Ashish Kakda Karthik G Pai Madhuri Dheervani Karishma Agarwal

INTRODUCTION

Phanindra Sama, the chief executive officerof redBus.in, is yet another engineer who chucked his lucrative job to start an enterprise of his own. RedBus.in was founded by three engineers of BITS, Pilani Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri

INCEPTION
Started modestly in August 2006 with a few seats from one bus operator Today is one of the most successful online bus ticket booking agencies with over700 bus operators, 10,000 buses listed on it, works in 15 states and sells around 5,000 tickets every day. It all started in 2005 when he couldn't get a bus ticket to go back to Hyderabad during the long Diwali weekend. As he had no other work, he went to a bus ticket agent and asked how the whole process worked. He felt he saw a lot of inefficiencies in the system and there might have been a buses which went vacant as there was no link.

INEFFECIENCIES IN THE CURRENT SYSTEM

Suppose there are hundreds of buses from 30 operators running from Bengaluru to Hyderabad, the agents do not have access to all the operators. When an agent gets a customer, he calls a bus operator to find out whether there are tickets available. The operator looks at the chart and tells him the number of vacant seats. The number of agents a bus operator can have is limited as he needs to identify all by phone. The agents also have only limited number of operators to work with. Then, the customers cannot always choose the seats as there is no transparency.

INEFFECIENCIES IN THE CURRENT SYSTEM

Another problem is, as the fares are not published, there is no fixed fare for the customer. But the major problem was booking return tickets. Every time you went home, you had to call someone and ask them to book the return tickets from there. One could not book tickets late nights or from the comfort of his/her home like Plane or Train tickets.

INTERFACE

ADVANTAGES
Cash on delivery service of bus tickets in major cities Book online using credit, debit cards and net banking Book bus tickets online or over IVR through call centers Book bus tickets online with over 700 bus travel operators Book bus tickets online for over 10000+ routes across India Return bus tickets reservation Special Discounts for occations Read bus reviews submitted by the passengers Paperless bus ticketing with mTicket Dedicate helpline for customers. 24x7 Online booking

ISSUES BEFORE USING CLOUD & CRM

The company previously ran its operations from a traditional data center by purchasing and renting its systems and infrastructure. After using it for over a year, Due to the increasing number of users, RedBus ran into scalability issues. Procuring a new server or upgrading an existing one took more than two weeks. Moreover, the limited server capacity could not effectively handle processing fluctuations, which had a negative impact on productivity. The memory size wasn't enough to service the workload. RedBus looked to introduce Impel CRM with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a solution.

CLOUD & CRM

Amazon offered its cloud technology on Software as a Service (SaaS) basis. RedBus developers then designed apps to suit their needs. Several other features included the ability to easily manage access to servers through security groups, the easy-to-use, selfservice management console, the concept of Elastic IPs, and superior support. RedBus also started using a software called BOSS (Bus Operator Software Service) through which redBus could get real-time access to the operators' inventory. The CRM software also helped it to send mTickets, confirmation, and notices to the travelers. It also helped the users to get real-time info, bus info, pickuppoint any information regarding the travel, all in one call.

BENEFITS OF USING CRM AND CLOUD

After moving to Impel and cloud hosting their infrastructure at the AWS Asia Pacific (Singapore) region, the traffic to RedBus has increased 3 folds due to reduced latency. It has also given us an overall cost benefit of about 30 to 40 percent.

CRM STRATEGY
Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organisation has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship. RedBus is one such organization which puts its customers on priority. CRM at RedBus involves increased communication with customers. Its philosophy focuses on each and every customers satisfaction. Understanding customers is important in order to develop a sound relationship with them. CRM also helped it in valuation of its customers to understand customer profitability and Customer Life Time Value (CLV).

CRM STRATEGY
To foster a strong customer relationship, it is ensured that the customers have easy access to information and employees are trained on how to use customer information to tailor interactions based on both customer needs and potential customer value. Customer feedback is taken after every travel. Customers can rate the service experienced in the bus on their website and other customers can see the ratings and feedback.

The website also provides information about the amenities available in the bus during the course of travel.
Special discounts are provided in the form of coupons to selected customers.

CRM STRATEGY
Emails are sent during long weekends or holiday seasons to every customer to provoke them for a small holiday or travel. Customers are texted an mTicket once the ticket is booked and if the travel date is ahead by a week or so a reminder about the travel is sent 48hours in advance. A text message with the bus number is sent to customer for his convenience while traveling. Tickets are home delivered for a small fee. Feedback is taken from both the person booking the ticket and traveling if the two are different. Ladies occupied seats are highlighted for and reserved convenience of potential lady occupants.

CUSTOMER RETENTION
Customer Attraction

Customer Value

Customer Satisfaction

Loyalty

Business Performance

Shareholder Value

Customer Retention