"We have Always Focused Heavily on Growing our Market Leadership in the Enterprise CRM": Talisma

Talisma Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boca Raton- based Campus Management Corp, is the provider of digital customer engagement platform for a wide range of industries.

Talisma offers comprehensive solutions primed towards acquisition, servicing and retention of customers. Talisma boasts of the widest range of channel support from Digital channels like Email and Chat to Social Channels like Facebook and Twitter to all leading Instant Messaging Channels as well as traditional channels like Phone, SMS and Letter.

Raj Mruthyunjayappa manages operations for Campus Management across its Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa divisions and is Managing Director of Talisma Corporation Pvt. Ltd. He has successfully spearheaded Talisma’s foray into SaaS and cloud computing along with emerging frontiers such as social media marketing and enterprise mobility, as well as the launch of Citizen Relationship Management software solutions for public sector organizations.

Excerpts from an exclusive interaction with Dataquest:

What are some of the customer experience metrics you have been able to deliver on?

Let me first give you the business context for one of our customers. A leading private bank wanted to streamline business operations and processes to gain an integrated view of operations across business groups. Since the bank had expanded exponentially with a massive network across the country, it needed to revisit its communication strategy to ensure continued growth and success. It also needed to create new revenue streams, increase wallet share of existing customers, and continue to differentiate itself in the market place with very personalized customer service.

To tackle these objectives, this bank went in for Talisma’s customer facing experiential banking solution as well as an internal collaboration tool within the organization. The metrics of performance for Talisma’s solution include a increase of 60% in customer satisfaction levels, 70% increase in first time resolutions with a 50% increase in upsell and cross-sell opportunities from its existing customers.

Raj Mruthyunjayappa

So, you focus on industries such as banking where customer contact is multi -channel and customer experience is largely based on issue resolution.  What about high-touch industries where customer experience band is wider, where the whole product or service matters more?

Talisma serves many verticals beyond banking and financial services. Take for example, the hospitality segment. One of the largest luxury hotel chains in India was looking for a solution to empower its Guest Contact Centre team to effectively manage hotel reservations related queries, requests and issues raised by its aggressively growing guest base.

With Talisma’s Digital Engagement Platform there has been a 43% increase in guest satisfaction with an operational cost reduction of 24%. It has also helped the hotel chain drive collaboration across teams with ease of information sharing, enhanced monitoring and tracking, all of which are also available to the management. The hotel chain is thus able to live up to its reputation as a premier guest service provider and able to add and retain more guests.

How has Talisma’s run been in the Indian market?

Being the pioneers of CRM software in India, we have always focused heavily on growing our market leadership in the enterprise CRM and digital customer experience space. This focus has resulted in a significant effort and investment in product innovation and service delivery areas of the offering to provide the latest and best in class products to customers in both domestic and international markets.

Talisma has witnessed consistent growth in India and outside, both directly as well as through our partner network. Some of our key wins in the last year include – Indian Oil, Samsung, Bajaj Allianz, Idea Telecom and Tata Motors amongst others.

How do you differentiate yourselves from similar companies like Aspect, Genesys, CRMNext and larger companies like Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, SAP? What is the market landscape for the market Talisma is in?

Along with great products, Talisma has been providing its rich experience and expertise in implementing highly successful enterprise wide CRM projects across the globe for the last 18 years.

With full ownership of the solution from implementation to support, whether sold directly or through channels, Talisma leverages its experience to apply proven strategies and best practices that ensure the success of the solution.

Talisma boasts of the widest range of channel support from Digital channels like Email and Chat to Social Channels like Facebook and Twitter to all leading Instant Messaging Channels as well as traditional channels like Phone, SMS and Letter. Our built in Robotic Process Automation helps our customers to take their engagements to fulfillments whilst delivering a superior customer experience. Since our solution is built as a platform it enables our customers to be agile as well as plug in and modify their requirements as and when required.

What are some the future directions for innovation/ research at Talisma?

Talisma’s focus for the future revolves around enhancing the platform’s ability to help future-ready organisations address their customer experience challenges and equip them for continued success.

Robotics, both from a process automation as well as from a conversation agent (Bots) dominate our tech investments. Significant work is being done to augment the Omni-channel offering with bots that will be critical in improving the way our clients engage with their end customers thereby delivering immense value to both.