Acer to brace up service-support network

BANGALORE:Aiming at a substantial share for notebooks market in India, Acer is now concentrating on establishing a strong service network across the country and has also launched an India toll-free number a few months back. Sudipto Ghosh, general manager (Customer Support), Acer India believes service is an enabler of business and promises more support from the Taiwan hardware manufacturer. He is responsible for establishing and developing an extremely strong support network and making support an important key enabler of Acer's business growth. In an exclusive chat with R Jai Krishna of CyberMedia News, Ghosh revealed the company’s plans to expand and strengthen its service network in the country, which according to him will be the important key enabler of Acer’s business growth in the country.

What is the rationale behind Acer India strengthening its support and service network?

The notebook sales in India have grown tremendously, and it necessitates that service levels are high from the company’s side. Acer India sees the key differentiator as the middleware, where support plays the major differentiating factor. This combined with the high volume of notebooks in the Indian market has made it essential for us to expand and strengthen our service/support network across the country. We believe that the support network will now help the user properly, as most customers are knowledgeable about the product. Acer strongly believes that service will act as an enable of business, both from the customers’ perspective as well as the company. Moreover, in India revenues tend to go high when you have a good service/ support network.

What are the initiatives that Acer India has taken for strengthening the service network?

Acer India has launched a toll-free customer care number, which will be operational six-days a week from 9 am to 6 pm. At this centre, which we have outsourced to a company in Okhla, New Delhi; we have trained the personnel on technology, soft skills and warranty validation. We want to feel the pain of the customer, when he feels it, and this resulted in the toll-free call centre, as in other means of service delivery, it will be too late for the company to understand the need of the customer.

We will shortly launch an exclusive Repair and Replacement Center at Whitefield, near Bangalore. One of our vendors will be establishing the centre on an outsourced model for Acer India. With the RRC center in place, we will be able to cut-down the turn-around time for replacements and other components. Till now, the replacements for the Asia Pacific Region is done out of our headquarters in Taiwan and with this we tend to cut down on transit costs also.

Apart from these two initiatives, we will also be expanding our service network to 300 cities by year-end from the current strength of 175 cities, thus making a footprint of authorized service partners of Acer India.

What will be the key differentiating factor as for the service/ support network?

We have put in place an integrated approach towards the service network. At the contact center, we have established an auto-monitoring system, based on the CRM platform, which will capture the problem a customer may be facing. We intend to solve the problems, then and there, when the customer calls. In case, the customer has to walk-in to the nearest service/ support centre, the input data in the CRM platform is sent to the concerned network partner, to enable them to be reactive and solve the problem as quickly as possible. We believe that this system not only increases the efficiency of the support network but also makes the customers happy, as they will not have to wait for a long time at the service centre.

© CyberMedia News