Acer to expand support to 600 Indian cities

BANGALORE, INDIA: Understanding the increasing need of quick service and support for both businesses and individuals, PC companies are ramping up their offerings. While Dell recently opened its first customer services store, Acer is all set to cover around 600 Indian cities with the offerings.

The Taiwanese vendor plans to open 150 stores before the end of this year, and also introduce new services. It is also hoping to woo some of the government and educational deals, by boosting their nation-wide presence.

Speaking to CIOL, Sudipto Ghosh, chief customer support officer, Acer India, said that today support is a very important factor for customers.

“We consider technology, price and support as the three key benchmarks for this business. A lot of PC companies formulate their market strategies based on customer service support, as it plays a big role in customer retention. This is our endeavor to reach more and more customers, with all possible ways to further cut down the turnaround time,” he said.

According to Ghosh, a lot of government departments, especially in BFSI and education segment, prefer a company that can support them in all locations. Giving examples of Indian Bank, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh governments, he said, “We could get these project orders because of our wide-reach in those regions.

Acer today announced to open around 50 Acer Customer Service Center (ACSC) and more than a 100 Authorized Service Provider (ASP) stores. An ACSC is a franchisee service center. It is carry-in center where the customers can submit the faulty material. ASPs are the on-demand service providers, who get leads from the company to visit the site.

“When a customer calls up to our toll-free numbers, their address is forwarded to the nearest service provider who provides on-site service. Our centers will now remain open on Saturday and Sunday as well for the working customers,” he added.

Acer has tie-ups with two call-centers, namely RT Outsourcing and Team Computers, to provide assistance to the customers over the toll-free number provided by the company. While RT Outsourcing handle the notebook division, Team Computers answer to the desktops related queries.

In addition to the toll-free number, the company has plans to launch a chat and SMS service, where customer can chat with the technical representative of the company or even send an SMS, which will be again routed to the nearest ASP.

It has also launched an online docking system, where the customers can login anytime to check the status of their product.

Ghosh explained, “We have deployed CRM module – titled Clarify - provided by Amdocs to streamline the entire process. This will bring more transparency in the system, and help companies know about the status of their products, anytime. This will help the IT departments of companies in submitting performance reports to their company.