The pride of Turkey

An interesting first was recorded today, and kudos for the folks at Turkcell for doing so. Turkcell is proclaiming itself as – get this – the “pride of Turkey” for bagging the Gartner EMEA CRM Excellence Award by dint of its CRM program “Journey to/with the Customer.”

The CRM projects conducted under “Journey,” which Turkcell first initiated in 2002 reportedly cover the company’s entire clientele of 31.8 million customers.

Dubbing itself “Turkey’s leading mobile communication provider” (okay, they can brag a little today), Turkcell representatives announced their status as the first Turkish company to win a Gartner CRM Excellence Award. Founded in 1979, Gartner holds the CRM Excellence Awards annually in order to honor CRM applications that are “up to world-class standards and to share the accomplishments with broader audiences.”

Contestants were measured by Gartner’s methodology of "The Eight Building Blocks of CRM,” with companies “expected to build a customer-centered structure in all aspects from their visions to their strategies, from their organizational structure to their business processes and their technical infrastructure, and to reflect the outcome of their efforts to their operational results.”

As of September 30, 2006, Turkcell is the leading GSM operator has a market share of approximately 60 percent in Turkey with 31.8 million post-paid and pre-paid customers. Turkcell reported $4.7 billion in net revenue as of December 31, 2006. Turkcell has interest in international GSM operations in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Northern Cyprus and Ukraine.