Defiant Industries Jamnagar Case Study

1. Analyze the functioning of the service provided by

Defiant Telecom to their mobile telephone clients using
WILL technology?
Ans:
Blueprint of service provided by Defiant telecom.

Ambu Bhai launched Defiant Telecoms at Jamnagar towards the

end of 2001. The company was to provide limited mobility
through technology called WILL. This was a cheaper alternative
and the government had been kind to it by offering liberal terms
to the companies offering limited mobility using this technology.
Defiant Telecoms launched mobile phones based on WILL
technology and therefore offered limited mobility.
Below are the services provided by defiant telecom to their
customers.
1. Front office/Line of interaction
a. Front office was managing pre-sales as well as post
sales customer support.
b. There were lot of issues in pre and post sales of phones.

c. Customer engagement/loyalty not managed properly.

I. Presale issues
a. There were not enough phones available to
distribute to customer due to lack of solid
infrastructure.
b. These instruments were specially made and were
meant only for the network of Defiant Telecoms.
Hence every client who entered Defiant Telecom,
had to create a long-term unbreakable relationship
with the company by having to buy these
exclusive handsets.
II. Postsales issues
a. Post sales there were lot of issues related to
working on phone which should have been
resolved properly, which is missing in this case.
2. Back office
a. Bills were managed through back office which were
faulty. This was really annoying for the customers.
3. The launch of the service was well organized and was
aggressively advertised over the TV, through bill boards and
advertisement in press. The service appeared to be almost
at par with the fixed line telephone expenses.
2. Were the problems due to the needs of customer base
that starved of connectivity or was it due to the
personality of Ambu Bhai?
Ans: The problems were due to mismanagement of entire
portfolio by Ambu Bhai.
1. Deficiant was not having a plan of launch or demand
forecasting i.e. how many connections will be needed at the
time of launch.

2. Scaling of increase in customer was not at all planned. After

certain amount of customers service started crashing.
3. Combination of Operations & Activities (planning, Organizing,
control) that is Manufacturing process was not set properly.
4. Failure of Service-system design Matrix.
5. After sales service was really bad.
3. What went wrong and how can the service be set right
now?
Ans: There are many things which went wrong. Here is the
analysis in a nutshell.
1. Bookings were pouring in due to very low cost telecom
packages. There were long queues in many big cities outside
Defiant Telecom offices. Many customers had to spend a full
working day to get a Defiant Telecom mobiles telephone
connection. This was really annoying in terms of customers
as they are not habitual to long wait time.
2. Product development process of Conception generation,
Design, Development and Production is not followed
properly.
3. The network had just not been planned for the quantum of
connections it was being called upon to provide/handle. The
growth rate was frightening and the network engineers were
sure that the ability to get calls connected to and from
mobile telephones of Defiant Telecom network will become
unacceptable very shortly.
4. Connectivity actually deteriorated to much worst levels than
those anticipated by Defiant Telecom team.
5. There were serious problems with the billing software of the
system. This resulted in bills being faulty and being delayed.
Many subscribers received bills bunched together. There
were too many billing errors.
6. Another mistake made was, the phone instruments were
distributed were specially made and meant only for the
network of Defiant Telecoms. Customer has to pay money for

those hand-sets but they cannot change the service provider

as well.
7. Lastly the other mobile telephone service providers
complained to the telecom regulatory authority about WILL
system being given better commercial terms. Defiant
Telecom managed to salvage the situation by paying hefty
sum to the government as penalty. This additional burden
had to be passed on to the subscribers. This was done by
giving full mobility to the subscribers. The bill started
becoming more and more inflated and subscribers were truly
fed up.
8. In a nutshell due to all these issues customer was very
dismayed regarding Defiant Telecom.
Here are some of the inputs to restore service.
1. Letter of Apology will be sent immediately.
2. Scale up the infrastructure ASAP to take the load the existing
customer which will ensure that existing customers are
happy.
3. For time being till all services are restored properly, new
connections can be kept on hold which will loosen the extra
burden on the existing system.
4. Ensure we are giving a very good customer support to the
customer.
5. Parallely as service is getting established, we need to look
into the billing issue resolution.
6. Will make customer support very strong which will satisfy
customer queries.
4. What are the lessons Reliance JIO can learn from
Defiant Industries?
Ans: Here are some lesson learnt for Reliance JIO.
1. Understand demand forecasting for next 1 years. Based on
that

a. Ensure your network/Infrastructure is ready to take the

load.
b. Ensure based on load capacity, SIM cards should be
issued without handset.
2. Ensure good customer relationship through fast responding
customer care center.
3. Publish how many connections can be given in a month so
that customer did not need to wait, as time has changed, the
waiting customer will spread a bad word of mouth.
4. Ensure billing system is giving proper bills.
5. Monthly collection of bills. This was a major issue in Reliance
telecommunication in past.
6. As telecom is an oligopoly market, rates should be
competitive, not very low, and not very high.
7. Combination of Operations & Activities (planning, Organizing,
control) that is Manufacturing process is set properly.
8. Service-system design Matrix implementation.
9. After sales service should be very good to ensure they will
get customer loyalty. Customer engagement is also very
important.
10. Product development process of Conception generation,

Design, Development and Production should be followed

properly so that there are no issues with product quality.