TCL(The Creative Life), a China based electronic and communication product manufacturing company is poised to accelerate its pan-India expansion through its distributors, dealers, retailers and service franchisees. In an interview, Rambo Zhang, Managing Director, TCL India Pvt. Ltd shares the future plans of the company.
Ramanjit Kaur (RK): What inspired TCL Corporation to venture into India?
Rambo Zhang (RZ): We entered India in 2004 with the idea to approach from the ground level itself for each of our customers and hence we decided to authorise exclusive franchised service centres. We are regarded in the worldwide market as being the acclaimed recipients of prestigious awards in design and product delivery to their consumers. TCL is now perfectly poised to accelerate its Indian Overseas Business by the end of this year. With its steady focus on strengthening its distributor, dealer & retail support pan – India, TCL India who has been delivering value added consumer goods to the growing needs of the Indian market have now further ramped up the brand support for its products line up.
RK: Why did you take the franchise route to expand the presence of the company in India?
RZ: To line up and cater to every service demand, we decided to work through every sales area and appoint a capable franchisee to ensure the same world class service employed by TCL worldwide. We are focused on the synergy of process, people & product. Customers depend on us & our belief of timeliness, quality, and accuracy of our service.
RK: How do dealer network and service franchisees work?
RZ: TCL India Holdings Pvt. Ltd has branch offices spread across the country and a dealer network that are supported by our service franchisees. We maintain a good inventory of local spares, along with mobilisation of trained and efficient technical personnel every distributor, dealer or retailer. These distributors, dealers and retailers are strongly supported on all fronts by the local authorised service franchisee.
RK: What are the eligibility criteria for selecting your service franchisees?
RZ: The main criterion of our partner is good understanding of the customer service requirements, appreciable technical skills, modest investment coupled with an ambition to grow and a capability to adapt to change in market trends. From our service business partners, we expect the TCL way of personal service which upgrades a neutral impression about service to a good impression about TCL.
RK: What kind of support and training is provided to the service franchisees?
RZ: We heavily invest our time, experience and resources to better the current crop of field engineers. Within our Customer Relationship Management (CRM), there is a training module which gives only our service partner the benefit of technical diagrams, product specifications, manuals, operating and rectification procedures.
We stress to develop and refresh learning through a hands-on training approach provided at a local level. This is accomplished by conducting scheduled technical training with apparatus and tools by a guidance-through-practice method developed in- house by us. Training progress is tracked by individual technician for every authorised service franchisee.
RK: How many service franchisees, dealers and branch offices does the company presently have in India?
RZ: We have branch offices spread across the country and a dealer, retailer network of over 1500 + supported by 100+ service franchisees.
RK: What are the future plans of the company in terms of expansion through franchising?
RZ: Ably supported by our service associates, we firmly believe the year 2011 shall see us conquer the Indian business horizons.
TCL is happy to be a dynamic player in the large Indian market with the support of our service franchise partners. We are pleased to seize a high number of opportunities in today’s challenging scenario.
