Vodafone: Decoding 123

123 call karo, aur phir dekho, ki mobile kya kya kar sakta hai,” said actor Irrfan Khan in the ad campaign by Vodafone, which was launched in the fag end of 2011. The ad, which ran till January this year, promised a host of value-added services-from recipes to movie reviews-which a subscriber could access by dialling 123 from her Vodafone number. (For the southern markets, the campaign features actor Prakash Raj.)

Although the company refused to give nation-wide figures, the campaign in Haryana resulted into approximately 72,000 calls on 123. There was an increment of 200 per cent on the subscription percentage between the launch and closure of the campaign in the circle. “The fact that millions of people call 123 every day and a good percentage of that actually subscribe to the services proves that it is a big hit with the customers,” notes Anuradha Aggarwal, vice-president, brand communication and insights, Vodafone India, the third largest mobile network operator in India after Airtel and Reliance Communications.

Till now, subscriber queries on 123 have been equally distributed between entertainment services such as ring-back tones or film reviews and infotainment services like cricket alerts, recipes et al. “This service will be a constant feature among the many search and discovery tools introduced by Vodafone. Soon we will launch a feature where 123 will become customised for individual customer,” she adds.

Aggarwal says, “The 123 campaign is one of the key initiatives that allow our consumers to seek and subscribe to all value-added services from one location.” Sounds like a mobile Google, right? No. 123 is not a search engine, but the whole process is just as simple.

When a customer calls the toll-free number, she can navigate the portal to find the content and services she wants. Having found a service, the customer can then hear details of the service (such as product description, pricing and validity) and, with simple touch-tone commands, can send an activation request. This request is then sent to the pertinent platform provider’s system after which the activation, charging and provisioning architecture take over through Vodafone’s centralised subscription manager.

It is a fully automated voice-based service and there are no live customer service representatives at the other end of the call. “This ensures consistency of service offering and eliminates human error,” explains Aggarwal. The subscriber chooses the duration of the package and receives short message (SMS) alerts accordingly.

The portal is available in several languages and is customised for each circle. “This is a pull-based rather than push-based service. That is to say, no one is ‘selling’ any service to the customer. The customer initiates the call when she wants a particular service. That way, there are no unwanted calls,” points Aggarwal. And since it is not a live number or a call centre, there is no limit to the number of calls that can be handled simultaneously.