Technology is not the means to an end

Call centers are increasingly reducing the direct human interaction. Going ahead, companies are looking at providing intelligent technology where one can talk to the machines.

The Indian market perspective on customer service has changed dramatically in past few years. Customers have become more demanding and enhanced customer service will be the norm of the day and it will be the main differentiator for a company, feels Shamsheer Ahmed, managing director, Genesys India.

In an exclusive interaction with Dheeksha Rabindra from CyberMedia News, Ahmed opines that technology is not the means to an end in providing better customer service, but just a front-runner.

What made Genesys enter Indian market?

We came to India when we thought that the market was ready. The entrance to India was due to two reasons: one is that we felt that the market was more manageable to the kind of capabilities and software we provide and second is Indian market to customer service perspective has changed dramatically. Customers are becoming more understanding and demanding and a lot has changed from past five years. Customer’s service is going to be a great differentiator for a company now.

Is technology a key factor in providing better customer service?

Just by implementing technology does not mean that we provide better service. To make customer service lot better involves three components: one is technology, second is internal processes related to the whole customer service strategy and of course the people who are in. All the three should come under right mix. There is also responsibility on vendors like us that we don’t pump in technology into market just for the sake of it. Technology should be the frontrunner. It is a key component but not ‘The Component’. The Indian market has experienced a shift in customer service.

What are the critical factors to meet customer’s demands? How has US slowdown affected Indian market?

The population in India is huge and India has a huge subscriber base. This is where they have to differentiate. Profiling customers and segmenting a customer is going to be very critical for a company. Another challenge is the system should recognize a particular customer when contacted through different mediums like mail, mobile, landline, SMS, etc. That’s where most companies fails.

Rather than being company centric, companies have to become customer centric. Being customer centric is going to be the mantra in India. Further, with the US slowdown, it is an opportunity for Indian companies. Indian companies now know how important each customer is. Internet is a huge information domain and with click of a button one can move from company A to B just for price comparison and one will lose a customer.

What is the key strength of Genesys? Do you customize software according to various vertical requirements?

The software that we provide is open in nature and do not hook on to proprietary standards and this makes it amiable to the market in terms of connectivity, databases or front end application. The key strength of Genesys software is the software matrix and the technology we provide in market is vendor agnostic. It’s a huge value add for lot of companies.

We bring capability around self-service and we have also partnered with some of the speech recognition vendors. We feel that speech is going to become significant component of self-service kind of interaction. Technology enables one to converse with computer and given the huge Diaspora of India and multiple languages there is huge market for speech recognition. Genesys software is able to support variety of software and environment. Customization in historical sense is depleting.

Can you talk about your plans for India and go to market strategy?

Genesys operates on indirect market. We go through partners and System Integrators. Since this is the fourth year we are looking at double-digit growth in India and we are also looking at expanding and making varied investments in India. 2008-10 will be defining years for us for reasons like – penetrating into new verticals, working with existing customers, new capabilities that we are ready to market. India is one of the key markets for Genesys apart from Brazil, Russia.

There is huge opportunity in verticals like Retail, Airline, Healthcare, Education, Hospitality. We will focus on sales, new verticals and domestic market. We have to get the volume to survive in India. Customer service is provided through various mediums like SMS, web chat, call, etc. What are the future trends to enhance customer service? Voice is going to be predominant. People in India are in favor of multimedia interaction. Further multimedia interaction is something that’s going to take off in India.

Another trend is seen across the segments in Europe and US is Business Process Routing (BPR). BPR provides software solution, which helps bridge the gap between a transaction taken place between Call Center (front end) and Back Office. Essentially, BPR walks through the whole life cycle of the program from start to finish. BPR targets the BFSI vertical. In India we haven’t launched this. Right now we are not focusing on this. BPR is going be next trend in India. It also depend on the organization too, how matured are they to adopt this.