Tuesday, August 5, 2008

National Do Call Registry

In my recent posts, I have mentioned the 'action' and 'seriousness' of the Indian Goverment of the National Do Not Call Registry and the implications of the same. It is compulsory for all Telemarketers to register for this service and 'scrub' their lists before conducting Cold Calls.
The latest twist in the sad tale of Indian Commerce is that the Supreme Court of India (Apex Court) and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has decided to move on to a "National Do Call Registry" where in people will opt in for receiving marketing calls and messages (UCC - Unsolicited Commercial Communication) from marketers and businesses so as to market their product - leaving a very small percentage of people in India who will opt in to receive such communication. Quite obviously the entire business fraternity, banks, telemarketing & call centres and the Telecom Operators have raised an objection not to implement any such Act or Policy since it shall deeply harm the economy in terms of:
Revenue - Telecom companies will not make money from Telemarketers & Call Centres
Business - Telemarketers will not be able to generate business from Cold Calling due to lack of data or even no data.
Growth - If there are too many such units falling down overnight,there is bound to be a fall in the economy over a longer period of time in a larger picture.

Further, if any such policy does get implemented then what is the next level or next alternative medium of commercial communication? How do you propose to reach out to new clients and grow your business?

Vodafone Talk More

Its been a while that Vodafone has entered the Indian Mobile Operator's market. Inspite of the company picking up, 'Hutchison Essar Group' at snail's pace that it was, Vodafone has managed to pick up speed. The international giant has hired one the best ad agencies in the country and has come up with absolutely ingenious marketing concepts ever made in the Telecom industry.
So to speak, the Indian Mobile Market is limited to Mobile Number Sales & Mobile Handset Sales separately - Airtel & Nokia/Sagem have made attempts in the past to make 'Packaged Deals' of handsets with special offer Prepaid SIM Cards, which honestly did not take off very well. Vodafone re-installed this idea in the market as the "Magic Box" comprising of a pretty handy and featured handset with basic Phonebook, Messaging and FM features, along with a special tariff plan attracting people to change more phones than only change or buy a new number. The campaign went on successfully with a mass approach to the common Indian man who cares more of what handset he keeps than the number or tariff plan on his number.
To top it all, Vodafone has recently come out with a campaign that promotes their Call Conference faility @ Rs.30/month. (Delhi circle). Not only does a mere Rs.30 add much more revenue to the VAS Sales but also the fact if one person calls the other, the 2nd to the 3rd...so on till there can be 5 or more participants (The limit is of 5 people on conference on one number incl the number owner) - The genius of this marketing is that by using Call Conference - Vodafone is actually multiplying their Sales of outgoing calls to friends by friends or business to business users. The chain here is practically limitless.
Further, keeping in mind that (or so I believe) that Mobile Operators have to bear a fee or submit a cost of terminating a call made from their network to anothers like Airtel, Idea, etc.
The intra call conference keeps these costs low so that people are encouraged to make V2V Calls more than to other operators. If you notice, this is why your own operator charges you lesses to make calls to the same operator as compared to making a local call to the network of another operator.