Oracle Customer Case Study

AIS Improves Client Service and Boosts Revenue

with Proactive Customer Care

“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
Advanced Info Service Public
Company Ltd growing mobile communications market in Thailand.”
Bangkok, Thailand – Arpattra Sringkarrinkul, Executive Vice President, Solutions,
www.ais.co.th/eng
Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited
Established in 1990, Advanced Info Service Public Company
Industry:
Limited (AIS) is the largest cellular operator in Thailand with a
Communications
50% market share and almost twice as many customers as the
Annual Revenue: number two operator. The market is characterized by high rates of
$2.4 billion
churn and a tendency to compete on the basis of price, but the
Employees: company believes technical and service superiority is the way
5,500 ahead. AIS owns the country’s largest digital GSM network and
was the first operator to offer GPRS services.
Oracle Products & Services:
AIS implemented Siebel Communications for Mobile Carriers in
Siebel Communications for Mobile
2002. Its sales and marketing staff previously relied on manual
Carriers
Siebel Partner Relationship processes and disparate systems to manage customer interactions,
Management which hindered information sharing between departments. The
Oracle Database company also wanted to move to a proactive customer service
Oracle Partitioning 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.”

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

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.

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

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.

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

“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.

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