Spotlight

Servion: managing customer interaction

The company’s contact optimisation model helps organisations optimise and enhance their customer response mechanism, says Vinutha V.

Channels such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response), e-mail and fax are opening up as means to serve customers better. The interface management between customers and the multi-channels in order to offer better customer satisfaction is a challenge. A rising customer base, complexity of services, exploding customer contacts and technology obsolescence are some of the reasons for the gap between what is and what should be. This situation has given rise to Customer Interaction Management CIM). CIM is a combination of hardware and software that integrates all interaction touch points—telephone, e-mail and the Web.

Contact Optimisation Model

Identifying the potential in managing customer interaction, Baskar Subramanian of Bell Labs decided to form Servion Inc in 1992 in the US and Servion Global Solutions in India in 1995. Initially, the focus of the company was to develop IVR applications for telecom equipment companies, but now the company has matured to offer end-to-end services in CIM. The experience garnered over a decade in CIM helped Servion put together a Contact Optimisation Model which helps organisations to optimise and enhance their customer response mechanism. In this way, Servion has been able to help its clients squeeze more out of their existing systems and infrastructure, reduce operating costs, increase revenue, and enhance customer satisfaction. This model helps them understand the gap that exists between an ideal state of ‘contact’ and what the real situation is. It helps create solutions to bridge that gap and improve customer service levels.

Servion offers solutions from application maintenance to consulting to R&D that encompass multi-media contact centres, computer telephony integration, self-service channels (such as IVR), speech recognition, outbound interactions in diallers, multi-media alert notifications, call-back managers, workforce management software, process management solutions and CRM. Based on a Frost & Sullivan study, the Indian addressable market for CIM is tagged at $50.5 million, and Servion believes that it is in a position to corner a substantial portion of this. The company has helped enterprises in verticals such as banking and finance, government, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, manufacturing, outsourced call centres, retail, telecom and transportation.

Competing in a fragmented market

"With India’s multilingual scenario, we foresee sophisticated customer interactions taking place, which is a huge opportunity for us" - G Shankaran Nair Senior Vice-President Servion Global Solutions

Typically, CIM is a niche market and vendors offering end-to-end solutions in this space are few. “Since it’s a fragmented market, we have to compete with vendors operating in different areas such as telephony and CRM, as well as global SIs. However, the trend is slowly changing as consolidation is taking place and the fragmented market is now turning towards a one-stop-solution for CIM,” says G Shankaran Nair, Senior Vice-president and Head, Marketing and Business Development, Servion Global Solutions. Initially the growth path was clear for Servion as it focussed on IVR and related applications. Then in January 2006 Servion acquired 5by5 Networks, a company that specialises in managing and routing telephone calls, e-mail, faxes, SMS and chat.

Most business from telecom and BFSI

For Servion, telecom and BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) are the verticals that generate the largest chunk of its business. Customers include Hutch, Reliance, Bharti, BSNL, HDFC, ICICI, Standard Chartered, Kotak, IDBI, Bank of India, Syndicate Bank and State Bank of India. About 30 percent of the revenue is being generated out of India, with the US as its biggest market, contributing as it does 35 percent. APAC, Middle East and Europe account for the rest.

Developing business by acquiring customers in verticals such as healthcare, travel, railways, hospitality and retail is on the company’s radar. “Even though the CIM market is in a formative stage, the services industry is opening up in India. The concept of generating a good customer experience is catching on. With India’s multilingual scenario, we foresee sophisticated customer interactions taking place, which is a huge opportunity for us,” observes Nair. Automotive and retail are coming up with different CIM requirements. Automotives are looking at direct customer interaction not only through dealers but also with end-customers. With the boom in retail, enterprises are looking at acquainting end-customers with their loyalty programmes and promotions. The BPO space—especially the voice part of it—is an important market for Servion. Adds Nair, “Since Western countries such as the US and Britain are setting up customer call-handling facilities in India, the market is pretty big as we generate revenue on a per-agent basis.”

Different strokes

Servion’s selling model is different for different geographies. The company’s game-plan for the new verticals is to have a direct sales force. In the APAC and Middle East regions it believes in generating business through partnerships. Even with the hurdles of language and the need for a different business approach, Servion aims to tap the Chinese and Japanese market. “Our decade-old domain expertise is helping us build strong capability in consulting. Through our R&D wing, we see a better opportunity in serving other CIM players such as Intervoice and Avaya, our strengths being our cross-platform capability and systems integration,” states Nair.

Servion achieved revenue of $12 million in fiscal 2004-05. Though the company has not audited its financial results for 2005-06, it expects a 40 percent growth in revenue. It has set a target of $50 million revenue in three years. From its existing employee strength of 360, Servion will grow to 400 by end-2006.