advanced info service case study

Oracle Customer Case Study

AIS Improves Client Service and Boosts Revenue with Proactive Customer Care

Copyright © 2006 Oracle. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Published October 2006

Advanced Info Service Public Company Ltd Bangkok, Thailand www.ais.co.th/eng

Industry: Communications

Annual Revenue: $2.4 billion

Employees: 5,500

Oracle Products & Services:

Siebel Communications for Mobile Carriers Siebel Partner Relationship Management Oracle Database Oracle Partitioning

“The benefits derived from Siebel Communications mark a significant milestone in AIS’s ongoing commitment to deliver superior services. The customer care project will put AIS in a strong competitive position to address the needs of the rapidly growing mobile communications market in Thailand.” – Arpattra Sringkarrinkul, Executive Vice President, Solutions, Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited

Established in 1990, Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS) is the largest cellular operator in Thailand with a 50% market share and almost twice as many customers as the number two operator. The market is characterized by high rates of churn and a tendency to compete on the basis of price, but the company believes technical and service superiority is the way ahead. AIS owns the country’s largest digital GSM network and was the first operator to offer GPRS services.

AIS implemented Siebel Communications for Mobile Carriers in 2002. Its sales and marketing staff previously relied on manual processes and disparate systems to manage customer interactions, which hindered information sharing between departments. The company also wanted to move to a proactive customer service model to improve service and reduce churn. Siebel Communications has allowed AIS to automate its call center and sales operations, standardize sales and service processes around a customer-centric strategy, and extend its services to new channels.

“The benefits derived from Siebel Communications mark a significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to deliver superior services,” said Arpattra Sringkarrinkul, executive vice president of solutions, Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited.

“We believe that sustainable competitive advantage and a source of long-term revenue will be built around strong customer relationships and the ability to leverage customer profiles for innovative marketing campaigns. The customer care project puts AIS in a strong position to address the needs of the rapidly growing mobile communications market in Thailand.”

http://www.ais.co.th/eng


Key Benefits: Improved data accuracy and currency by installing solution that manages, synchronizes, and coordinates sales, marketing, and customer service across all communications channels and points of customer contact

Reduced churn through proactive customer service, whereby staff can offer products and services tailored to the needs of individual customers

Increased productivity by eliminating manual processes, streamlining workflows, and automating certain tasks

Cut problem-resolution time by establishing service level agreements, ensuring alerts are sent when service requests are overdue

Regulated dealer management and performance assessment by allowing staff to monitor and manage dealers according to their profiles

Proactive Service Addresses Customer Churn and Drives Growth AIS’s vision is to create an emotional attachment with its customers because customer loyalty cannot be won simply with technology or pricing strategies in highly competitive markets such as mobile communications. The company has responded to market dynamics with a strategy to differentiate itself by repeatedly providing its customers with exceptional experiences and offering unique services that match their lifestyles.

Realizing that proactive customer service was key to expanding its market share, AIS launched a customer relationship management (CRM) program in 1999. At the core of that program was a customer care project called CCare. Before CCare, AIS was transaction focused and did not capture customer information, let alone share it consistently across all departments. Besides broken and ineffective customer service processes, the company also lacked the ability to analyze customer behavior and market trends. Now, with the CRM system in place, AIS is able to coordinate and roll out customer-focused processes across the organization, track changes in customer behavior, provide value-based service, and come to market more effectively with segment-driven offers and packages.

CRM is used in every aspect of the customer lifecycle at AIS. Over 4,000 people now use Siebel Communications for Mobile Carriers, an industry-specific version of Siebel eBusiness Applications that enables wireless service providers to manage, synchronize, and coordinate sales, marketing, and customer service across all communications channels and points of customer contact.

The Siebel solution encompasses all customer contact channels, including call centers, branch offices, retail outlets, dealers, and AIS’s Web site. Customer information and details of all interactions for AIS’s over 16 million prepaid and postpaid subscribers are stored in a single database, ensuring data is accurate and up to date. Giving staff access to a single, comprehensive source of customer information helped AIS streamline its sales and service processes, facilitated informed decision-making, and improved productivity. Manual processes have been replaced by automatic escalation that sees issues referred to a more skilled person if not quickly resolved.



As a result, AIS customers experienced improved response times to their service queries and superior levels of customer service across all channels of interaction.

The Siebel system and service design approach enabled AIS to shift from a transaction-based customer service model to a solution-based model. “Before Siebel, customer service was corrective,” Sringkarrinkul said. “For example, customers might call to say that they had lost their cell phone, so we would temporarily suspend or deactivate their service. With Siebel, our staff can anticipate and meet the needs of a customer who has lost a phone. Has the customer saved his or her phone book onto their SIM card and consequently into our systems where we can retrieve it? Where can the customer get the best discount on a replacement handset? If they are a high-value customer, can we deliver that handset to an address of their choosing? If the customer is abroad, would he or she like us to pass a temporary number to their relatives in Thailand?”

AIS invested early in creating a single view of its customers and is now leveraging that base to launch new strategies to increase loyalty and average revenue per user (ARPU). “The software provides customer profiles, the services used, their interactions with AIS, the nature of any problems, the kind of service they liked, and so on,” explained Sringkarrinkul. “This allows us to proactively offer customers product and services matched to their needs. We can also up-sell or cross-sell according to the customer’s lifestyle. As a result, we have significantly reduced customer churn and enhanced non-voice revenue.”

Although competing carriers have attacked AIS by dramatically undercutting its prices, the company still dominates the market and has a churn rate 50% below the industry average.

Enhanced Customer and Dealer Management Management of the AIS dealer network has also improved. Partners can carry out transactions on their own account or on behalf of customers through Siebel Partner Relationship Management. Importantly, this extends the CRM system to cover SME customers even if they are located in cities or towns where AIS does not have direct presence.



The Siebel system allows AIS to monitor and manage dealers according to their profiles, assessing their performance to ensure fair commission payments and loyalty rewards. Dealers also have a single point of contact with AIS staff and online access to information.

Improving performance and ensuring a consistent customer service experience at dealers is critical to AIS’s competitive positioning due to the large number of transactions that take place at retail stores. The prepaid market in particular in booming and service providers have struggled to find a stable business model that will reverse high churn rates and increase ARPU.

In the past, AIS treated customer segments arbitrarily, providing more service to post-paid customers “because we had positioned prepaid customers as low usage,” said Sringkarrinkul. “This is no longer our approach… Some prepaid customers have very high levels of usage, so now we put all customers in the same database and segment them by their usage behavior. It ensures we can respond quickly to valued customers.”

Improved Efficiency The Siebel system introduced new efficiencies at AIS by streamlining workflows and automating certain tasks such as corporate sales opportunity management. Service level agreements were established, and alerts are sent automatically when service requests are overdue. Requests can be prioritized according to urgency instead of leaving critical matters to languish in a queue behind comparatively trivial matters.

“The Siebel system delivers up-to-date market data that informs decision-making at AIS,” said Sringkarrinkul. “By analyzing customer information on a daily basis, we can respond quicker to emerging trends. This helps reduce time to market for new products and services, helping us retain our position as the market leader in the Thai mobile communications industry.”

Why Siebel? AIS evaluated several CRM products before selecting Siebel because of the software’s extensive features and easy integration with other systems.



“The AIS management was extremely comfortable with the Siebel solution,” said Sringkarrinkul. “The software offered rich functionality that met our selection criteria. The modular design and pre-built connectors made the solution easy to interface with other systems so we didn’t need major customization.

“Siebel also offered a clear research and development roadmap so we knew the solution would serve us well into the future and maximize our investment.”

Implementation Process The Siebel solution was implemented in three phases beginning in September 2002 and ending in January 2004. Phase one involved rolling out the solution to the corporate customers division, enabling staff to manage profiles and sales opportunities and provide quotes and proposals. The Siebel system enabled AIS to manage small and medium-sized customers located in smaller cities where the company does not have direct presence).

In the second phase, the company integrated order management, inventory management, and trouble ticketing (customers’ service requests and complaints about disrupted service) with the Siebel system for use by the corporate customers division and selected AIS employees.

In the third and final phase, the solution was made available for use by all business divisions. This enabled staff to up-sell and cross-sell products and services, oversee dealer orders and analyze dealer performance, and manage loyalty programs and marketing campaigns. The company also introduced self-service facilities for customers via the Web and interactive voice response (IVR) services.

Since the first rollout in 2002, AIS has upgraded from Siebel 7.0.4 to Siebel Communications 7.5.3 and increased the number of users from 250 to 4,000. The company’s deployment was recently recognized as a finalist for the Gartner Group 2006 CRM Excellence Award.

Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited is the largest cellular operator in

Thailand. The company owns the country’s largest digital GSM network and was

the first operator to offer GPRS services. It has a 50% share of the market or

around 17.5 million subscribers.


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