Published on August 26, 2021
Tata Pravesh, a portfolio of Tata Steel, offers a complete range of home solutions, from steel doors to windows. For the vertical, Tata Steel has been developing its three key levers — people, process, and technology, to create a consumer experience that surpasses their expectations. Towards this endeavour, the steel major reached out to Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) for guidance, which suggested that the former interact with Voltas to understand more about the latter's service network management and customer service-related practices.
Tata Pravesh wanted to know more about the following concepts from Voltas:
- Call centre automation
- Channel/network model for service
- Return on Investment (ROI) for the service partner
- Transforming from a cost to a profit centre
- Capability development of field installers/technicians
- Spare part/accessory hub management
- Reverse logistics and defective handling methods
- Coping with the pandemic
- KRAs and KPIs
- Service workforce
Subsequently, TBExG facilitated interaction between the two companies in September 2020. The session saw Girish Shah, UPBG - Customer Service Head, Voltas (Retail Business), sharing details about the company’s practices around service network management with a team from Tata Pravesh. During the session, the Voltas team elaborated on the following:
- Mission and philosophy
- Customer satisfaction model
- Empowering the front-line workers
- Mindset and culture change with technology adoption
- Customer satisfaction initiatives across direct customers
- Management of key accounts, dealers and service franchisees
- 10 cube NPS
- Customer-connect initiatives
- Skill enhancement and training
- Mobile-training platforms
- Cost-savings
- Spare-parts management
- Call-centre management for service
- Safety procedure for partners
- Field-service personnel capability development
- Training through the use of mobile applications
- Other best practices at site
The team from Tata Pravesh found the sessions extremely useful. They decided to evaluate the adoption of some aspects from discussion into their business processes:
- Capability development: Due to restricted field movement, Digital LMS (Learning Management Systems) have been piloted and is under horizontal deployment now.
- Predictive escalation management: Establishing the required reminder systems to alert the respective teams on potential escalations through CRM.
- Service buddy programme: Identify and develop a technical, go-to person in crucial markets for immediate support on customer escalations and quality-related issues.
- Moment of Truth: To capture customer feedback after installation through a 'Happy Code' (OTP-like code to be collected from the customer).
The adoption of the above processes has helped in measuring the quality of customer service. The Tata Pravesh team has subsequently improved its Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 30 points in FY22 after implementing Voltas' best practices.
Participant Speak
Being a part of the Tata Group, we have the unique advantage of being able to leverage the immense knowledge that resides within the ranks. It is particularly critical for us at services and solutions since we are a new division and need to be consumer-centric with service orientation. Having just set out on our journey towards business excellence, the pace of this journey could be accelerated by adopting and building on the best practices prevalent in organisations such as Voltas, which are significantly service-oriented. This interaction, which has acquainted us with Voltas' philosophy of customer ownership, would shape our future initiatives. I thank TBExG for their vital role in driving new businesses towards the path of excellence.
P Anand, Chief Commercial Officer - Long Products Business and Chief Services and Solutions Business at Tata SteelAs a new business, Tata Pravesh is grappling with the evolution of its customer experience initiatives. Technology is becoming essential for customer interactions. Binding our people and processes for a seamless service delivery mandates the successful adoption of technology. Voltas has provided us with valuable guidance in adopting some key processes to enhance our service delivery. It will help us to achieve our objective of ensuring a customer experience beyond their expectations. We are grateful to TBExG for facilitating this interaction with an entity that has successfully sharpened its processes by adopting technology for customer outreach.
N Nagaraj, Lead - Consumer Experience, Tata Pravesh