Bharti Airtel, India's largest private telecom services provider, today announced a strategic outsourcing agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) to further enhance its customer service experience for its top end Platinum customers through process and technology innovation.

The six year Q3 contract for outsourcing contact services to IBM’s Managed Business Process Services (MBPS) unit will involve augmentation of Airtel’s sales, customer service, and back office capabilities. IBM MBPS combines IBM's deep industry and process expertise with innovative technologies and a talented employee force to offer client’s repeatable processes and assets that can improve process productivity and deliver cost savings and reduced risk.

IBM Daksh Business Process Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM Corporation, will provide a suite of services covering both voice and back office in areas such as customer service, collections, customer retention and the like to Airtel Platinum customers from its centers. IBM Daksh expects to have over 700 employees in the first year focused on providing services in over 11 languages to elite Airtel customers across the country.

"We are highly focused on our customers and continue to innovate and invest in enhancing their experience. In this direction we have taken another step by moving to a ‘One Airtel’ outsourcing arrangement which is oriented towards our business outcomes and customer delight than on effort. Our keen focus coupled with IBM Daksh's extensive knowledge and expertise in this domain of servicing high-end customers would surely help us to further enhance the experience of our platinum customers.” said Dr. Jai Menon, Director - Technology and Customer Service, Bharti Airtel. He said, “This partnership will help us concentrate on our endeavor to create and provide highly innovative and customized products and services for our platinum customers.”

Pavan Vaish, CEO, IBM Daksh, said, "IBM will utilize its rich industry knowledge and leverage its innovation capabilities to help Bharti Airtel offer enhanced service delivery to its Platinum customers thus increasing their satisfaction levels in today’s highly challenging telecom market. We look forward to offering our process transformation knowledge to help Airtel get better operational flexibility, productivity and increased customer satisfaction of these high-end customers.”

The partnership is also expected to help Airtel cconsolidate its service delivery to its Platinum customers across its business units of Mobile, Telemedia Services (Fixedline and Broadband) and Enterprise Services. Airtel became the first telecom service provider, to implement a service model to outsource its call center operations, which at the time of launch in 2004, was only beginning to become a reality in the developed economies of the world.

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