When Monica Guha, a non-resident Indian, had to select a mobile operator for her mother in India, she got the work done by one of her close friends here instead of personally surfing the websites of the operators to compare their offerings.
But when she wanted her own connection in India, she decided to browse the websites of all major operators to choose a service provider and a handset. ?While choosing my service provider and the handset, I thought I should try to find out the best offer,? she remembers. The result: she clicked through the websites of all the major operators and found there was plenty of information but not much that was user-friendly.
Many people like Guha feel telcos need to have a section for first-time users. ?None of them has it. BSNL has a FAQ section, which addresses some of the issues that first-time users may face. But the information is certainly not exhaustive and attractive?plenty of texts with no graphics,? she states. Though Airtel?s FAQ section is better organised than Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the former does not have any recommendations on the kind of handset a first time user should buy. So she ultimately made her choice using ?fuzzy? logic?word of mouth, brand image and advice from the local mobile retailer.
Why don?t mobile operators in India put up exhaustive and user-friendly websites? Is it because India has less than 50 million internet users? But then, look at the rapidly expanding mobile-telephony subscriber base. Shouldn?t that be a driver? After all, the Indian market has crossed 300 million subscriber base with an overall teledensity of 25.11 %, and has positioned itself as the second largest telecom market in the world, after China.
To be fair to Indian telecom operators, in recent times, they have made a sustained effort on their part to make their websites attractive with more graphics and less text (especially Virgin and Vodafone).
Initiatives to create a storehouse of information and helpful things like the tariff calculator available on Airtel, BSNL, and Tata Teleservices sites have also been aded.
?Indian telcos? websites have improved a lot,? agrees Kasturi Bhattacharjee, associate director, PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC). However, they are focused on selling value added services like ringtones and other entertainment products. ?In other countries, telcos? websites have matured enough to be a revenue generator. Many a time, you see them advertising products with which they have bundled their services,? she says.
Tata Teleservices for one, has recently revamped its website. Along with the new look and feel, it has come up with personalised billing details. It also features a CDMA phone comparison chart, which provides telecom users a comparative view of the features of different phones offered by the operator. Virgin Mobile?s Indian website has a ?GYAAN? section. A first-time user would find this section attractive, since it provides a user guide to different functions of a handset.
Though tariff calculator is a must, according to a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) regulation, operators like Vodafone still don?t have the facility. The tariff calculator available on some of the operators site like Airtel or BSNL, is not interactive for the customers. It is the operator who decides the usage (talk time) inputs on behalf of the customers to find out the monthly bill.
A senior analyst with Springboard Research, Ravi Shekhar Pandey, thinks that all operator websites would do well if they have some customer friendly tools. ?Something like a spend analysis tool (for instance, it would surely help a user if he can keep tab of his telephone expenses on a weekly or monthly basis) or information on handsets (that can help users buy what is best for them).
Abdul Khan, head of marketing at Tata Teleservices, says that the tariff calculator and spend analysis tool helps customers keep tabs on their expenses. ?The ultimate tariff calculator will customise to suit the subscriber?s budget. But this means going beyond the company-fixed tariff structure,? says Khan.
A senior executive of a leading telecom operator, who did not wish to be named, says, ?We have to make our websites more customer-interactive and friendly. We have started realising that an informative website has less to do with additional cost and more to do with better customer service and getting new customers.? For the operators, the pull factor for a more informative website is the need to lower operational costs and open alternative channels of sale, says the senior executive. ?It has to become a part of our core operation,? he says.
Amitava Maulik, chief scientist of the US-based telecom revenue assurance and management company Connectiva, thinks that the Indian operators? websites have to catch up in terms of offering dynamic information. ?The websites don?t have bill analysis and comparison of rate plans. The presence of these tools would help a consumer, say to compare the annual spending based on a rate plan with other rate plans,? says Maulik.
If a telecom operator has a well-rounded information site, fewer people have to visit company stores and the company has to deploy fewer customer service executives to attend to telephone queries. Khan believes that the website is part of the core business for Tata Teleservices. The company has to engage specialists to upgrade the content according to the subscribers needs and requirement and also have to make an effort to use website as a tool for marketing and customer retention. ?For us, a website is a combination of business interface and consumer-connect point,? says Khan.
Most of the operators outsource the hosting and maintenance part but the planning and content generation is done in-house. For the telecom companies, an information loaded website would be one of the cheapest channels to catch new consumers and an efficient tool to stop churning.
Girish Trivedi, deputy director of ICT Practice for Frost & Sullivan in South Asia and Middle East, says the look and feel, navigation, usability and the like have increased by leaps and bounds over the last 18 months. Operators like Vodafone have replicated their global practices, and most of them are already in an advanced stage of making websites an integrated part of brand strategy. To attract customers for all its services, some of the operators with multiple services (fixed, broadband and mobile) are offering users a single window approach on the website where they can monitor all services they have subscribed to.
?Specific web-portals for broadband users offering services like chat, email etc are also being created,? Trivedi says. He agrees that operators were initially slow, but over the past two-three years, they have devised initiatives to update, maintain and develop user-friendly websites.
They have improved their websites to offer services like account information, usage history etc, including online bill payment facilities on their websites using credit and debit cards. A user can now add/delete services and change bill plans online. Despite all these efforts by the operators, a few areas where the Indian telecom websites have to make substantial improvements are the creation of local language sites, information regarding tariff and quality of services, customer grievances redressal and making the sites more ecommerce friendly. Out of 250 million of mobile users, a large number of subscribers will be comfortable to surf the pages having local language content, which many operators except BSNL are not addressing.
Trivedi also feels most websites are merely seen as a source of information and not for any transactions. ?This can also be due to low awareness. Also, users might not be willing to use it for transactions due to security concerns on web transactions,? he says.
On the tariff front, Pandey of Springboard Research thinks even though most of the operators have tariff-related information on their websites, it is still very difficult for a user to understand the implications of a particular tariff plan. ?More transparency is needed on this front. Nothing would be more appropriate than using the website to provide tariff information in a way that makes everything very clear to a user,? says Pandey.
When it comes to looking at websites as a tool to address customer grievances, state-owned BSNL and MTNL fare better since these websites have directory of their senior officers. The telecom websites are silent on the quality of service they provide. Except for few maps to show the network presence, mobile operators in India are not comfortable in revealing the quality of service audited by third parties like Trai.
Perhaps, Virgin is the only exception. It refers to Trai?s quarterly survey regarding Tata Teleservices mobile network performance. But it is dated?March 2007.
