The Hindu Business Line : World Phone setting up customer support centres

WORLD Phone Internet Services has planned to set up 24 x 7 regional support centres to retain its customers in a low-involvement market like Internet telephony. The company will set up customer support centres in each of the States where it is present.

"Calling cards are products with low customer involvement. Purchase decisions are usually built around denominations and call charges. Customer support service is a part of competitive strategy and will help us retain our customers," said Mr Aditya Ahluwalia, Chairman, World Phone Internet Services.

World Phone has covered around 70 per cent of India geographically. It recently signed on seven channel partners across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

The distribution strategy is franchisee-driven. Each channel partner has been appointed to distribute calling cards in States as it helps faster roll-out of services as against a retail model. The company has also tied up with Rediff to sell its calling cards online.

The total Internet telephony market is around 215 million minutes. World Phone holds a 20 per cent share of this market. The company was launched in August this year, and has registered 10 per cent growth per month since then, Mr Ahluwalia said.

The company has also unveiled its new corporate Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) packages, which will enable its clients to cut their communication costs down by over 85 per cent and enable them to make unlimited calls to the US for Rs 3,995. The company has sold around 700 corporate lines since its inception in August.

The Internet telephony market in India is at a nascent stage and is estimated to be around 2.5 per cent of the total telephony market. This segment is growing at 100 per cent annually.

The growth driver for Internet telephony has been a sea change in quality. The compression techniques in converting sound waves to digital packages have enhanced the quality of telephony. Moreover, there is also a wider availability of bandwidth, which has made Internet telephony a viable alternative, Mr Ahluwalia added.

Though messenger services from Web sites such as Yahoo and MSN apparently offer free telephony, the company does not consider them an obvious threat as there is a major gap between the quality of voice packages offered by the company and these portals.

"The messenger speech service is more like an unmanaged service, while ours is a managed service where voice packages are a priority on the network. As a result, our calls are clearer and uninterrupted," Mr Ahluwalia added.