Hutchison Max Telecom, one of the cellular operators in Mumbai, has been named 'Best Practice' organisation for its customer interaction management by the best practices research project, conducted jointly by ORG-MARG and Qimpro.

The respondents to the survey assessed the company on 10-key sub-elements of the International Quality Maturity Model (IQMM), a tool for assessing the quality of management performance, before declaring Hutchison a best practice organisation.

Hutchison was appraised on 10 different parameters including leadership initiatives in customer service, process focus, quality, market environment analysis, benchmarking and forecasting, marketing mix, customer relations, contract review, documentation and records and internal best practices.

"For us, the key differentiator in mobile telephony service in the country will be the quality of the cellular network, value-added services and customer service," Sandip Das, chief executive officer of Hutchison Max Telecom, said.

Hutchison Max, which has 3.5 lakh cellular subscribers in Mumbai metro, has also earmarked an investment of Rs 41 crore for improving its existing customer service systems in the current fiscal.

From customer call centres to the sales force, the company invests in training programmes to hone the customer-interaction skills of every member of this value chain. This is appraised by a clutch of internal and external quality audits on a regular basis. "We treat these as basic equirements for a player in the competitive service industry," he added.

The best practices 2001 project, conducted by ORG-MARG, and Qimpro, India's first quality consultancy, is borne out of a comprehensive survey of the top 100 Indian companies, is an attempt to map and recognize world-class best practices across corporate India.