Uninor Launches 200 Grahak Shikhsha Kendras to Drive Mobile Internet, Product Awareness

In its bid to engage with customers and educate them about mobile services, Uninor has launched 200 Grahak Shiksha Kendras’ (customer education hubs) across all its operational circles in India.

Building on it’s successful mass market business model, Uninor opens 200 Grahak Shiksha Kendras (GSKs) that will act as a knowledge and awareness centers where existing and potential customers can walk in to get information related to Uninor voice and Internet services as well as resolve queries around the use of mobile phones.

“At Telenor Group, we have a vision to empower societies through the use of mobile services. With our ambition to offer Internet for All, we believe in building and developing society through affordable mobile connectivity with reasonable and relevant services. In markets like India, we also see the need to spread awareness and educate people on how to use mobile technology, so they can enjoy and explore the full potential and use it more responsibly. The Grahak Shiksha Kendra is a step to build awareness and knowledge on how to take the full benefit of communication services in their daily lives,” said Katja Christina Nordgaard, executive vice president and head of corporate affairs, Telenor Group.

Also speaking at the launch, Vivek Sood, CEO, Telewings Communications Services (Uninor) said, “As a responsible operator serving the mass market customers, we see the need to educate and hand-hold our customers on mobile internet and voice services to empower them to make the right choices about the services they activate, explore and enjoy. Through the Grahak Shiksha Kendra, we will be able to open our stores not just for sales and support but also educate the customers on using their mobile phones for relevant services, be safe and avoid transactions that are not intended. With our dedicated and trained team of Customer Relationship executives, 50% of whom are women, we will be able to make our customers confident and better informed.”

The company will convert 200+ retail stores across its six operational circles into GSKs in the first half of FY 2015 and another 300 GSKs will come up by year end. Uninor hired dedicated Customer relationship executives to deploy them in each GSK store, 50% of these GSKs will have female customer relationship executives (CREs). Uninor developed an in-house curriculum to train its customer relationship executives for the awareness initiative at the GSK stores. The CREs will undergo a four-day training and will be fully equipped to educate customers and handle their queries.

Consumers visiting these centers will be taken through a detailed experiential session on use of mobile phones, services available, relevant key features and safe Internet practices by trained CREs.

“Uninor has a strategic focus of keeping the customers needs at the core of our business operations and developing products and services to fulfill these needs. GSKs are set up as we see the need to educate and build awareness in our consumers on mobile voice and Internet services. Customers will be able to interact and gain information on products, services and basic mobile functionality by the trained CREs who have been chosen after careful evaluation and trained on delivering the right information and guidance to facilitate customers to make an informed choice.” said Upanga Dutta, chief marketing officer, Telewings Communications Services (Uninor).

Last year Uninor launched the *121# self help menu for its customers. It has seen huge uptake with over 50% of its users benefitting from the services. The self-help menu is a USSD code based menu that guides the users to different kinds of information including product related queries, features and services available on their phone.

Apart from the GSKs and easy to use self help, Uninor is also conducting workshops to make its users understand benefits of Internet and how to adopt safe Internet practices. The company has around 23% of its customer accessing Internet on its network. As part of its Internet for All ambition, Uninor targets to convert 50% of its customer base into Internet users by 2017.

Uninor currently has over 45 million subscriptions and caters to the mass market with Sabse Sasta (most affordable) basic services. One of the youngest telecom operators in India, Uninor has worked towards offering most relevant services and products to its customers. Apart from offering most affordable voice services, Uninor had introduced service-based plans for Facebook and WhatsApp for its subscribers. The disruptive product innovation brought a paradigm shift by charging customers for the services rendered rather than the amount of data consumed.