Interview with Mr. Chandrashekhar Pitre

Interview with Mr. Chandrashekhar Pitre, Senior Director Marketing – South Asia, DHL Express

PW: As a marketer what would you say are your current priorities?

CP: Justifying Return-on-Marketing-Investments by opting selected measurement techniques that help drive specific business objectives. At the same time provide our customers with unique value propositions that last longer. Main areas of focus in this current marketing year should include particular attention to Customer Data Management & Analytics and Social Media & Digital Communication. Additionally, a Customer Self Service attitude should be developed to increase online dependency. Finally, New Product Development and e-Commerce should be an ongoing investment.

PW: At DHL Express, how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

CP: Technology has played a pivotal role as e-Commerce applications enable daily transactions to be completed faster and error free (if any). Applications like SMS/WAP ensure timely updates providing customers real-time updates and accessibility anytime anywhere giving DHL an edge over competition. As part of many firsts to our credit DHL Express India also was the first to introduce India’s first and only 24-hour customer service call centre in the Express industry.

Multiple Tracking Options: DHL’s online tracking is the fastest way to find out where your shipment is. There is now no need to call Customer Service numbers when we can offer you real-time details of your shipment. The call is answered in three rings. Our back-up Customer Contact Centre in Chennai makes sure that the customer gets un-interrupted service all the time, even in case of emergencies.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

CP: Technologies like Scanning Solutions, TCL, Smart Truck ensure customized solutions which creates a need of new products and markets that directly contribute to market and business expansions owing to their highly intrinsic nature as per customer requirements.

To start with the Online Scanners (Motorola 9596 series of PDA) which is designed to talk to customer services and operations systems parellely – where once a booking is captured in customer services application (CSV – Cyber Services) based on the courier’s area of operation receives the fresh request within three to five mins of registration and courier upon accepting the request whenever courier collects the parcel from customer the event is captured and transferred back to track and trace server within three to five mins giving next to real time visibility to the end customer. The same technology is used when the courier is out for delivering a parcel and based on the timing of the event the information travels instantly to the backend systems within five mins and the same is visible to the entire world through DHL’s Track and Trace.

Customs clearance is considered to be a tedious process across the globe and where the need of paperwork for dutiable shipment plays a crucial role at the time of both the export and import clearance – this is where the imaging solution of DHL namely CIA (Clear In Air) comes into picture wherein the paperwork are scanned flight-wise at origin and destination within a minutes of image scanning is able to download the images and file the documents for pre-clearance – this clearly saves six to 12 hours of clearance time thereby gives us a clear edge over all the other competitors.

Last but not the least the SMART TRUCK solution, a technologically advance solution wherein for huge volume / remote area and higher cut-off demanding customers – a vehicle equipped with GPRS connectivity having capability of enabling the couriers of performing data capture / re-weighing / imaging while on move and thereby reducing the processing time in facility and clearly allowing the customer to have late cut-off’s – also this vehicle’s location can be tracked using map’s thereby the back office can also plan their processing activities accordingly.

 PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?

CP: Yes indeed we do have budget for IT Components as in today’s scenario any marketing plan would be incomplete if it does not have a space for IT in it. We at DHL believe marketing decisions depend upon IT, and IT depends upon marketing decisions. The two are interdependent. Decisions that are made in marketing are based upon information provided by IT, and systems that are developed by IT are based upon requirements provided by marketers.