CRM - Minor Assignment.

Customer Relationship Management at Pantaloons

Introduction:
Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited, is a large Indian retailer, part of the Future Group, and operates in multiple retail formats in both, value and lifestyle, segments of the Indian consumer market. Headquartered in Mumbai, the company has over 1,000 stores across 71 cities in India and employs over 35,000 people and as of 2010, it was the country's largest listed retailer by market capitalization and revenue. The company separated its discount store business, which includes the Big Bazaar hypermarket and the Food Bazaar supermarket businesses, into Future Value Retail Ltd., its wholly owned subsidiary, so that the company may be listed independently. The companys brands include Pantaloons, a chain of fashion outlets, Big Bazaar, a hypermarket chain, and Food Bazaar, a supermarket chain. Some of the company's other regional brands include Depot, Shoe Factory, Brand Factory, Blue Sky, aLL, Top 10 and Star and Sitara.

Why CRM?
1. Pantaloons wanted to focus on more customer acquisition and customer retention. 2. They wanted to convert daily footfalls into loyal customers. 3. To provide extraordinary service and greater customer satisfaction. 4. To increase the customer share.

CRM at Pantaloons:
In the entire Future Group only Pantaloons is following customer loyalty program. The CRM is practiced through GREEN CARD program. Green Card loyalty program contributes approximately 55% in profitability of Pantaloons across country. It maintains a customer database of 21 lakhs across India. Software used by the Pantaloons is the Customer Loyalty Program. Green Card Program: The Green Card program is brought in to build in customer database and better customer retention. With the help of this Green Card program customers are informed about the loyalty program brought in by Pantaloons. To become a Green Card member initially a customer has to fill a form of their details along with an enrollment payment of Rs. 100/- . While filling this form various customer details like name, address, date of birth, phone number and email id, income etc. are collected to form a database. As soon as the customer enrolls for the loyalty program special enrollment benefits are provided such as gift voucher worth Rs. 200, 5% discounts are provided on Fridays and various discount coupons of Pizza hut, YO China and VLCC etc. are provided. The Green Card program works on the principle of shopping and earning rewards and depending on the purchases made, customers are promoted to various levels of membership. This loyalty program is divided hierarchically into four different levels which are 1 star members, 3 star members, 5 star members and 7 star members. The benefits provided at these various levels are

1) 1 Star Members: Gift voucher worth Rs. 200/- on enrollment and upgrade to a 3 star status by shopping for Rs. 8000/immediately preceding 12 months of current shopping date. 2) 3 Star Members: 5% discount on every purchase and upgrade to a 5 star status by shopping for Rs. 20000/- immediately preceding 12 months of current shopping date. 3) 5 Star Members: 7.5% discount on every purchase and upgrade to a 7 star status by shopping for Rs. 40000/immediately preceding 12 months of current shopping date. 4) 7 Star Members: A whopping 10% discount on every purchase.

Additional Benefits and Privileges: Pantaloons has days like Fashion Friday where additional 5% discount is given to all members. There are regular updates provided to their customers on themes, collections and promos (beginning & end) via catalogues, SMS and email. Also, special invites to the most happening events and mega sales. An effective tracking is done by them to understand the buying behavior of the customers which helps them to inform customers for their preferences whenever there are new stocks on their preferred brands. The database of customers created is integrated across all country wide stores which give the benefit to the customers of using same card at any store.

Pantaloons also works and relies on feedback from customers for continuous improvement in their services and offerings and so they have a feedback handling group which assess all the positive and negative feedbacks of the customer. The customers can share their feedback even by mailing them at sharewithus@pantaloons.com. The CRM program of Pantaloons also tries to make customers feel special on certain occasions by giving birthday call to all the green card customers and celebrate birthday of 7 star members by sending a greeting card, cake or a bouquet. Customers birthdays are celebrated in store or either the store manager personally visits their home with cake, card and a bouquet. The various privileges given to various levels of loyal customers are as follows

 Some more benefits given to the members are 1. Free parking space. 2. Free gifts on certain purchases. 3. Stock manager personally deals to them. 4. Any kind of promotion is communicated to them first. 5. Special billing counters are provided to Green Card members.

Ishan Sharma Roll no. 9 (B.pharm + MBA) 4th year