Indian Oil automates LPG booking and delivery with Idea IVRS

MUMBAI, INDIA: Idea Cellular and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) have entered into a long-term agreement for servicing over 82 million LPG consumers of ‘Indane'.

As part of the agreement, Idea will extend its ‘Smart Gas Solution' service to enable end-to-end automation on refill delivery process of IOCL. The process starts from initiating booking request, billing, etc and ends with delivery of LPG cylinder with regular updates to consumers, across the country.

Covering over 82 million consumers and over 7,000 distributors delivering more than 1.5 million LPG cylinders everyday, Idea's ‘Smart Gas Solution' service agreement with IOCL, for a period of two years, is one of the largest IVR Deployment by a telecom operator, in recent times. The service allows Indane consumers to book LPG 24x7 and offers IVR and SMS based delivery status updates, without having to visit the distributor‘s outlet.

AN Jha, executive director (LPG), IOCL, said, "This has been one of the major e-governance projects for IOCL and has not only helped us enhance overall transparency in LPG cylinder booking and real-time reporting, helping better stocks and logistic management across country, but also faster problem resolution and better experience for the consumers."

Sashi Shankar, CMO, Idea Cellular, "Idea has always believed in offering simple telephony ideas to solve day-to-day problems. We understood the loop-holes in the Gas distribution system and offered a simple, yet, robust solution to IOCL to help them overcome the distribution challenges and provide convenience and satisfaction to their end consumers."

"We are happy to undertake one of the largest deployments of IVR across the world, involving automation of the complete business process of LPG booking till delivery. This is a major boost to our Enterprise business solution which is focussed on providing unique voice and data based Telecom Solutions to help large, medium and small enterprises to transform their businesses."

Presently, the service is launched in 45 cities and would be progressively rolled out across India in the next three months.

Following is the LPG booking process:

- Dial XXXXX24365 - Select Language - Key in STD code and distributor's telephone number - Key in customer number - Press 1 to book refill - Press 1 to register mobile number - Or SMS IOCSTD code distributor's telephone numbercustomer number to XXXXX4365. On receiving confirmation, SMS IOC to XXXXX24365

The 5 digits of Idea IVR no. would differ from circle to circle.