Sunti Medhavikul, DTAC's chief customer officer, said yesterday that Bt300 million would be spent building a modern call-centre building, able to handle three million calls a month. It will spend Bt1 billion on customer management software and Bt150 million to upgrade a third of its retail stores.

The massive spending plan is all in the name boost its competitiveness in the fierce mobile-phone service market.

The new call centre will be capable of handling three million calls a month. The new software that can help analyse customer usage patterns, which, the company said, would help it design call packages to suit customers' specific needs.

The effort to improve 100 of its 300 shops nationwide will enabled the overhauled outlets to provide the same services as DTAC's customer centres, including bill-paying.

DTAC aims to have two million post-paid customers at the end of this year, up from the present 1.82 million. If it can achieve this goal, its market share in the post-paid subscriber market will grow to 45 per cent from 40 per cent.

Currently DTAC has more than 10 million customers, while the market leader, Advanced Info Service, has around 17 million.

Sunti added that during the rest of the year DTAC would focus on providing a new service that will allow its customers to use their phones to conduct banking transactions like paying bills and transferring funds. The company plans to launch the so-called mobile ATM service in the last quarter of the year.

DTAC has also applied for licences from the national telecom regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), to operate 3G broadband wireless technology.

Sirivish Toomgum

The Nation