Satisfying a customer has never been easy. But in today’s fast-changing business scenario, it seems to be a mammoth task
Customers have always been demanding, and the new-age one is no different. In fact, the ‘always-connected customer’ wants personalised, frictionless experiences delivered to him at a break-neck speed. It is this idea of constant transformation that is proving to be an insurmountable challenge for companies trying to survive in today’s complex business environment.
Driving customer loyalty is tougher because spoilt for choice and armed with information, today’s customer will not settle for anything but the best. In a bid to understand how companies are strategising customer experience, The Economic Times and ServiceNow (an enterprise software company), recently organised a roundtable discussion in Bangalore attended by some key leaders from the industry. The panel was moderated by Alokesh Bhattacharyya, Senior Editor, ET.
Understanding customer behaviour is a must before designing your CX strategy. While the North American customer will not tolerate even one mistake, his Chinese counterpart (if you have good relations with him) may be much more accommodating. Indians are a mixed bag; they will be forgiving but not for very long. “Indian customers are becoming increasingly demanding and will not stay with you if you don’t give them a cost-effective and seamless experience,” said Rohit Chatter of Inmobi. In fact, companies such as Mphasis work on something called behavioral AI to study the user’s behaviour pattern, whether expressed through emails or call centre conversations or social media posts. “We try to identify the big five personality traits that the user falls in. Based on that we can brief our sales or the first line how to deal with the customer,” said Jai Ganesh.
Sometimes, even the geographical diversity of the country is a problem. Because your customer in a metro is completely different from the one in a Tier II or a Tier III city. Organisational structure can be a problem too. “Companies today have very complex structures with a chief information officer, a chief digital officer, a chief analytics officer, a chief data officer, etc. The idea for a customer should be to be able to talk to the company,” said Manu Shankar of UST Global.
One thing that is revolutionising CX today is technology. But many a times the real benefit of technology is not realised as departments accessing it keep working in silos. “We deal with multiple verticals, so there are customers within customers who work in silos within the organisations. That really complicates things,” shared Bala Navuluri of Yash Technologies. Relevance of the technology for the customer is also important. The digital natives and the traditional players know they will get disrupted and want help in knowing what they are missing. “People tell us they know artificial intelligence and want to know how it can work for them. They want us to help them see beyond where they are,” said Narendra Bhandari of Persistent Systems. Tech is also enabling preventive detection of issues. “If you identify your common problem areas and refer back to the recommendations, bots can be deployed to fix them,” said Puneet Chaddah of Relevance Lab.
Traditional industries such as water is also adapting to the digital wave. With customers expecting companies to be available at their service 24/7, veterans such as Suez with a humongous client base — are transforming. “How much we are able to transform ourselves by knowing physics, chemistry and mathematics will have to seen. But this transformation is essential for the world,” stated Girish Iyer.
What happens when something goes wrong? What can be the best way to deal with it? Experts echoed that being proactive and reaching out when you know something has gone wrong works best. The idea should be to build a partnership, not a transactional relationship. Creating a knowledge management base that can be used across the globe can also be the way forward. “If a problem is raised in India and isn’t resolved, someone in the US or UK may have an answer to that. Creating a knowledge management process where you can pool your rich experience across the board and are able to resolve customer issues will be the true use of the digital revolution,” said Iyer.
The panel agreed that data and tech can play a big role in CX but they can’t replace the human touch or gesture. For companies to excel in CX, just assigning a team to that won’t help. It has to be deeply engrained in the company. Each and every employee should know how their work impacts customers. It’s only then that the road to frictionless CX would become easy.
This article has been written by Pallavi Chakravorty from Times Group
