FLIPKART

Flipkart is Indias largest online retailer. It went online in 2007 with the objective of making books easily available to anyone who had internet access. They now sell products across various categories- Apparel, Healthcare and Personal Care, Electronics, Mobiles, Cameras, Music, Movies, Games and a pioneering digital platform Flyte for selling music.
GROWING CLICK BY CLICK

Total investment in Flipkart over five rounds of funding is $380 million Annualised run rate of total value transactions on Flipkart is over $500 million; expected to hit $1 billion by 2015 Investors include Naspers, Accel Partners, Tiger Global, Iconiq Capital The company has 9.6 million registered users Shipped a maximum of 130,000 items a day last month Market valuation of Flipkart is at $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion E-tailing market in India was valued at $0.6 billion in 2012 Source: Business Standard Flipkart beefs up to take on Amazon dated July 16,2013

MISSION AND VISION

Although not explicitly stated, the founders have often said the following of their Mission and Vision in interviews and on their company page on the website Mission: To provide customers a memorable shopping experience Vision: To be the largest online retailer in India/ To be the Amazon of India (Forbes magazine, July 2012- Can Flipkart Deliver?)

Be it our path-breaking services like Cash on Delivery, a 30 -day replacement policy, EMI options, free shipping - and of course the great prices that we offer, everything we do revolves around our obsession with providing our

customers a memorable online shopping experience . Then there are

our dedicated Flipkart delivery partners who work round the clock to personally make s ure the packages reach on time.

Customer Relationship Management is the cornerstone of the Flikart business model. In a market with several sellers selling generic products, the businesses have to be extremely differentiated. Flipkart has now adopted a marketplace model where it fulfils the order but gets the best offers from several suppliers. Thus, it has already made itself price competitive. But what Flipkart used to its advantage very early on in the business was establish a strong culture of putting the customer first and making delighting the customer its motto. In a scenario likes this, because of the respect and intent Flipkart shows its customer, people are often willing to pay more just to get their orders on promised time in the condition promised. All articles and interviews that cover Flipkart, commend its customer service approach making it the poster boy of Indian e-commerce.

CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION
Upper Middle Class Technology Savvy 16-35 years Well educated, relatively higher disposable income Comfortable with the medium, high percentage use plastic money

The primary customers for the Flipkart.com are urban middle class who are well versed in using the technology, are well educated and are comfortable shopping online. Flipkart started as the online seller of books has now diversified itself into product categories like music, video, games, computers, electronics, mobile phones, healthcare and personal product categories. What Flipkart is doing is to sell more products to same people by adding more product categories.

SERVICE OFFERINGS TO CUSTOMER

1. Allows customers to choose from a large number of products from 16 categories. Since it follows a marketplace model, it allows customers to make informed purchase decision by choosing the most competitive supplier. It does so use a clean, user friendly interface

2. Intuitive website to overcome the hurdles of the absence of a sales assistant and relative inexperience of the Indian shopper

3. Straightforward return and exchange policies: Flip kart allows its users to return products if unsatisfied within 30 day period with full refund of money or exchange for another product. This allows customers to shop online without worrying about the risks involved. It uses the Wallet feature to debit the refund money that can be used to make a purchase from the website.

4. Payment Models Sanjay and Binny Bansal caught the pulse of Indian internet buyers and realized that credibility, reliability and trust are essentials to create a loyal customer base. To emphasize the same, they introduced payment models such as: Cash-on-delivery: Payment method that allows consumers to purchase products and make payment after delivery. EMI: Easy monthly instalments to help consumers purchase expensive goods spread over a period. Electronic wallet: Allowes users to save money as prepaid balance and later appraise for purchasing products. 5. Price Flipkart optimizes its costs owing to the inventory model it has adopted and hence can afford to give best prices and discounts on purchases to its customers unlike its competitors.

6. Customer service Highly responsive 24/7 customer service team is one of the core strengths of flipkart. They tackle all kinds of queries and process all request within five business days.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

1. A CUSTOMER CENTRIC APPROACH TO MANAGEMENT Flipkart can be said to be the pioneer in initiating the sceptical Indian shopper into online retailer. Flipkart has built itself on the core foundations of reliability, quickness, credibility, variety and quality. It uses Customer Relationship Management as its differentiating factor. Providing good customer service enables Flipkart to enjoy high levels of customer satisfaction, generate repeat business and ensure positive word-ofmouth. The customer is informed at every step through e-mail/text when the: order has been confirmed order summary & shipment details + tracker informing customer if order has been delayed Easy to reach out to the customer service team through their social media channels as well as a customer care number Customer complaints are quickly addressed and there are transparent return and exchange policies

2. TECHNOLOGICAL SUPPORT AT THE OPERATIONAL LEVEL TO FACILITATE CRM Sales Force Automation SFA is the application of technology to support regular sales functionsand includes tools that are employed by users to perform administrative and other repetitive tasks. SFA transforms repetitive and routine manual processes to automated processes, which helps sales reps operate in a more efficient manner. For example, applications such as quarterly automated sales reports and calendaring tools are key elements of sales technology. The domain for SFA applications includes the attainment and storage of information. SFA tools assist sales reps in formulating a professional sales encounter. Sales reps can remain in contact with distant customers via e-mails and cell phones, thus reducing travel hours. They can also receive and manage orders from customers in an easy, timely fashion. Addition-ally, applications like calendaring and routing tables help sales reps reduce downtime and increase their own production during regular work hours. 3. CUSTOMER KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY Flipkart has an amazing recommendation system at place to make product discovery faster and seamless.The recommendation system used by Flip Kart predicts users intent and helps connect them with products they need or

perhaps be interested in an automated manner.They help users in following ways : Help find: similar products. Ex: recommendations to buy a apple phone when surfing nokia phones. Help decide. Ex: people who viewed this ended up buying. Complete the purchase experience. Ex: cases for phones, laptop bags etc. Excite or wow. Ex: New Neil Gaiman novel etc. Recommendation system= data + algorithms. 4. CUSTOMER DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS AND CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR MODELLING Flipkarts customers fall in to the categories of youth, avid book readers, technology enthusiasts and online shoppers. Therefore, it has carefully demarcated and segmented each of the demographic categories and modelled the customer behaviour to understand their needs and preferences. It creates data models from the following sources: Bought history Browse history Compare history Bought items Wish list items Rated products Cart additions

CUSTOMER VALUE ASSESSMENT

Value assessment at Flipkart is done through various metrics such as: Click-through-rates o Relevance/ quality. o Visibility Click-to-order o Quality o Confidence A/B Framework A/B framework is used to measure the success of web marketing programs as it allows multiple versions of the site to be live simultaneously, thus enabling the company to conduct live experiments by drawing off a considerable portion of traffic and analysing the results. Both components of measurements i.e. metrics and A/B work hand-in-hand. The metrics tool exists in the form of a dashboard that measures the website's performance on various parameters. For example, if the transaction rate falls below a certain limit, systems are immediately alerted, whereas with A/B, engineers can rapidly implement their ideas.

Survey Emailer requesting customers for feedback with the Subject line Help us give you better service