A Working Report On The Customer Service Department of

A WORKING REPORT ON THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF
GRAMEENPHONE LIMITED
By
Md. Ashek Uddaula Siddiqui
ID: 0620364
An Internship Report Presented in Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Degree
Bachelor’s of Business Administration (BBA)
INDEPENDENT UNIVERSITY, BANGLADESH

December, 2010

By
ID: 0620364
Has been approved
December 05, 2010
______________________________________
Farzana Chowdhury
Lecturer, Management
School of Business
Independent University, Bangladesh
Letter of Transmittal
December 05, 2010
Farzana Chowdhury
Lecturer, Management
School of Business
Independent University, Bangladesh
Subject: Submission of internship report.
Dear Madam:
Please find herewith my internship report titled “WORKING REPORT ON THE CUSTOMER
SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF GRAMEENPHONE LIMITED”. I have prepared this report as
part of my internship program. The report has been compliant as per your requirement and those
set by the organization. The internship project has given me the opportunity to explore one of the
most important aspects of the customer service division of Grameenphone and expand my
knowledge thereby.
I ardently hope that this paper will live up to your expectation and you will appreciate my efforts.
With kind regards,
___________________

ID: 0620364
Abstract
I have selected Grameenphone Ltd. for attaining on-field experience as an intern for a period of
twelve weeks as a part of my internship program of Bachelors of Business Administration
requirements. During the internship in Grameenphone I was assigned in assortment of tasks. In
the following report my day to day activities during my internship days in Grameenphone
Contact center are described. I have tried to neatly sort all my activities separately to describe a
clearer picture of my responsibilities assigned by my supervisor at Grameenphone. In most of the
cases that are described in the report practiced the natures of individual customer query,
complain and service request and also sorted out my task in a specific manner. To conclude the
report I tried to express my experiences that were reflected by my academic career in the
internship tenure.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my internship program supervisor Farzana Chowdhury for her careful
guidance and instruction which actually enabled me to accomplish the internship report
successfully.
I would like to thank my supervisor Mr. Shafiqur Rahman for giving me the opportunity to
perform my internship program under his supervision in the Business segment of the Customer
Service Division, Grameenphone Ltd.
I would also like to express my humble gratitude to all of the colleagues of my team members
who not only helped me to prepare this report but also helped me with their guidance and by
sharing their valuable knowledge.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
1.1 Company Background 01
1.2 Company Vision 02
1.3 Company Mission 02
1.4 Company Values 02
1.5 The Shareholders of Grameenphone Ltd 02
2. Products & Services of Grameenphone Ltd 03
2.1 The Products 03
2.2 The Services 03
3. Division at Grameenphone Ltd 04
3.1 Customer Service Departments 05
3.2 Contact Center 07
3.3 Assigned responsibilities 10
4. Observations and Recommendations 11
4.1 Some scope of implementation would be helpful 12
5. Conclusion 12
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure no, 1: Grameenphone Organogram.
Figure No, 2: Contact Center Organogram

REPORT ON THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF GRAMEENPHONE LIMITED 1
1. Introduction
1.1 Company Background

Grameenphone widely known as GP is the leading telecommunication service provider in
Bangladesh with more than 25 million subscribers (as of June 2010). Grameen Phone is a joint
venture company between Norwegian Telecom giant ‘Telenor’ and ‘Grameen Telecom, a non-
profit sister concern of the internationally acclaimed microfinance organization and community
development bank Grameen Bank. Telenor owns 62% and Grameen Telecom owns 38% share of
GrameenPhone.
Grameenphone was the first company to introduce GSM technology in Bangladesh. It also
established the first 24-hour Call Center to support its subscribers, though it has changed now.
With the slogan “Stay Close”, stated goal of Grameenphone is to provide affordable telephony to
the entire population of Bangladesh. Due to the heavy competition in the market and low
acquisition rate, currently the company is focusing more to satisfy the existing customers.
Grameenphone, the market leader in the industry, is trying to establish a benchmark in terms of
customer service in the mobile phone industry. They have established a customer care hotline
which operates 24/7 round the year but now 17 hrs a day. There are more than 500 customer care
touch points naming GPC, GPCF and STP to serve their client all over the country.
Along with their core service, Airtime, Grameen Phone also offers high speed Internet, Health
line, Bill Pay and many other value added services.
1.2 Company Vision

The vision statement of Grameen Phone is simple-
“We are here to help”
This means that Grameenphone helps their customers to get the best out of communications
services in their daily lives. “We’re here to help” isn’t a slogan; it’s a way of life for all the
stakeholders of Grameenphone.
1.3 Company Mission

“We will lead the industry and exceed customer expectations by providing the best wireless
services, making life and business easier”.
1.4 Company Values
¾ MAKE IT EASY
We are practical. Everything we produce should be easy to understand and use. Because we
never forget we are trying to make our customers' lives easier.
¾ BE INSPIRING
We are creative. We bring energy and imagination to our work. We want to be a partner in the
development of our community. We are passionate about our business, customers and our
country.
¾ KEEP PROMISES
Everything we set out to do should work. If it does not, we are there to put things right. We are
about delivery, not over promising - actions not words.
¾ BE RESPECTFUL
We acknowledge and respect the local culture. We are respectful and professional in regard to all
our interactions, both internally and externally. We are open, helpful and friendly.
1.5 The Shareholders of Grameenphone
The shareholders of Grameenphone contribute their unique, in-depth experience in both

telecommunications and development.
The international shareholder brings technological and business management expertise while the
local shareholder provides a presence throughout Bangladesh and a deep understanding of its
economy. Both are dedicated to Bangladesh and its struggle for economic progress and have a
deep commitment to Grameenphone and its mission to provide affordable telephony to the entire
population of Bangladesh. Telenor holds 55.8 per cent of Grameenphone, with Grameen
Telecom Corporation owning the remaining 34.2 per cent. The rest of the shares belong
to general retail and institutional investors. Telenor has played a pioneering role in development
of cellular communications in Bangladesh.
2. Products & Services of Grameenphone Ltd.
2.1 The Products

GrameenPhone mainly provides the telephony service to the customers. But in the recent years
GP’s is showing interest to capture the whole customer insight by offering them different type of
products. It offers products like Smile, Djuice, Business Solution, Ekota, GP Public Phone, BPO
for GPPP, Village Phone and Xplore. It also offers internet modem along with an internet sim
that may be pre-paid or post-paid.
2.2 The Services
GrameenPhone also introduced a number of value-added services during the last 13 years. It may
be noted that GrameenPhone was the first mobile phone operator in the country to introduce
value-added services like Voice Mail Service, Text Mail Service and fax and data transmission
services, in particular Internet access, downloadable content and ring-back tone services.
GrameenPhone also launched the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Other services include
International Roaming, SMS (short message service), SMS Push-Pull Services, Voice Mail
Service (VMS), Voice SMS, Web to SMS, Cell E-mail, MMS, EDGE/GPRS, GP World,
BlackBerry services, Welcome Tunes, Call Block Service, Dynamic Pricing, E – Bill, Music
Radio, Study Line, Mobile Backup Service and Missed Call Alert. People’s life is now much
easier as they are getting services as per their necessities. Cell phones are now something more
than just a cell phone. It’s a close pal of many of us.
Figure no, 1: Grameenphone Organogram
3. Division at Grameenphone Ltd
Grameenphone Ltd. has over 4800 employees working at different levels of organizational
hierarchy. There are 9 functional departments engaged in managing these employees- with the
aim to meet organizational objectives. Grameenphone follows a mix of centralized and
decentralized decision making process-where the top management mainly takes all the strategic
decisions while the functional managers have flexibility to take decisions by themselves on a day
to day basis. At GrameenPhone the Managing Director is assisted by 9 Senior Executives who
are heading different departments in the strategic decision making process. The departmental
names of GrameenPhone are given below:
Corporate Affairs Division
Customer Service Division
Finance Division
Human Resource Division
Information Technology Division
Internal Audit Division
Internal Control Office Division
Marketing Division
Network Division
Public Relation Division
Sales Division
3.1 Customer Service Departments
Customer service department is a part of commercial division. From the birth of the department
it tries to meet the demand of the near about 23 million subscribers regarding their queries &
complains. GrameenPhone customer service Hot Line was the first 24-hour Contact Center in
Bangladesh. Like other Telecom operator GrammenPhone has a special service for the people to
call the hotline for after sales service, solution & complain regarding the SIM (Subscriber
Identification Module) operation.
GrameenPhone customer service department has 5 major segments
1. Contact Center: There are two segments within the contact center, the first one is the
Consumer segment and the other one is the Business segment. The Consumer segment deals with
all the queries and complains that come from all the subscribers other than the corporate or
business subscribers. On the other hand, the Business segment generates more than 60% of the
revenue for the company so, GP provides special customer service to their corporate clients and
they get the priority in getting the service over 121(hotline) without being in queue. Their
comments and requests are taken seriously and solved with high priority.
2. Resource Management: This segment is known as RM.This is the department which assigns
duty to all the employees of customer service division. Forecasting, on how different plans are to
be executed by the employees are done by them. All the backend planning regarding customer
service are planned by them which is then executed by the employees of customer service
division.
3. Complaint Management: This department handles all kinds of complain related issues. All the
fraudulent activities done from a GP SIM and the complaints regarding these issues are dealt by
this department. This is a very dedicated team which makes sure that all the complaints are
looked after.
4 .People &.process Development: This department arranges internal training of all new and
existing employees. Their job is to keep all the customer service employees updated regarding
the latest service and offerings. All new software trainings for employees are also arranged by
them.
5. Telesales: This department sets a target on selling F&F, missed call alert service, call block
service and different edge services through 121 hotline. They prepare targets for each customer
managers who are directly interacting with the subscribers. They prepare modules and selling
techniques for customer managers which help the customer managers to better perform their
duties.
Contract center also has some segments such as business segment, Consumer, emerging, bill pay,
EDGE & BlackBerry Services and online communication. Responsibility of the Customer
Manager include –
¾ Inform the subscriber about new service & promotion.
¾ Conduct direct sales activities of various service offered by GrameenPhone such as –

Missed Call Alert, EDGE package, FnF, Welcome tunes and other value added services.
Provide service related solutions of different problems arising from Voice call connectivity, data
connection setup and connectivity, SMS connectivity and other VAS activation or deactivation
over the hot line 121.
3.2 Contact Center
A call centre is a place used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of
requests by telephone. GrameenPhone is a flexible call centre model doing both inbound and
outbound calls serving our different customers according to their needs. Currently there are
around 874 customer managers in our call centre. Contact Centers can be divided into various
categories based on their strategy of function and nature of service. But there are mainly two
types of Contact Centers such as inbound call centre and outbound call centre.
¾ Inbound Contact Centers: In an inbound call centre, customers generally place their
queries about product information and report any technical glitches; Inbound Contact
Centers are often a little easier on the employee because the caller initiates the first
contact, often calling for help with a product, or responding to an advertisement..
However, the emphasis is often on 'upwelling' the customer to a more expensive product
or package as part of responding to the customer’s original request.
¾ Outbound Contact Centers: Outbound Contact Centers are usually works under;
1. Up Selling- Sometimes we do call subscribers to sell a number of Value Added

Services such as EDGE P1, EDGE P5, EDGE P6, Call Block Service, Missed
Call Alert service etc.
2. Campaign promotion- Sometimes when a new campaign is launched, a number

of inbound agents have to call up random subscribers to inform them about the
campaign. If they asks as we also activate the promotional offers in their SIM.
3. Transformer – A number of times users of another operator is called as per

management decision. Usually that subscriber’s monthly usage rate is rather high.
So we try to persuade that subscriber to use our service for trial basis. If that
subscriber is happy with the service received then he might think of using our
service in a permanent basis.
Responsibilities of Contact Center Agent or Customer Manager
¾ Provide one-stop quality Customer Services to ensure positive customer

experiences.
¾ Conducting service awareness and telesales to retain the existing customers and
acquire potential customers.
¾ Maintain targeted KPI on a regular basis
¾ To be more caring, reliable, inspiring and friendly with the subscribers to enhance
and maintain GrameenPhone Brand promise
¾ Capture customer insights, follow-up and escalate critical issues / complaints and
provide timely feedback to ensure customer satisfaction.
Customer Service
Gjermund Lia
Business Control*
Donna Mariam Sitwat
Strategy & Planning Coordinator

Ferdous Ahmed Farhana Sabrin
Quality Assurance
Bushra Faruq
Ummi Nazam
Resource Complaint Contact Center Telesales People & Process

Management Management Stian Syvertsen Development
Golam Kibria Sabrina Afrin Smita Yeasir Mahmood
Service Operations,
10th Floor
Mostafa Jamal Galib
Service Operations,
9th Floor
Shafiqur Rahman
Md. Monjurul
Karim
Service Operations,
Md.Ashek Uddaula
8th Floor
Siddiqui
Figure No, 2: Contact Center Organogram

3.3 Assigned responsibilities:
I was assigned as an intern in the Corporate and Business Segment in the contact center under
Customer Service Division. I had to deal with Grameenphone corporate subscribers using both
prepaid and postpaid SIM cards. This SIM cards are not owned by individual subscribers. This
SIM cards are sold to a company and owned by the company. In order to buy these SIM cards,
the company needs to have a trade license. After showing the trade license the interested
company needs to do an agreement with Grameenphone Ltd in order to buy business solution
prepaid and postpaid SIM cards for their company. After the SIM cards are sold, the company
selects an authorized person who then represents his company to GP. Subscribers of that
particular company can call GP hot line or visit GPC for service but to avail a new package or to
change any package the subscriber needs to contact with the authorized person. After subscriber
contacts the authorized person, then the authorized person sends a fax or mail to business
segment of customer service division. Only after receiving a confirmation mail or fax from the
authorized person, a particular service can be activated or deactivated of a business solution SIM.
In other words, Grameenphone cannot activate or deactivate any service of a corporate SIM
without the consent of the authorized person of the particular company. If a subscriber is facing
service related problem from the SIM then only a subscriber’s complain can be taken care of
directly and worked up on without the permission of the authorized person. I had to complete
the following set of activities both routine and non-routine basis during my internship.
Escalating the activation/deactivation assortment of services

Updating the connection status of a corporate SIM after receiving the authenticating mail
from the authorized corporate signatory personnel and Grameenphone credit management
team.
Attending international roaming queries, request and complaints and providing feedback
to the designated agent of the roaming customer.
Handling mobile backup service related queries, request and complaints.
Routine tasks:
My routine tasks were regarding International Roaming, Call Block Service and giving
feedback on customer’s queries, such as bills, fnf activation and EDEGE activation.
4. Observations and Recommendations
In my observation Grameenphone gives more emphasis on customer service. Customer service is

not only after sales service but also an income source for Grameenphone. So now a day’s
customer service division is important like other division. All the customer manager of customer
service is very efficient, energetic and educated. They all are trained well to handle customers.
The quality of service is very good. The environment of the office is also very good. The office
setup is very modern and technological advance. All the calls from subscribers come in to
automated answering machines which call IVR. Subscriber has to wait for a human agent. All
the computer and pabx system is up to date, so customer manager can provide service very
smoothly. The main problem is Grameenphone has a large number of subscribers and the ratio of
subscribers and customers manager is large, so it is very difficult to handle the call pressure for
the customer manager. It is very painful for subscribers to wait a long time for getting the
service.
I have identified the following problems which can again be addressed from both internal and
external context.
Internal to the Contact Centre:

Employee dissatisfaction, Tools down, Lack of flexibility in work place, Complication in
execution, Roster related problem, Information mismatch, Complicated process flow.
External to the Contact Center:

Subscriber end errors, User unfriendly product and tariff, Natural calamities, Network failure,
ever changing subscriber need, Miscommunication.
In recommendation part I want to recommend something to betterment of customer service.
¾ Decrease the call pressure to increase customer satisfaction.

¾ Give more training to the customer manager so that they can increase their skills.
¾ Create a strong IVR (interactive voice response) so that subscriber get more service from
IVR without the help of human agent.
¾ Free the call charge when subscribers are in queue.
¾ Effectively make the break plan so that the customer manager can remove stress.
¾ Increase the number of employee to reduce call pressure.

¾ Motivate the employee by different motivational factor because it is a monotonous job.
¾ Establish strong coordination among segments and design simple process.
¾ Efficient technological backup and Ensure timely and unique information through
Establish more authority at workplace.
¾ Provide health checkup specially eye and hearing checkup on a regular basis to the
employee.
¾ Give more benefit to the employee to reduce employee turnover.
¾ Reduce the time limit of solve complains of the subscribers to increase customer
satisfaction.
4.1 Some scope of implementation would be helpful:
¾ Increase Grameenphone Service point to serve more people.

¾ Use the easiest communication method to reach all level of subscribers.
¾ Recruit skilled customer manager who can serve the subscriber with high quality.
¾ Provide training to the customer manager so that they can satisfy the customers.
¾ Recruit local people in local area so that they can understand local subscribers need.
¾ Use the latest technology to serve the subscribers more efficiently.
¾ Establish strong coordination among segments and design simple process.
¾ Efficient technological backup and Ensure timely and unique information through
Establish more authority at workplace.
5. Conclusion:
Getting an opportunity to do internship in the largest telecommunication company of

Bangladesh has been a great experience. It was a great honor for me to work in such a
professional company where everything is so organized and perfect. The corporate culture that I
learned from GP is a thing to be mentioned especially and adapting to it was a big challenge in
such an early stage of my career. Textual learning’s form university courses were helpful, but the
things learnt form real time work experience for the first time has indeed been a privilege.
Dealing with customer queries & complaints has certainly helped my interaction &
communication skills. To work in such a big organization was a pressure itself and adapting to
this pressure was also a new experience. After completion of my work tenure as an intern, I feel
blessed to have learned so many things in such a short span of time. New learning’s and helpful
attitude of colleagues is a thing to be remembered for a long time. I certainly believe this
experience of working in GP will help me to be professional in life and also work as an added
advantage for the years to come.
REFERANCES
(2010, November).Retrieved from Grameenphone:

https://wow.telenor.com/grameenphone/en/opco/Pages/history.aspx
(2010, November).Retrieved from Grameenphone: http://investor-

relations.grameenphone.com/Company-Facts.html

relations.grameenphone.com/Dividend.html

relations.grameenphone.com/Major-Shareholdings.html
(2010, November).Retrieved from Grameenphone:

https://wow.telenor.com/grameenphone/en/Pages/default.aspx

A Working Report On The Customer Service Department of

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

A Working Report On The Customer Service Department of

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A WORKING REPORT ON THE CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF

Md. Ashek Uddaula Siddiqui

An Internship Report Presented in Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree

Bachelor’s of Business Administration (BBA)

INDEPENDENT UNIVERSITY, BANGLADESH