Rediff.com is one of the most used Internet portals focusing on India and the global Indian community. Currently, Rediff consists of interest specific channels, extensive community features, local language editions, sophisticated search capabilities, and online shopping. Rediff.com also provides users with extensive Internet community offerings, which include e-mail, chat, instant messaging and personal homepages, all tailored to Indian interests. The site has developed its offerings based on the demands and the requirements of its users. The company also has a US edition of its site, with content more relevant to the Indian community in the United States. Rediff was a pioneer in offering e-commerce transactions in India by tying up with Citibank Suvidha. Recently, it has added multilingual services to its website.

Rediff.com is a classic dotcom success story of India. It has always been a leader in spotting opportunities in the Internet space and moving into it with a speed which is crucial for online success. Today Rediff, because of its speed of deployment, has many firsts tucked under its belt. First to offer B2C transactions, one of the first to offer chat and e-mail facilities, multilingual offerings,... the list could go on. But, it is where it is as a result of years of hardwork and Rediff’s endeavor to keep the learning curve as flat as possible.

The Situation

Rediff was founded in 1996, when the now famous word ‘dotcom’ was still unheard of in India. It was quick to realize that there was a new customer profile in the making - the e-customer. And the e-customer profile called for a complete paradigm shift in the concept of customer service. The e-customer will reach you when and where he wants to at his own terms; at the time convenient to him. This virtual customer will defy all customer profiling done hitherto and will demand prompt and quality e-service 24x7, round the year. And if he fails to get that, all he has to do is to click on his mouse once - and move on to the competitor. When Rediff.com initiated free e-mail, chat and e-commerce transactions at its website, it was well aware of the criticality of the then new concept, "e-customer service". As e-commerce transactions at Rediff.com picked up speed, the company realized an acute need for a tool to manage, track, capture customer information, create customer histories and respond to the e-customers, all in Internet time.

The Solution

Talisma helped Rediff.com develop an e-service strategy that looked at defining and establishing quality 24x7 e-customer service parameters.

At Rediff.com, customers and surfers send in their queries, transaction information and feedback to Rediff.com through e-mail. All e-mail related to e-shopping is received at a common e-mail ID shopping@rediff.com. The e-mail is then routed to different queues based on predefined rules set in Talisma. With the volume of e-mail flowing into the organization addressing varied range of subjects rising, Rediff claims Talisma came across as a big help. It provided a transparent shared inbox environment where the CSR’s (Customer Service Reps) could work in an open and transparent customer service setup.

"Unlike phone support, with Talisma one can track the customer service process at any point in time. One can pull out mails from Talisma’s virtual filing system, pin down errors, if any, and take prompt remedial actions. Also, Talisma’s canned and rapid response features have helped make the entire customer service process much more efficient," points out Balachandran K Unni, Director - e-shopping, Rediff.com.

Rediff was also impressed with the extremely user friendly graphical user interface (GUI) of the product. Balachandran adds, "The tool came as a blessing to us exactly when we required it most. The ease-of-use kept the learning curve flat which was important to us as we were up and running in a matter of days, and that’s saying a lot for an enterprise level software."

Today, Rediff.com deploys Talisma at their Mumbai office to handle queries pertaining to e-commerce transactions. The portal has today deployed 4 licenses of Talisma Dialog, the e-service module with 5 people offering support round the clock from customer support, operations and technical divisions. Talisma enables Rediff.com track, thread and log all critical e-commerce transaction information in the Talisma database resulting in prompt and comprehensive response to customer queries.

Rediff.com also makes use of Talisma’s outbound marketing module, Talisma Campaign. The module enables Rediff to proactively reach out to potential and current customers with product/services information, news about new features, upgradations, launches and promos.

Rediff deploys the e-marketing module twice a week to disseminate information to thousands of contacts from their database across the country. When you speak to Balachandran about the numbers involved, his eyes light up. "We receive upto 250 e-mails a day related to e-shopping queries. Moreover, we extensively deploy Talisma Campaign, the e-marketing module to disseminate eDM’s (electronic direct mailers) to a focussed database. On an average we send out over 1,50,000 personalized eDM’s to a targeted database. What’s more is that we can actually track the effectiveness of every eDM campaign and analyze it against varied parameters offered to us in Talisma’s rich reporting feature. This is truly a closed loop e-marketing exercise where nothing falls through the cracks."

"We use Talisma Campaign to send out new offers like ‘Deal of the Week’ or ‘New Product Launch’, promotion schemes like ‘Pre-advance Offering’ or schemes and events. We sent over 2,50,000 personalized and focussed eDM’s on Father’s Day. Talisma helped us select this database from over 1.5 million names in our database," adds Balachandran.

Nike has tied up with Rediff to open a Nike premium store online. This is Nike’s first tie-up with any website worldwide to offer their products online. Talisma will help Rediff select and send out the online store launch invite to over 1,50,000 contacts from its database. Balachandran says, "To top it all, Talisma helps us generate comprehensive reports on a weekly basis about kinds of enquiries from customers. We can correlate our Order Management System based on these reports giving us current status of orders."

The Future

Rediff.com has charted a growth plan to ensure that e-customer service maintains the website’s stickiness. Discussions are on to merge all customer contact points i.e. e-mail, live chat and the 1-600 number into one. Balachandran is keen on a single RediffSupport Cell integrating all touch points into one. Also, with the experience Rediff.com has had with Talisma, it is looking to upscale the number of licenses quickly. As a first step towards that, Rediff.com has recently purchased Talisma’s new offering, Talisma Chat. Talisma Chat ensures 24x7 proactive and reactive live chat at the customer’s website. With Talisma Chat, Rediff.com will be able to assign dedicated 24x7 Customer Service Reps on its website who can engage the customer in live chat and proactively offer product and services information. So, the next time you visit Rediff.com and out pops a chat window saying, "Hello, I am Ruchi from Rediff. Can I help you?", you would know that Talisma is working at Rediff.com, 24x7 live - just the way you wished it were on the Internet.