By Alex Lam

Today, entertainment has become a core of human lifestyle. Stress is dissipated by what some still term as the idiot box. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that satellite television has leeched onto the idiot box to become a utility almost as important as the telephone, or electricity.

Bearing that in mind, Nokia Malaysia engaged Integricity to provide a comprehensive solution to manage the warranty for the set-top boxes that provide access to Astro, the nation’s satellite television provider.

By the end of 2001, Nokia had supplied 250,000 set-top boxes to Astro subscribers, and this was estimated to grow exponentially within the next few years. Nokia had been tracking each set-top box at their Cyberjaya headquarters manually via the use of software such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access.

The process of tracking customer complaints from the Astro Call Centre to the many levels of service contractors that Nokia employed was simply a disheveled mess due to the manual processes. The pressure was on from Astro to Nokia to improve the time taken to repair set-top boxes and keep customers happy, measured by an internal term called “Turn-Around-Time” (TAT). At that point in time, the TAT could vary from 5 days to 2 weeks, and even then, it did not ensure that the repair job would be completed satisfactorily.

Our Integricity consultants spent weeks fact-finding with Nokia and producing a detailed study on how processes could be best improved for their complex operations. 3 months later, a pilot run was conducted that involved linking the Customer, Astro Call Centre, Sub-contractors, Couriers, Local Service Centres, Authorised Service Centres and Nokia staff.

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system tracks every single set-top box and its warranty status. From the point a call is made to Astro, the call centre staff can verify the warranty status and advise the client immediately. A courier can be dispatched to pick up the unit and deliver it to a service centre, or a sub-contractor can be sent for an on-site visit.

The fault reports are entered on-line via the CRM system and each repair job is analysed to produce detailed reports on the spare parts used for costing purposes. TAT is also tracked carefully to ensure the success of the CRM system.

To date, more than 15,000 fault reports have been monitored by the system successfully, and the CRM system tracks 750,000 set-top boxes, with the capacity to grow.

Nokia management can now produce an array of reports instantly, and with live data as compared to the former processes which involved manual calculation at the end of every month.

TAT, which is the measure of success for the system has been brought down to 48 business hours which is a drastic reduction of an average of 8 days, or an efficiency improvement of 400%.

Disclaimer: This case study is for informational purposes only. Integricity makes no warranties, expressed or implied, in this summary.