Compaq India Set To Vend Products Over The Internet

Compaq, (India operations), is all set to market its products and solutions over the Net. Though it is not known as to when exactly the company will be e-ready, the fact that it was looking at the Net as an alternative route to transact with its customers was confirmed by highly-placed officials at Compaq.

The ability to deliver products and services over the Web would be a big boost to the company's efforts to consolidate its position in the country.

Kiran Subba Rao, marketing services manager, said that Compaq still had to work out details related to payment gateways and was in talks with some companies to get it sorted out at the earliest.

As to when Compaq would be able to complete the project, Subba Rao was not ready to put a date on it, and said that it would be completed "as early as possible."

In the developed markets, Compaq has already stared e-tailing its products and it was expected that such a move would be sooner than later in the Indian context where Compaq is one of the leaders in its segments.

Thandava Murthy, director, customer services, Compaq, said that the company

was also all set to web-enable its customer services operations in India within the next two months.

According to Murthy, the company was looking at web-enabling its customer services because of the tremendous growth in demand that it had seen.

According to him, the company was also looking at a centralised call centre in

India, though it had not decided on where exactly to locate it. As of now the company has six call centres located in Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Further Compaq plans to open an additional two call centres in Ahemdabad and Pune soon.

The plans to come out with a centralised call centre will largely depend on the way the union government implements the toll-free telephony in the

country, he said. The company, Murthy said, was looking at bringing about the same level of interactvity over the web, as a customer would enjoy on calling up any of the call centres in India.

Compaq, according to Murthy, would also be looking at a three layered approach to architecting the interactive customer services over the web. At the first level, Compaq proposes to have pro-active interface which will do the job of doling out patches and updates for customers.

At the second layer Compaq- will have a self-assist mode of interactivity which will consist of chats, and bulletin boards. At the third layer of interactivity over the web, as far as custome services are there, the company will have the Compaq assisted calls, which would mean that it would be possible for the company to close the call remotely.