The Hindu Business Line : Club Mahindra on a `hep' CRM effort

HERE'S one instance of CRM going `hep'! Club Mahindra's Holiday Experience Profilers (HEP) aim to provide instant response to customer feedback at its resorts. The HEPs are touch-screen kiosks set up at the company's resorts in Goa, Munnar and Binsar. They provide an online mechanism that allows the company to address concerns about any aspect of the holiday, be it check-in experience or room/food quality or activities.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Vijay Srinivasan (Head, Marketing), Club Mahindra, said this facility was launched a little over a year ago. It uses proprietary software. When feedback is entered into the machine, it immediately alerts the head of the department concerned who can address the problem. This can also be viewed by the company's member-relationship department in Chennai.

According to Mr Srinivasan, customers with complaints or suggestions do not always mention them then and there; HEP encourages them to do that. For the company, it is a member's current state of mind, which is scoring its performance. Further, it enables the company to record feedback, which would have been transient if it had been verbal, Mr Srinivasan said.

The company is planning to expand in South and South-East Asia. It is looking at Sri Lanka, among other destinations. It now has one resort in Bangkok. It is also setting up a resort in Coorg in Karnataka. It now has 11 resorts.

Club Mahindra will launch the next phase of its advertising campaign on TV in the summer, Mr Srinivasan said. The campaign, handled by Interface, will take the company's `family holidays' proposition forward. According to him, Club Mahindra is probably the only timeshare company with a TV campaign and the only such company in India to have a toll-free number for reservations. The company has also tied up with RCI to promote India as a tourist destination abroad. It will do this by holding a contest for RCI's holiday consultants with incentives and prizes for those who bring in tourists. Club Mahindra has launched an initiative called Cruise Gallery, which is a tie-up with an American company, International Cruise and Excursions, to provide its members all-inclusive cruises to popular destinations worldwide. The company has also been offering `villa holidays' in Udhagamandalam and Kodaikanal which aim to provide a homely experience, replete with a cook, Mr Srinivasan said. According to him, this has been a big success. He added that Indian holidayers love experience, and choose a different destination for each holiday, unlike in the West where holidayers went back to the same place every time.

Some time ago, the company set up Holiday Worlds in various cities to let customers get a feel of all that it offers. Considering that it hopes to increase its membership to 24,000 from 20,000 this year, the company is taking mobile Holiday Worlds to towns and cities where they don't exist, Mr Srinivasan said. Also, the company uses the lean seasons to get prospective customers to sign up by offering them a free vacation rather than offer a one-time holiday package to non-members to exhaust inventory, he added.

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