost of the initiative to connect the company's 260 dealers and 300 contractors to thebranch offices and the factory is close to Rs 1.5 crore, according to company sources.

The recently-introduced toll-free call centers will be extended to the company's 11 branch offices and six area offices within the next two months inform company sources. Once this is accomplished, the company will embark on a mass media blitz to hard sell its `fresh from the gym' service muscle.The company is now working on the principle that to enhance customer satisfaction it will need to constantly try to reduce the average response time of the after-sales service team to consumer complaints. ``Our internal target requires us to respond within three hours of a consumer complaint being registered,'' says a Voltas dealer based in Mumbai.

Voltas has spent most of the last one year working on the human facet of the new IT-enabled initiative. Under this, the company has been busy gearing up its sales and front-line managerial staff by imparting training on areas like negotiation skills, customer management, customersatisfaction, commercial and legal aspects, counselling and front-office management.Voltas dealers and sub-contractors too have been given intensive training in areas like call handling, consumer satisfaction and relationship building. The total number of dealer training man-days per year has gone up to 1.56 during 1998-99 from 1.22 in 1997-98, according to company sources.

In an internal study, the consumer satisfaction index computed for 1999 exhibited a mean score of 4.95 points as against 4.52 points in 1997, where a score of 6.0 points indicates maximum satisfaction. Lending credibility to the exercise are the results of a validation study conducted by RK Swamy BBDO's research agency.

According to this, the company scores a mean score of 4.9 in 1999 as against 4.47 in 1997 on the various factors that go into determining consumer satisfaction viz, company involvement in the pre-sales stage, planning, installation and execution, and the commitment to after-sales service and systemperformance.

Further as against the service revenue of Rs 73 crore reported during 1997-98, the company is hoping to notch up Rs 77 crore for 1998-99. Although Voltas had the first mover advantage insofar as the sheer numbers of its service network are concerned, the company had been steadily loosing market share to Blue Star and Carrier Aircon.

Besides focussing on customer satisfaction for the last two years, Voltas was also forced to launch a range of 44 new products last summer and focus on increasing efficiency by shedding weight across the organisation.