“We are working on a new app for brands to interact with their consumers”

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With an aim to create an India specific CEM suite that can help brands in addressing end consumer queries, Akosha’s products not only help brands in capturing mentions and feedback from popular social channels but also from third party websites and forums which is one of the core USPs of its product.

Vishrut-Chalsani

In an interaction with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com Vishrut Chalsani, VP, Enterprise Sales and Co-founder, Akosha talks about the company’s core activities and its road ahead for the near future.

What are some of the key focus areas for your operations in India?

For AkoshaOneDirect, our key focus area is to help brands to reduce negative impressions on the internet and reach out to unhappy customers in an effective manner. AkoshaOneDirect helps brands to improve customer satisfaction. The OneDirect Enterprise Suite has been built from the ground up to address specific reasons why brands are unable to actually deliver a great customer experience.

Our focus is on building an India specific CEM suite that helps brands in addressing Consumer queries and feedback using online and mobile channel. Our products not only help brands in capturing mentions and feedback from popular social channels but also from third party websites and forums which is one of the core USP of our product. We understand that mobile is new customer service channel and we are working on providing a new app for brands to interact with their consumers. This will be a game changer.

What are some of the key verticals that you are targeting with your solution?

As mentioned above, our key focus is on large enterprises which sell or provide services directly to consumers. A large part of our repertoire comprises telecom and e-commerce companies. The adoption rates for our services are highest in these sectors on the back of their rapidly increasing user base. We are also targeting other verticals including consumer appliances, smart phones, financial products, FMCG and Travel & Leisure.

What are the key features of AkoshaOneDirect?

OneDirect Cloud connects every online interaction the customer has with a brand. OneDirect is the only platform that includes all of the capabilities to manage a holistic social media strategy; along with built-in integrations with traditional CRMs to leverage the power of social media throughout the brand. This is where the traditional CRMs typically fail.

OneDirect product line includes tool like:

  • Indic Crawler- Custom-built natural language processing (NLP) l algorithm to track all relevant online mentions in the Indian context. We track 40% more mentions then any other ORM system in the market.
  • Workflow engine- Intelligent technology which automates assignment of mentions using advanced business rules and workflow architecture (integrated with your CRM).
  • OneDirect Feedback cloud- Integrate customer feedback from all sources including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, website, email and other sources.
  • OneDirect Customer Love- Curate online mentions which capture the great experiences of your customers – use social voice to showcase happy customers.
  • OneDirect Social Leads- Tap customers before your competitors snap them. Involve yourself in conversations around similar products/services, and convert pre-purchase audience into customers.
  • OneDirect Benchmarking Index- Our proprietary index based on 30+ criteria spanning across social personality, Google online presence and customers’ perception gives you a real picture of your online reputation.

How big would be your focus towards the telecoms segment?

Our emphasis on the telecom sector is huge. This is because almost 78% of the Indian population uses SIM cards and there is a huge subscriber base for telecom services, especially as mobile devices become more affordable for the masses.

The immense focus also stems from the fact that this is a sector that requires high levels of assistance in overhauling the customer experience. Telecom companies attracted the second largest number of customer queries in 2014 on Akosha’s platform at 14%. These facts spell out that there is an urgent need for brands in this space to elevate the levels of customer satisfaction they are currently being able to offer, which is why it is one of our core focus areas.

What kind of growth are you looking at and where is this growth going to come from?

We have been growing at a steady pace of 300% year-on-year. We expect to grow at an equally formidable pace in the coming time. Today, over 100 large brands use Akosha’s platform and 35 of them have become paid customers and are using AkoshaOneDirect for industry benchmarking and to improve their customer experience. Some of our key clients include brands like MTS, Aircel, Micromax, Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, Videocon, Groupon etc.

In July 2014, Akosha.com secured a funding of $5.2 million from Sequoia Capital, which we are using to make sizeable investments in technology and to expand our OneDirect Suite as well as in building mobile app for consumers.  We will soon be launching an app which will redefine the customer service landscape in India. Consumers love instant, meaningful customer support (get real time response from our brand experts). Akosha App will help them solve their queries as quickly, easily, and painlessly as possible, thereby creating happier users. Using Akosha app consumer will be able to chat with our experts and get free help for queries related to any brand or service. They can get things done for FREE and SAVE time. No more call center or endless web searching. Just chat and our expert will do it for you.

Apart from India, are there any other geographies that you are actively looking at?

At the moment, we are only focusing on India and no other geographies. Our overall objective is to improve the standards of customer relationship management in the country across sectors and geographies before we think of expansion to other countries.

We have two offices in Delhi and we recently opened our office in Mumbai and Bangalore.

Which all telecom brands are currently using AkoshaOneDirect?

We are working with MTS and Aircel. The Akosha and Aircel experience works as the perfect case study of how we have helped brands in attaining meaningful CRM. During the floods in Jammu and Kashmir, last year, there were several Aircel users looking for help to contact their relatives. They also had queries regarding the network shot up. Employing Akosha’sOneDirect suite, Aircel listened actively to customer conversations and requests and paid careful attention to people who were acutely distressed because of the natural disaster. The telecom services provider, then, opened up its network to all postpaid users in Jammu and Kashmir and activated services like “know the last known position of the user”, etc.

While the goal for Aircel was altruistic, the quick and sensitive response to customers’ appeals resulted in positive word-of-mouth across online channels about the brand. The perception and goodwill of Aircel received a tremendous fillip. These are the kind of path-breaking initiatives in the realm of customer experience that we at Akosha wish to galvanise. The Akosha and Aircel association, therefore, works as the perfect example of what a thrust on customer delight and satisfaction can achieve for a brand.

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