MTNL remodelling workforce to focus on sales, marketing and customer care

State-run telecom firm MTNL is remodelling its workforce to make them sales, marketing and customer care driven as part of efforts to generate additional revenue of Rs. 500 crore this fiscal, a top company official said Sunday.

"We are re-orienting our workforce from operation management driven to sales, marketing and customer care driven. The company has chalked out an agenda so that we generate additional revenue of Rs. 500 crore from services and existing resources," MTNL Chairman and Managing Director A K Garg told PTI.

MTNL at the end of FY 2012-13 posted Rs. 3,428.66 crore, marginal increase of 1.6 percent from Rs. 3,373.25 crore at the end of FY 2011-12.

"We have already allocated about 500 people for enterprise business to deal with customer problem and take immediate action to resolve complaints. In the next six months, we will devote another 2,000 people for sales, marketing and customer services," MTNL Director for Human Resource Sunil Kumar said.

Some of the focus point under the new plan include fault repair on same day, simplifying bill payment, responding to customer requests like address change, name change, plan upgradation within a few hours instead of days.

Garg said that company is considering to include grading system for new recruitments where points will be given to employees on the basis of their sales generation and customer satisfaction.

"We are also working on integrating customer care services and touch points technically so that it can be monitored live at highest levels," Kumar said.

As a result of proposed remodelling of employees, the company expects revenue of Rs. 75 crore from landline business, Rs. 200 crore from broadband, Rs. 100 crore from mobile services, Rs. 75 crore from enterprise business and Rs. 50 crore from monetising existing assets.

Employee benefits is one of the major burdens on MTNL balance sheet.

In the second quarter ended September 30, 2012, the total figure under employee benefits amounted to 115 percent of total income (expense of Rs. 970 crore against a total income Rs. 842 crore).

However, there was an improvement by company in the ratio of employee benefit vis-a-vis total income in the second quarter of the current fiscal. During this period, the total amount under salary and employee benefits, including actual payouts and provisions, was Rs. 820 crore which is higher than the total income of 813.45 crore by merel 1 percent only .