MARKETING STRATEGIES ADOPTED BY BSNL

MARKETING STRATEGIES ADOPTED BY BSNL

The BSNL – Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., is the largest telecom service provider of India offering the full range of communication service – basic land line, wireless mobile (CDMA), Leased line circuits, internet telephony etc. catering to various segments SOHO (Small Office Home Office), Corporate, Individuals, Business groups. In terms of the revenue yield it is found that 15% of the subscriber yields more than 85% of the revenue and this group when distilled further who result in a 5% of the customer population yielding 50-60% of the billing. In a competitive environment it is this group of customers who are most vulnerable to be turned away by the private operators (competitors). This article attempts to define the various relationship markets present in the segments.

DEFINING THE MARKETING MIX – 7Ps

The product is provision of communication service (Basic Telephony, mobile (CDMA, GSM) technologies, Dedicated leased circuits, Voice over IP, Internet services)
The price is based on the usage charges as per tariff apart from the installation cost. Discounts are offered to heavy callers.
The place of delivery is the customer premises /location.
The promotion very limited till recently. However now logos, brands names for different services, slogans (Connecting India) etc. have been coined. Very recently advertisement in the price media as well as television commercials has been released. (www.bsnl.co.in)
The people have a key role to play since it is a service sector. However this is the weakest link in the marketing mix since the monopoly attitudes have hardly changed at the ground level.
The process is another one of the neglected Ps. Lots of corrective processes has being provided for after the complaints by line up of escalations, meeting the senior officials. Yet the preventive / proactive processes are not sufficient/ (work – in – progress).
The physical evidence (being a service sector) depends on the maintenances of front end staff dealing with customer care, the office premises and facilities available there, toll free numbers, call centers.
The service can be classified as B2C even through some of the important user groups are business groups. To tackle the issues related to that segment B2B methodology can be followed.

CUSTOMER CARE AND SEGMENTATION

The company has identified the higher callers or those who make calls worth more than Rs.5,000/- per month as the high calling segments. This kind of segmentation purely based on the revenue yield alone results in a heterogeneous group of high calling individuals, companies, corporate with inter city presence. Neither has this group refined further for preferential differentiation nor any of the measures specified in the customer care specifically targeted towards this groups. Of course the system corrections undertaken would benefit the high callers as well. Hence apart from providing certain billing discounts or special meeting time the issues cannot be very clearly addressed.