Complacent

Total Access Communication wants its employees to remember the tough times in the past so they would work harder and more creatively in order to weather the economic storm next year.

DTAC chief commercial officer Thana Tienachariya admitted yesterday that staff are now too complacent and carried away by the company's growing market share and revenue.

One DTAC executive said he had also shifted into "neutral gear" during the past six months because the company performed so well.

That has raised a red flag, since rival Advanced Info Service (AIS) has kept forging ahead with aggressive marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) activities, including brand building.

Thana said that as part of the new mindset, DTAC would launch what he calls a "fit society" programme mid next month to encourage all staff to come up with innovative marketing ideas and cost-saving activities. The second-largest cellular operator will slash its marketing budget to Bt800 million next year from the average of Bt1 billion per year, while the IT budget will be axed. DTAC will also focus on CRM.

"We realise that AIS has done a good job with CRM, so we have to work harder but we'll do it differently," he said.

DTAC should come up with the same attitude as in the past when, despite the tight marketing budget and low revenues, the staff could manage to spin out many unconventional marketing campaigns, he said. All were driven by the same goal of turning the ailing company into a healthy one.

DTAC now has more than 18 million subscribers. It posted a third-quarter net profit of Bt1.8 billion, up 35 per cent from the period last year.  Brokerage UOB KayHian forecasts DTAC to post a normalised net profit of Bt1.7 billion this quarter, up 4 per cent on year but down 7 per cent on quarter due to the slowing economy.