Indian Railways’ New Cash Cow; Rail Sampark IVR Service
Last week, Bharat BPO announced its plans to introduce advertisements to the IVR service of Indian Railways- Rail Sampark. Bharat BPO manages the call center operations for Indian Railways since 2007. This post looks like why such a move would bring value to advertiser’s money.
Bharat BPO who handles the call centers for Indian Railways decided to monetize the inbound inquiry call. It plans to run a 10 second advertisement during the time which system takes to retrieve the information like reservation status, train running position, accommodation availability and fare. Currently the service is available in 11 languages- Hindi, English, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bangla, Oriya and Assamese. The call centers are based in Noida, Ahmedabad, Mysore and Kolkata. Bharat BPO also offers SMS alerts to inform consumers about their PNR status. The call to the call center (dial 139) is local all over India.
In the below block diagram, as an example we have two towns- Town A and Town X. Business establishments (lodge from town A and mall from town X) who would like to advertise in Rail Sampark can send their advertisement to an Aggregator (which could be a part of Bharat BPO). Along with the ad content, the advertisers can choose the time and other demographic data available to target niche customers.
Based on the PNR (Passenger Name Record), the system could get information of the travel plans of the customers. And based on the origin of the call, the system could understand the locality and other demographics associated with the caller available with the telephone exchange. The advertisement can be in any of 11 languages mentioned above. By choosing readily available information and local language, advertisements can be targeted to niche customers. These advertisements get the undivided attention of the customers.
As an example- Two days before travel, a user from Town X (going to Town A) makes a call to 139 to confirm the reservation status. The user could be made to listen to an advertisement of a discount sale in a mall near the user’s locality (Town X), or advertisements of restaurants or lodges in Town A, where the user is traveling to.
Lets assume that on an average advertisers have to spend 10 paise per 10 seconds for an IVR advertisement. Based on current volume of calls of 4 lakh (0.4 million) per day, the net revenue would be 0.4 lakh rupees (0.04 million rupees) per day. Based on the year end projection of 128 lakh (12.8 million) calls per day, the net revenue would be 12.8 lakh rupees (1.28 million rupees) per day. This is in addition to the local call charges.
It is not clear what kind of profit sharing plan will be in place between Bharat BPO and Indian Railways for IVR advertising. Customers would be interested to know if the calls would be free, after the advertisements are introduced. Advertisers may have to find creative ways to convey a message in 10 seconds.
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[…] Also See: Cash Cards account for 28.8% of all online transactions in IRCTC (May 2008) | Indian Railways’ New Cash Cow; Rail Sampark IVR Service (April 2008) […]