Coimbatore's prominence on the education map of India is expected to grow considerably, once the Aegis Global Academy's Institute of Customer Experience Management (ICEM) opens its doors.
The business school from the Essar conglomerate has set up its first campus in the country in the city to cater to the manpower needs of the service sector.
“It is the first such institute in the country,” says Subir Ghosh, president, ICEM.
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The service sector boom has brought in employment opportunities but customer satisfaction across verticals has been a cause for concern. For example, a recent study reveals that there is a 25 per cent mismatch between customer expectation and what the telecom industry offers.
“This will have an impact on the industry's bottomline. It will be forced to spend more to redress customers' grievance, retain customers, bring in new customers to keep going, etc. And all this involves a cost,” he explains.
The same is true of banking, insurance, retail and information technology and information technology-enabled services.
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“It is so because the people working in the service sector are not industry-ready. They are not oriented enough to place the customer first, for which an unlearning process is required.
The unlearning should help people shift focus from the product-centric approach to a customer-centric one. For, in the end, customer satisfaction is what matters.”
“More so in the service sector, where, according to me, only two types of jobs exist – one, enable the customer, and, two, enable those who enable the customer.”
The Institute does not focus on conventional, functional specialisations in human resource, finance, marketing, etc. “We, in stead, concentrate on sectors – telecom, banking, insurance, retail, IT and ITES – so that candidates are ready to deliver from day one.”
“The reason for doing so can be better appreciated if one were to observe that employees often recommend their friends in the same vertical. The industry too appreciates the same because the candidates have a good understanding of the work.”
Mr. Ghosh, who has worked in telecom, retail and a few other areas for over 25 years, says such an approach makes ICEM different from other management schools. “There are enough b-schools in the country and I don't want the Institute to be one among them.”
The 15-month programme will have 11 months of academics and industry orientation and four months of internship. The curriculum has been endorsed by Indian Institute of Management – Indore, Service Quality Centre, Singapore, and COPC, U.S.
The institute is scheduled to begin classes in the first week of September.