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Bsnl Services - A Promotional Challenge

Introduction
In May, 2008 when the scorching summer reaches its peak, Mr. Kumar had another problem at his hand. Kumar was the Director of Communications and Marketing functions at Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and his office was based in Hyderabad. He was looking at a survey report which said BSNL customers
BSNL launched a host of value added services for its landline and mobile telephone services over the last couple of years. It has one of the best set of services in the industry at very affordable tariffs. But strangely revenue from these services was minimal and did not even break even as stand-alone services. To understand the reasons behind this trend, BSNL hired a market survey agency and conducted a survey on various aspects like awareness levels, service perception among other things. The results and analysis of the survey was reported to Mr. Kumar. The awareness levels about the services were least among the BSNL customers itself let alone non-customers. Also the perception of the customers was that BSNL had a very low service quality.
BSNL was the first state owned company in the telecom industry in India. It had enjoyed a monopoly till the 1991 economic reforms saw entry of many private and international players into the service starved telecom domain. These new companies have quickly shaved of a significant portion of BSNL’s market share. Also they have become known for their first class quality of service and other value added services. On the other hand BSNL carried forward its age old image of bureaucratic and red tape plagued organization with minimal focus on customer service and efficiency. It took a lot of time for it to respond and treat customer as a priority. It then introduced a lot of promotional offers to reduce customer defection and started wielding its financial muscle to position itself as a value for money player by slashing call rates to a minimal level. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), an...

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