Wildcraft Collaborates with IBM to Drive Higher Customer Advocacy

IBM has announced that Wildcraft India Pvt. Ltd, India’s foremost company in the manufacturing and distribution of head-to-toe products for trek-to-travel solutions, has selected IBM to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as-a-service-platform to drive customer advocacy and enhance customer experience.

The solution developed by IBM Services is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) capabilities and analyses customer interactions with Wildcraft India Pvt. Ltd at multiple touch-points. This 360-degree view of every shopper will help the company provide its customers a personalized shopping experience across all its channels.

The CRM-as-a-service solution ties into ‘The Circle’, Wildcraft’s customer engagement program which provides consumers with a single window to get all relevant information about the brands, products and services of Wildcraft. This initiative is part of the company’s growth plan to drive higher customer engagement by understanding their preferences.

As part of this new CRM solution, Wildcraft is introducing a virtual chatbot on their website and via WhatsApp. This virtual chatbot will be available in English and eight Indian regional languages (Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Oriya, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam). The virtual chatbot will handle a high volume of inquiries, from general FAQ’s to questions about multiple topics including products, policies and procedures and even customer complaints.

“At Wildcraft, we have always believed in harnessing the power of the unknown. In the last couple of months, we have been able to reach out to some of the remotest areas in the country to enable everyone to be safe and be ready. A lot of these consumers are first time users of Wildcraft and it was necessary to create a mechanism to reach out to them effectively. Partnering with IBM allows us a robust technology driven platform to understand our consumers and their wants. This will help us make our products better and customise them according to the larger needs,” said Gaurav Dublish & Siddharth Sood, Co-Founders, Wildcraft India Pvt. Ltd.

“We are proud to partner with Wildcraft India Pvt. Ltd to drive customer advocacy for higher brand affinity. IBM’s CRM-as-a-service platform has equipped Wildcraft with a 360-degree view to map their customers’ journey - from prospect, to customer, to brand advocate. Every customer will be nurtured at each stage to harness the real power of CRM, in today’s challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Kamal Singhani, Managing Partner, Global Business Services, IBM India/South Asia.

The virtual chatbot will authenticate users and facilitate user-specific information and transactions. In addition to understanding the intent of customer conversation through natural language processing (NLP), it will analyse the sentiment of customer responses and transfer the conversation to a live agent, if need be.

FAITH Associations Want the Negative American Travel Advisory to India, be Addressed

 * Advisory of 4 to India is the most severe 

* A do not travel will adversely affect Indian tourism’s restart options 

* The USA is the strategically most critical travel market for India

* India is bunched with the likes of Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen 

Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality, the policy federation of all the national associations representing the complete tourism, travel and hospitality industry of India (ADTOI, ATOAI, FHRAI, HAI, IATO, ICPB, IHHA, ITTA, TAAI, TAFI) & cause partner AIRDA has urgently requested the negative travel advisory from the USA to India to be addressed. 

The United States of America currently has a travel advisory, rated level 4 for India (as on 23rd Aug 2020). On a scale of 1-4 this is the highest level of risk rating, carrying with it the advice of ‘do not travel’. As stated, reasons for the same, apart from restrictive COVID 19 protocols, the rating highlights terrorism, crimes against women and insurgency among others as concerns. 

FAITH Associations have highlighted that the USA is the most important long haul source market for India for most segments of travel. Over the past 10 years, it would have probably brought in between 10- 15 million tourists who could have been instrumental in creating an estimated 40 million foreign tourist visits across Indian states. The travelers from the USA also have one of the highest average stays in India of 29+ days as against the average of 22 + days for all source markets. This is a very strategic source of economic and job multiplier for India. 

Some of the few countries that were reflecting in this category as on 23rd Aug include Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen etc. This is perceptually extremely poor for India.

As India has begun the process of opening up its air corridors, such an advisory for India is detrimental to kickstarting all leisure, business & mice tourists from the USA. Additionally, travel advisory as such from the United States of America tends to send a wrong signal for the rest of the developed countries as they start opening up their international air travel.

This advisory appears to have been last updated on 6th August 2020.  FAITH Associations have requested the tourism minister to urgently take it up with Minister of External Affairs, for him to take up with his American counterpart for an immediate revision.

The favourable revision of the travel advisory would be a big boost in beginning the process of creating a positive sentiment for travel, which will slowly put in motion revival for the inbound tourism industry

About FAITH: FAITH, Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality, is the National Federation of the 10 National Tourism, Travel and Hospitality organisations of India. These associations are ADTOI, ATOAI, FHRAI, HAI, IATO, ICPB, IHHA, ITTA, TAAI & TAFI

FAITH, on behalf of the whole tourism industry engages in key policy and strategy ideation with Central and State Governments of India for growth of the Indian tourism industry.

FAITH has worked with the governments on tourism components of various national strategic policies. These include e-visa, GST strategy , Monuments PPP policy, NITI Aayog vision document, Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20 ( SEIS), of economic surveys, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017& 2018, Udaan policy, Union Budget discussions with Finance Minister for budgets for 2015, 2016, 2017& 2018, cruise tourism policy, I respect women badges, tourism negotiations for trade blocs of SAARC, RCEP , Indo-US , Indo-Morocco , State Tourism policies for Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi, J&K & Punjab, brainstorming sessions with aviation, railways, commerce, finance, BIs , road and highways, waterways among other national initiatives.

Kingfisher slashes air fares between 21 to 65 per cent

Kingfisher Airlines said it had slashed air fares between 21 per cent and 65 per cent on various routes across its network with effect from January 1, 2009.

"This is consistent with Kingfisher Airlines' mission to aggressively pursue increase in market share and to deliver India's only five star experience at highly competitive fares", a Kingfisher press statement said here on Friday.

The airlines will also offer significant discounts to its traditional corporate customer base, it said.

Its frequent flier programme, King Club, will now offer incentives and rewards including free overseas travel on its new launched international routes.

"The declining prices of ATF facilitate such consumer-benefitting initiatives that will also stimulate the industry", CEO and Chairman of the airlines, Vijay Mallya said in the statement.

"We will aggressively pursue sales and share and this will help sustain increased load factors in the shoulder season between February and April", he said.

Source: Agencies

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