Tata Consumer Products boosts distributor service with AI-powered support

With consumer expectations on the line, any glitches in getting products delivered can be costly. For distributors working with Tata Consumer Products (TCPL), getting issues resolved was a time-consuming experience that could lead to lost opportunities and revenue. 

TCPL and its distributors relied on MAVIC, an app for distribution management. But whenever issues arose, distributors were required to call a toll-free phone number, often experiencing long wait times and slow issue resolution. Internally, a lack of integration between internal systems made it difficult for support teams to access crucial contexts for troubleshooting, further hindering resolution times. Manual reporting also proved time-consuming and offered limited insights for improving service.

TCPL replaced its legacy support platform (BMC) with an integration of Freshdesk into MAVIC and Freshservice and Freshservice for Business Teams to help the company’s IT and finance teams handle IT and payment inquiries promptly. Freshservice has made onboarding and provisioning processes easier, increasing the speed of change management by 137.5%. AI features like Summarizer from Freddy AI Copilot give IT agents a way to efficiently manage incidents, eliminating 40 minutes of logging incidents and reducing overall incident response time by 73%. Now, distributors can get help with a single click.

“With Freshworks, we have revolutionized the way our distributors interact with us, engaging seamlessly through our own mobile app,” said Pawan Satyawali, global CIO at Tata Consumer Products. “This not only streamlines communication but also enhances the overall experience, reinforcing our commitment to delivering excellence at every touchpoint."

The company

Tata Consumer Products Limited (TCPL), a powerhouse within the Tata Group, is a leading name in India's fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market. It boasts iconic brands like Tata Tea, Tetley, and Tata Salt and reaches over 263 million Indian households. It has a global workforce of 4,500 employees. 

The challenge

TCPL’s job is to get its food and beverage products onto shelves and into homes, and the company relies on distributors to help make that happen. But when distributors hit a snag in the process, they had only a clunky option for support: a toll-free phone line. While distributors waited on hold, agents were encumbered by the lack of integration of the legacy reporting system, BMC, with the internal distributor management system, MAVIC. In addition, at least 10,000 emails per day were sent to support teams, who could respond to only about half, and the company lacked ways to track these emails, identify common issues, and determine where the queries were coming from. The stakes were high: Missing even one email could be a huge financial liability for TCPL if it pertained to payments and distribution glitches. 

TCPL needed to streamline communication and gain deeper service insights into the top queries and locations to understand which customers needed extra attention and where the business could improve operational efficiencies. It sought a solution to simplify service management and integrate with its existing tech stack. The platform also needed the potential for future integration with platforms like WhatsApp, among other options, through an open API. 

The solution

TCPL replaced the BMC platform with an integration of Freshdesk and Freshservice, allowing support tickets to be generated from the MAVIC app with a single click and routed to the relevant internal teams. And if distributors preferred to contact by phone or email, Freshdesk’s unified helpdesk brought all queries into one place. An integration with TeamViewer Software Development Kit provided support agents remote access to diagnose and troubleshoot distributor issues. The new system also improved query resolution capabilities by providing support agents with comprehensive ticket context using Freddy AI Copilot’s AI-powered Summarizer feature. Automated workflows improved HR processes like onboarding and employee surveys. 

"The integration of Freshdesk and Freshservice has significantly enhanced our internal collaboration and issue resolution capabilities," said Gunaseelan Subbaiyan, director of architecture and infrastructure operations. "By providing our IT team with contextual information from Freshdesk conversations and previously browsed help articles, we can identify the issue and expedite the resolution process, resulting in improved efficiency and satisfaction."

With IT and CX operations on a single platform, the company had better visibility into issues and easily reduced costs and improved efficiency in IT and CX.  

Impact

With Freshservice, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, stakeholders experience faster resolution times and on-the-go support. Incident resolution times plummeted from 15 hours to four, dropping incident volume by 73%. 

Automated workflows and the power of Freddy AI in Freshservice have resulted in time-saving and data-driven decision-making, leading to a 137.5% improvement in the HR department's change management speed. Employee onboarding and provisioning processes became much faster, freeing the HR department from manual tasks. This allows them to focus on more strategic initiatives, such as employee well-being.