Outsourcing and BPO; the past and the future!

Outsourcing exists because economic inequality has been a persistent reality of our world, and as far as we can tell it is not going anywhere. Both futurists and economists believe that whilst growth infused inequality improves the lives of those on the weaker side of the economy too, in balance, but at the same time, they also admit that it does little to reduce the gap between the two extremes - crazy wealthy and desperately poor. Growth, the world must have, as, without it, anywhere between 1 and 2 billion people across the globe will die of starvation. You might wonder why I say inequality makes the case in favour of outsourcing? “Shift and Lift” & “Same mess for less” were common terms that the western world used when they had to make an unofficial argument to export jobs east.

Yes, it is the snobbery of the developed world, but of a kind that gives hundreds of millions of people in the underdeveloped world a chance at life. Imagine if India did not export the fruits of its cheap human labour to the west, what % of India would have been penniless looking into an abyss of hopelessness? The thought alone will intimidate you, to put things in perspective, it will be close to 150 million people, without any source of income.

All outsourcing however is not created equal.

The society operates hierarchically, and business calls its regime-  ‘band’.

Human history gives enough evidence for us to know that as society progresses and becomes technologically advanced it renders the least complex and the most repetitive of its tasks to machines, leaving smart humans with time and energy to concentrate on solving intricate mysteries of the facets of the ever-evolving world. “Cognitive capital invested on relatively simpler tasks does not give satisfactory returns”, as a principle has been known for ages. Let’s use this frame to understand outsourcing.

Outsourcing exists in every industry that operates on planet earth. Let me give you a few examples. 

• Apple manufactures in Asia. 

• An overwhelming majority of software developers in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Pune etc are developing and maintaining software owned by the west. 

• Third world countries (the third world is not an economic classification but a political one, countries that remained unaligned in the cold war era were given this label. Singapore is also a third world country), do financial accounting, transcription, translation and even train machine learning models with real-world data.

• Phone sales, customer service, credit card operations, travel logistics and loan processing - need I say more?

The way to classify the ‘band’, that I spoke about earlier is to judge a task by this simple standard.

• Have the people involved in outsourcing been academically trained in the same field? 

• Specialist outsourcing: If the answer to this question is a yes. Then you know that you are talking about high-value outsourcing. Like software (development and support), hi-end manufacturing etc.

• Generalist Outsourcing: If the answer to this question is negative, you know that what is being spoken about is low-value outsourcing: call centres (anything to do with phones), transcription, etc. 

At this point, you may be wondering why am I only insinuating about stronger currency hiring weaker denominations in the context of outsourcing? And you’re absolutely right, same currency outsourcing is a reality too. In fact, in the absolute share of manpower, it is roughly 60% that of all people working in outsourcing, but in revenue terms, it is just about 30%. You might wonder why 60% of people generate just 30% of the value? It is owing to the facts, listed below. 

• A vast majority of this outsourcing is generalist in nature. So unit pricing is abysmally low.

• The capital that enables politicians to try their electoral fortune comes from corporations, which want the minimum wages to remain as low as possible so that industries can remain competitive in the world market. As a result of which cheap labour is found in abundance, here.

• 98.99% of the tasks that these generalists perform can be automated, therefore, to remain relevant they are forced to operate at a cost that does not give the outsourcer compelling reasons to go all out to automate the workflow entirely.

Thus far we have covered the economic basis of outsourcing. Let us now look at the brief history of outsourcing in India. I shall focus on the BPO side of things, if you know me you’d know why and if you do not, read other articles on this subject that I have written and you’ll know.

Business historians classify outsourcing in these three different eras. 

The beginning of traditional BPOs from the 1900s to Mid 2000s.

• This was a straightforward period when consumerism was beginning to take gargantuan shape. The west needed a cheap solution to sell and service their customers, they started looking for countries that spoke their language reasonably well and offloaded the work to them. As they engaged with the east in this context they understood that they have tapped into an infinite pool of motivated, hard-working, sincere, hungry for growth cheap labour with plenty of skills to pull off generalist jobs well.

• Tasks after tasks kept pouring and India benefited by having an avenue of employment large enough to engulf its vast semi-skilled workforce.

• Wealth creation led to an increse in demand and indigenous manufacturing and distribution and real estate gained from it. 

• A high density of phone connectivity in the west enabled it.

The Medieval BPO Era: Omni Channel BPO 2000s to Late 2010s.

• West felt the need to cap their costs after nearly a decade long free for all outsourcing party. From this directional change, Indian players started offering goodies like process re-engineering, downstream innovation, process transformation and commitment to productivity enhancements, to keep the contracts alive.

• The phone was no longer the king of the reigns, the internet had made its entry into the homes (broadband) and in the hands (smartphone) of people. Asynchronous support channels gained ground, chat and email became popular too. 

• Other forms of work like simple MIS, basic data analytics and accounting processes also boomed in this era.

• In this period, the proliferation of phones picked up in India too and with it, large corporations began outsourcing their tele support, chat and email work to BPO service providers. Domestic BPO became a viable business. 

Contemporary Era (A): Insight-Driven BPO late 2010 and pre-pandemic.

• Corporations that had just come out of the slowdown in the west needed to tighten their belts. With great force, ‘lean and six sigma’ and similar standards became a part of the everyday routine for the Indian BPO industry. Providers burnt the midnight oil to achieve more with less. ‘Cutting waste’ became the mission of over a million people. As a result, a slew of process and product innovation made its way into the still flourishing industry.

• ‘Analytics with process transformation’ occupied the focal point of the industry.

        + Data-led process transformation.

                + Informed Insights-enabled digitisation.

    + Automation

+ Simple fetch and tell BOT.

+ Desktop automation.

+ RPAs.

 

Contemporary Era (B): Automation driven support late 2010 to Pandemic.

• There is a significant overlap between these two phases of outsourcing that is on account of the evolution of the outsourcers. Not every company woke up to the magic of automation at the same time. In Era A we have spoken about how the laggards of the industry reacted. In this section Era B, we are going to talk about the leaders and technology-first organizations. 

• The business landscape for the evolved part of the economy changed to proportions imagined by no one. The start-up revolution completely changed the way the world looked at business operations. Companies decided to trust algorithms for all rule-based tasks. Organisations like Ola and Uber were born, which was completely devoid of transactional support, the ‘application-only-operation’ became a thing. I know some of you are thinking about the brief period when both Ola and Uber used to take bookings on the phone. I must remind you that it was a period in which the organizations were educating the customers about this new technology, app-based operation. As it gained critical mass on the application, phones were switched off.

• Cheap data and economical smartphones came within the reach of the common man and what the west had experienced half a decade ago became the story of the economies of the eastern countries, too. 

• The organisation started working to reduce repeat with maniacal focus. Self-help was made cool.

• These technological advancements made their grand entrance into the scene, as well.

• Conversational AI.

• Advanced context-aware chatbots.

• OCR.

• Speech to Text and back to Speech - the whole cognitive stack. 

• Data modelling and advanced analytics. 

• ML gave machines an edge over humans involved in generalist tasks. 

• The little that was left of the traditional market was overwhelmed by the pandemic, which forced people to not only get acquainted but also comfortable with using support platforms and the internet for fulfilling their needs.

These advancements took away the winds under the wings of traditional BPOs.

• The technological solutions in the medium to long term became economical than a human doing a generalist task. 

• The efficiency gains of machine-made humans look unattractive. 

• Transparency, accuracy and ability to generate rich structured data from automated operations made generalists appear like chimpanzees in comparison to machines.

In the last two years of the pandemic alone the size of BPO has contracted to the extent of 24%, the 2/3rd that is still left is being slated to go down to half, in the matter of the next 12 to 18 months.

Why could the BPO industry as a whole not evolve with the changing market? Is a fascinating question, whilst answering that is an entire article in and of itself, I would say that ‘hyper inward focus’ is to be blamed for the ruins of the industry. The fact that this sector has not been attracting fresh capital for over 5 years now is somehow not catching their fancy. The aged leadership teams (50 Yrs +) has personal stake in keeping the charade on, as this late in the career changing stream would be impossible for them, so they shrewdly keep knitting stories of potential and show the 20% floating clients (who keep moving from one BPO to another) as territory for expansion to the promoters to keep their jobs going.

Much like Kodak, BlackBerry and Nokia were too busy with the make-believe world that they had created for themselves BPOs too are living the illusion of sustenance. The real world however has moved on, taking lesson from colossal failures of these one time giants.

Future of the BPO industry

• BPOs that metamorphose into tech products and platform organisations will survive and come out stronger on the other side of the churning. 

• Organisations like Concentrix, Wipro, WNS, Teleperformance, Infosys and Tech Mahindra are on the right track.

• The BPOs will have to find a way to put the great understanding of customer behaviour, their needs and wants that they have acquired over the last 2 decades, into developing tech products that solve the most pressing support questions of the day.

• They will have to move away from transaction handling and become consultative organisations that handle end to end customer journeys and not just what happens on the phone/chat/emails.

• Designing service philosophy and related processes.

• Budgeting service operations.

• Developing and deploying the platforms for support.

• Owning to the business outcome and billing for output rather than time spent on the job.

BPO that successfully catapults into an organisation that has skin in the entire vertical stack of service will not only survive but thrive.

Remember, what I opened this article with, outsourcing is here to stay - old devices of outsourcing (voice) will have to be given up in favour of new tools (cognitive tech).

With that, I would like to end this.

See you on the other side!

Till then stay safe and take very good care of yourselves. 

Remember vaccinations save lives.

Future Outlook: Indian BPO Industry

The article “Outsourcing 2.0, the future”, that I wrote on 24th of Feb 2019, has been generating a lot of interest in the BPO industry as a result of which my inbox is full of requests for a write up addressing the specifics of the Indian BPO/BPM industry, so here I am! I’ll link the article towards the end of this one for those of you who would want to read it. Before we talk about the future of the BPO/BPM industry, I think it is vital to dwell upon its history a bit to understand, broadly, how it came into being and why it is important to a large section of the society, beyond the economic circuit. Outsourcing started as a cost-saving major, developed economies started shipping non-core, low-value jobs to destinations which had labor skilled for the job available in large numbers. India became a popular destination, thanks to its colonial past which indelibly impacted the creation of curriculum for primary education in the country, even post-independence. English is taught as one of the three languages that all Indian students study. We’re also a country with a good supply of human capital (one of the few benefits of out of control population bust). For a little over 3 decades, the business of outsourcing has been blossoming here.  A democratic, aspirational, developing economy that had just got liberalised, made a perfect breeding ground for the service industry to thrive. This business model brought with itself prosperity, it created billionaires, millions of jobs as direct benefits, indirectly too, this new phenomenon in the post industrialised world, gave an unforeseen boom to the real estate industry, among others. Cities like Gurgaon, Hyderabad & Bangalore owe all of its development to this single industry. The story has not been one with all positives though, it has seriously dented spread of higher education in India, a significant portion (68.32%) of those who started earning in this industry before completing their bachelors did not complete their higher education. As a result of which their long term growth prospects got stunted, but then it also boils down to personal choices that people make and it will be unfair to blame the industry for this entirely. Business standard says and I quote “The IT-BPO industry grew by 8 percent in 2017, leading to an aggregate revenue of $154 Billion. Further, in 2017, the BPO sector contributed 7.7 percent to India’s GDP”. I pull this stat up to familiarize you with the enormity of its economic spread.

The rationale behind sustaining large workforces emerged from the difference between wages in the US and in India; for a certain set and category of jobs, the delta was so huge that even if an inflation of 8% were to be applied on annual Indian wages it would’ve taken more than 3 decades for it to become comparable, in the days of early germination of the Industry. Right at the base of this rationale was the confidence that the wages will grow stronger in the US also, at least at the rate of 2 to 5% year on year. Reality did follow this plan but for a duration a lot shorter than what was expected at the beginning. Let’s just say progress happened rather swiftly. I know you are tired of hearing of ‘technology, the devil’, but I’m here to tell you that it is not the only contributor, it certainly holds most of the chips but there are other factors too which can’t be ignored if the goal is to understand it clearly and should I say comprehensively. Without getting into too much detail, let me quickly outline a few factors, which are noteworthy.

Global Recession: It taught corporate America cost-cutting, non-core tasks got axed first. Optimization becomes very core of running a business, post the meltdown.

Smartphone : Post Blackberry, both Apple and Android smartphones opened up the floodgates of application that ran comfortably on handheld small-screen, always-connected devices, people learned to do basic stuff themselves. Popularisation of self help as a cultural imperative in the west akin to modernisation propelled industry-wide restructuring of customer education/support organisation and cost.

Internet: Proliferation of internet reduced lag, empowered people to access information in massive quantity and mostly free of charge. It enabled the culture of comparison, making decisions informed, calculated and in many cases swifter than before and most importantly independent, in an unassisted manner. 

Automation: Robotic process automation, text to speech, AI-powered BOT, advance analytics, computer vision, OCR, virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality, internet of things: these changed the game completely. A structured task which does not require cognitive decision making or understanding of context can be automated at an astonishing speed and at a surprisingly thin investment.

Job crisis in the west: Economy in the developed world slumped, jobs that were being sent outside to developing countries to save cost suddenly started getting perceived and then projected as the reason for natives losing livelihood. Political movements around the world gained momentum which forced legislators to regulate offshoring.

Geopolitical shift: Politicians around the world submitted to ostensibly right-wing stance to solve job crisis that they were facing in their countries. Public opinion on imposing penalties for sending jobs outside gained ground. Crashing domestic consumer demands exerted additional pressure on the governments. 

Territorialism: Rise of protectionism, opened the world to Trump's America and Brexit in the UK.

All of these factors started stressing the growth of the outsourcing industry hugely. Voice-based businesses, the cash cow of Indian BPO majors started growing pale. Majority of high-value voice business in a matter of 4 years got converted into backend jobs; there too, whatever the tech at the moment couldn’t accomplish accurately comes to countries like ours. It won’t be wrong to say that the BPO industry of today is surviving on the breadcrumbs, quite literally. Large players because of their size they are able to aggregate more, and given the fact that the size of the western economy is still huge when compared to ours, the leftover is satisfactorily satiating the hunger of the big guns. But writings on the wall is unmistakably legible now which has forced progressive organizations to look for greener pastures elsewhere. We’re at the beginning of the end!

Organizations are not ideal, we do witness them facing up the challenges in ways that they think is best. Let’s try and briefly touch upon how the industry is preparing to answer the question that is questioning its very existence.

Large corporations: They have the luxury of wealth, geographical presence and size, intellect and prominence, they are smartly diversifying into newer arenas; Data, digitalization, process re-engineering & consulting being a few of them. They are making a significant investment of time, effort and money in upskilling their manpower in technologies of the future. Some of them have even shown the courage to shed low margin business and focus only on high-value contracts. It is all about operating cash and PAT now.

Mid Sized Organisations: This is a rather volatile segment in which some still see light at the end of the tunnel. The game of valuation at the moment seems lucrative in pockets. Consolidation is in progress in this segment, all the work that the large ones are not interested in doing for they either being low value or thin on margin is effortlessly flowing to organizations of this segment. Much like water flows from higher to lower planes, they are happily grabbing new businesses at the cost of margin, sometimes ignorant of the fact that what is flowing to them is not work that requires the real application of mind, most of it is basically two to five-step process. It with a small investment can be automated. Let me give you an example here, many companies have invested in the large establishment for the digitization of physical forms: jobs. The ubiquitous smartphone is digitizing the data at the very source, eliminating the need for forms to travel to the digitalization centers. This has wiped an entire industry away, in a blink. Love of fading times is not lost on them as yet. 

Small Player: The least said about them the better, they are running modern-day cruel body shops, disgusted with their business they are in it because they do not know any better and are willing to give an arm to anyone who can promise them a way out of the rut. Things have become so strange that even the champions of efficiency have lost their way quite literally. They are urging to be bailed out. 

So is it all grim and sad? Not exactly It is yet another cusp playing itself out. Outsourcing as a concept is not going to end, there will always be, ‘core and non-core’ jobs and there will always be a need for people to do things. But it is certainly the end of the road for those who are unwilling to move up the value chain, romantics of the past will soon become history, the forgettable part of it. The future belongs to those who are willing to experiment and wish to disrupt. 

Domestic players are in graver danger because they do not even have the cushion of exchange rates, extinction is staring at them in the eye. Single-digit PAT, which gets even weaker and uninteresting when depreciation is applied on it. It just does not make financial sense, to keep all your eggs in the basket of voice. It is bound to end, in less than a couple of years.

Please understand, you can’t make an omelet without breaking the egg!

The future in the outsourcing/service industry belongs to those who know to deliver intelligent end to end solutions and for those who have the wherewithal to make existing systems aware of context, efficient, accurate, reliable, secure and sustainable. Let me say again, the ‘old’ is progressing towards a demise at a dangerous pace. So what does the future look like? Simply put one of the two things.

1. Product ( tech or otherwise)
2. Data 

Tech products will get the job done and not humans in the days to come, the kind of work that does not require imagination and complex context-based cognitive decision making, as the first input. So, what should you do? Take a good hard look at what is it that you understand really well? Or simply which part of the entire business that you have existed thus far it should be automated, not as a work unit or set of tasks but a complete role. Let’s take the example of what Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung are doing with their voice assistants. They are trying to replace that person, whose sole job role was to hear the needs of the master and then go search for information and then come back with relevant details. What do these digital assistants do? You give them the same instructions that you would give to your human assistant but the output is so much better in areas that it has its command over; you get the results without discernible lag, so you prefer it. Not only does it make things simpler, quicker but also accurate - you get the point. 

Apply your mind, invite intellect to study what should you build to solve and then go for it. Due diligence that you would apply before making any important decision must be conducted here as well. Try to be objective about the whole thing, always remember that you have to accept change and that even when you do not accept it, it still happens, so no point, not accepting it. Remember, if you do not build it someone else will and you will be left to survive in the shrunken ground. First-mover advantages those who know how to pull off a great show, though. 

A for Analytics; yes this is the world that we are headed towards. Data is the new gold, new oil and everything else that makes sense. Data makes decision richer and those who know to model data in ways that make decision making better will see acceptability and will rule the next upturn. The science around statistics-based prediction is invaluable. Data is being used along with understanding from behavioral psychology and neural sciences to predict customer buying and consumption behavior. The ecosystem is currently not completely ready but is coming together at a great pace. The future belongs to those who can work with data & understand human behavior. 

In the same breath, we must also acknowledge that this change is not going to be a cakewalk or easily comprehensible to all but then we know from history that old makes way for the new. Unless some lose, others can’t win, so in that spirit it is ok! The bigger picture will still be just as heterogeneous, vibrant and happy as always; with or without people and business models and practices from the past. 

Towards the end, we must also spend a little bit of time in understanding what causes delusion, indecision & inaction? Why are these dying sectors not reacting with the sense of urgency that is warranted? Let me take you to that old frog experiment in which the psychologist turned the temperature higher at a rate slower than frogs ability to adapt as a result the frog died of heat but did not feel the need to jump out. Businesses also become comfortable with the status quo, they block their own sensors sometimes with over-confidence, comfort, or plain incompetence that surrounds them dressed as top executives ( brainless leadership team). Conduct a small experiment: for the last 30 years, pull top 100 organisations in any segment and then compare the list you will see only 8% survive beyond 1^st decade in the leadership position, the story at the end of the 2^nd decade is less than 5% and after the 3^rd decade the number comes down to 2%! 

Why? 

Because they did not change and thus perished!

I hope you, do!

Till we meet again, goodbye!

Link to: Outsourcing 2.0, the future!

http://www.lavkush.co.in/2019/02/outsourcing-2-0-the-future/

You need Omni-channel & More!

The relationship between a customer and a brand revolves around a multitude of interactions that happens between them in the course of their journey together.

Customers expect to get all that they have signed up for and more without having to pay extra and the brands wish to make use of every possible opportunity to serve to the best of their abilities and resources, they create products, services, and related loops for the customers to keep coming back to them when in need & even otherwise. These objectives may appear conflicting from a distance but they actually are complimenting in nature. Companies spend a lot of time and money in preparing the foundation, as it were, for them to give prospects and customers a tour of their capabilities, educating them on the entire range of products and services is vital to gaining a larger share of the customer wallet. Investments are made in creating soothing, easy-on-the-eye, and nearly omnipresent digital footprint, from good looking, responsive &  intuitive websites to active social media participation. More traditional, brick and mortar establishments are also brought into the play, from choosing the right real estate to designing and erecting swanky showrooms: companies do it all. Not to mention that maintenance of both digital and physical assets come at a cost.

The question then is, is it enough to deliver an excellent customer experience? Do customers care about better or smarter solutions? These questions are important, no matter how complete a solution might appear to its creator if the customer/ end users do not see the considerable value and/or cozy comfort or both in it, it is not of good use and often will deliver less than ideal outcomes.

To understand this better, let’s take two examples.

Scenario #1

Customer: Payal Singh.

Need: Booking a holiday.

Chain of events :

1. Payal goes to the website, logs in with her credentials.
2. Provides her search criteria.
3. Makes to the relevant selection of the airline.
4. Provides passengers details.
5. Comes to the payment page.
6. Keys in the banking details.
7. Is greeted by transaction failure.
8. She tries one more time only to face a repeat of the error.
9. She goes back to the home page and starts her search for the ‘contact us’ page.
10. She finds the customer support number and calls up.
11. She is greeted by the IVR and a never-ending list of irrelevant options.
12. After spending, longer than she had expected to, she reaches the agent.
13. The agent greets her and waits for the customer to share her reason for calling.
14. The customer by then is already frustrated but keeps her cool and explains the entire story to the agent.
15. The agent places the call on hold, checks the information.
16. Comes back from hold and tries to authenticate the customer one more time because, in his book, it is customer account-specific information and must only be divulged to the right party.
17. Post +ve verification, says that the payment gateway is down and she must try another time.

The customer bangs the phone feeling absolutely frustrated, infuriated & disheartened. Despite putting in much effort and time she is still without a definitive resolution, she doubts if she should give the brand another chance. She tweets about the horrible experience before the agent finishes his shift her entire followers have read about it: some have liked and retweeted the incident too, causing the brand a lost sale and tarnished online reputation.

Net-net nothing has been achieved so far, neither by the customer nor by the organization. Both have had to face negative experiences and are displeased with the way things have turned out.

Let’s look at another example.

Scenario #2

Customer: Iqbal Ahmed.

Need: Booking a holiday.

Chain of events: Identical till step number 7.

8) Is greeted by transaction failure alert.

9) Right after the failure message, the pop up saying “ Allow us to help you” appears.

10) Iqbal clicks on the pop-up and reads,

1. Would you like us to call you back?
2. You can chat with us too.

11) Customer clicks on the chat option.

12) Agent “Ram” greets the customer and says, apologies for the error, allow me to check it and get back to you.

13) Iqbal feeling exasperated scrolls up and hits on the “Would you like us to call you back?” button.

14) Chat window gets updated, Ram will call you on your registered number “9835098350” in 2 minutes.

15) Before the customer could pour himself a cup of coffee, his phone rings.

16) The caller, the same agent he had initiated his chat with, greets him with a solution.

1. The agent from his integrated CRM was able to see the stage in which the customer had invoked the chat.
2. He had studied customer history and was aware of the complete profile.
3. There wasn’t a need for the customer to repeat the issue.
4. The customer had the option to choose between chat and voice support.
5. Both channels were instant.

17) He offered the customer an alternative and guided him through the steps.

18) Flight tickets were done.

19) The agent from the customer history could find out that he was looking for his wedding anniversary and then suggested, below options and offered additional & special anniversary discount to him.

1. Airport pick up
2. Options for beach facing hotel room.
3. Candlelight dinner in perfect settings.
4. Private musical show.
5. Florist Options.
6. Tour of the city
7. Photographer on call.
8. Suggested a variety of cakes to choose from.
9. He also presented to the customer with the option to visit the famous state museum in the city on the day of his return.

20) The customer was delighted and took a few options suggested.

1. The agent had access to his past bookings and the profile of the customer.
2. His integrated CRM suggested smart related bundles.
3. Given the size of the booking, he could provide the customer with a pre-authorized, on the spot discount.
4. Planned the entire holiday and not just flight tickets.

21- The agent also took permission from the customer and blocked his calendar and provisioned for auto call reminders for key activities.

22- The call ended with a happy customer and a happier business.

Which is going to be the most likely seen in your organization?

Scenario 1 or 2?

If it is 1, you most certainly need to urgently deploy an Omnichannel support layer integrated smartly with the CRM/order management system. It will not only prepare you to provide customers with instant resolution but will also make you present at whichever mode that the customer would like you to assist him on? Intelligent integration with the order management/CRM tool as depicted in example 2 will also enable the service agent to help the customer make logical choices related to their need, resulting in bounty upsell/upgrade opportunity for the business and desirable convenience for the customer: resulting in a stronger relationship between the two.

When presented options of upgrade/upsell are contextual in nature those options appear meaningful to the customers and they are more likely to buy from you again. In the entire process, we saw how a potential deal-breaker “transaction failed” turned into a delightful customer experience in scenario 2; and it achieved a great experience without making the customer toil, like in the first undesirable case that we looked at. Customers love being spoilt with pleasant options but at the same time, they hate having to work for it. It is therefore important that when you design your systems, you keep the customer effort index in mind.

If you do all the work for your consumer, your consumer will love you more. Most organizations have all the tech, people, and other infrastructure that is needed to create scenario 2 like a rich experience. What they lack is omnichannel and supported intelligent integrations. They do not use customer profile/ purchase history data intelligently to create circumstantial product bouquet, which makes them incapable of churning out products that can be upsold at that right instance quickly and they most certainly do not have a single screen for their support agent, which makes responses appear fragmented, ill-informed and mostly random to the customer, causing poor memory of the brand.

Integrate your CRM/order management system with a capable Omni Channel solution, keep all options open for your customers to choose from, restricting your customers either to only voice or only data ( ChatBOT, email, form-based interaction, etc) is not a wise choice to make. Use data analytics to create a meaningful product/ service bundles and most importantly have a single screen set up, so that the support agent without sweating is able to give the most accurate and the most relevant information to the customer, thereby reducing customer effort.

Omnichannel is a good choice to make, invest in your systems to elevate the quality of customer interactions.

Happy serving!

Glitter ≠ Gold!

All that glitters is not gold, this golden phrase applies to customer centricity just as much as it does to other things. If you were to look at one common publically pronounced feature between organization of all scales and statures: old and new age and also between successful, just hanging around and stark failures; you’ll find that all of them have sung praises for their customers, some louder and in denser perfunctory pitch than the others. Unfortunately, saying and doing are not the same thing, as of yet. We have enough data in the common knowledge to prove that the organizations that care about their customers in the true sense of the word and in spirit, not only do well but also go on to become a groundbreaking success. All brands of repute and recognization have happy customers in common. I would not name organizations at this stage but would rather ask you to think of a few brands that you have interacted with lately to meet your need, list them and then alongside, rate your experience with them on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being lowest and 5 being the highest. Take a moment now to do some research on these organizations to see if those who served you well were also sound business performance/revenue wise? People to people variation adjusted, you’d witness that the brand that delivered a better experience are also those that are doing excellent or at least better than the ones that annoyed you unwarranted, at least 85% of the times. Well, if your experiment tells you otherwise, I suggest you expand your sample wrt to time & interactions and then repeat, you’ll notice a confirmatory trend emerge.

If even then you see that those who cared little are doing better; take it with a pinch of salt for every dog has his day; good thing is that dog will not have all the days to itself, surely, it will move out of the 15% short term exception that we spoke about earlier into the oblivion, never to return. Like there's now no debate on the fact that open defecation is unhealthy, in the business world there is consensus on considering ‘customer experience’ as an item to strategic importance.

Many progressive groups are creating positions like chief experience officer/ principal support office etc to drive the mandate of customer experience across the group. They are moving away from having people lead a certain line of business in solitude and are now marching towards onboarding people with appropriate intellect and sufficient seniority to lead the entire machinery. In some cases, business operation leaders have been made accountable to the office and chair of experience officer to make sure that the business, in particular, the sales/delivery functions do not get carried away and foolishly trade short term growth for long term experience damage. I find it to be a good way of defining and demonstrating intent.

We perhaps cannot emphasize enough on the fact that the world around us is rapidly changing, in most cases at a pace stronger than the speed of adaptability of most organizations. The hunger to receive greater value from the limited investment is growing faster than ever in the minds of the customers, it won’t be an understatement to say that it is almost insatiable. To make matters even more complex, with it, what is also gaining ground is the unforgiving attitude of the customers. Think of it, in a market as crowded as ours and in times as lucid, in which 73% of moving population has 1.5 computing devices each (smartphones) with them, 96% of which is connected to the internet 67% of the day. No idea in today’s world is unique, before you know it a bunch of passionate people with a few computers on table in a garage and big dreams in their eyes will create a cooler organization to deliver what you considered your proprietary service and if they also happen to be folks who understand service and experience ; God save you! So, how do we approach this? In most simple terms, you need to have people who understand service, who are progressive and if not visionary at least thinkers who know to apply their minds to imagine what might be of value to customers in days to come and then set up the backend operations in motion to deliver solutions if not ahead of time at least not behind it.

Customers no longer see sore encounters as problems in isolation. Gone are the days when a rude salesman at the retail outlet was seen as a bad apple, today, one such bad experience is all that a customer needs to not only not buy but also quickly taps on the blue screens to let their entire new age friends and followers know about it. Connected world amplifies error in ways that expose the brand’s vulnerability in ways most egregious. So you got to cover the entire spectrum of things to deliver one excellent experience. Interaction between a customer and a brand, as we know it, happens at various levels starting with the customer gaining awareness of the product and or service, goes on to the period when they conduct discovery around what they have already gathered, specs are compared, prices are gauged at this stage customer also often seeks feedback from existing users. Technology provides for review to be read. From all of these customers cultivate interest, and then the forecasted purchase happens. Things do not stop there, they become vigilant for post-sale service and if you do things right not only will you get repeat purchase but also cause the customer to give you advocacy benefits; all of it put together is customer experience in its totality.

I quoted, the below findings from a reputed research firm in the customer fest panel discussion that I attended last month and it is so apt that I do not get tired of quoting i again and again. On my website, I have embedded the video of the 7 minutes talk, that I gave, should it interest you, you can watch it as well.

The research finding:

When Bain & Company asked organizations to rate their quality of customer experience, 80% believe they are delivering a superior experience. This is compared to only 8% of customers who believe they are receiving a great customer experience.

Cleary, companies, and customers are not always on the same page, especially, the leadership team, those who spend days and weeks without really getting in touch with a real customer, personally. If you happen to be one such person, you do not necessarily have to step out to meet customers, while if you do that it will be awesome. What you can and must alternatively do is listen to recordings of support calls or read emails. Every now and then, make time to respond to customers on your own, unassisted. And you will know exactly how fragmented your systems are, which all parts need repair and what (people, process, technology) must be replaced right away. Employee satisfaction is also a good indicator and so is attrition (the bad attrition). Unhappy people do not create great customer experience and if you see imminent brain drain, great people leaving your organization; you should know all is not well. Well, now that you have a good sense of how your customers see you, you must take credible, verifiable, sustained & resolute action to change things for better as swiftly as you possibly can.

Every company is different, every customer is unique; yet, there are a few principles that are ubiquitous and in some sense form the basis of creating a customer-centric organization. Five fundamentals of creating a formidable foundation of fantastic experience that comes to my mind are.

1. Clear customer experience vision: It is vital to include customer experience in the statement of direction, with financial goals you should also have unambiguously documented service performance objectives. You can take inspiration from benchmark studies of your industry but you have to have it. You must also invest effort, time and money in making sure that everyone in your corporation understands what those visions, goals, and principles are with clarity and confidence so much so that they should be able to articulate it without difficulty in their own words. COPC standard of service is also in conformance of this, tip.

2. Know your customers: It is inevitable, you have to know who your customers are, where do they come from, what their needs, wants and preferences are. In a market as diverse as modern day India, you are most likely to find every kind of imaginable customer in your mix. Broadly categorize them, give them personas and personalities; age-old, marketing and profiling technique. Create suitable approaches for each of these personas and then train your staff on it: operationalize the model. Make sure your profiling is data based, flex your analytical muscle to its full glory here.

3. Create customer engagement roadmap: Research by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that more than 50% of the experience is based on emotion as emotions shape the attitudes that drive decisions, the same research also says that business that optimizes for an emotional connection outperforms competitors by 80% in sales growth. So go out there and express yourself, remember every interaction with the customer is an opportunity to win his loyalty. Build a comprehensive moment of truth map of your customer journey and make sure you leave nothing to chance. Prepare well, it is the least that you must do.

4. Feedback is gold: Nothing will give you better insight than the voice of your customers, tap into that rich source. Get as close to real-time as possible, deploy the tools of measuring customer satisfaction. When it comes to feedback, equally critical & perhaps more estimable is the feedback that your employees can give you. Remember, your employees serve your customers - they know it. Create an environment conducive to the seamless and fearless exchange of information. I have written an entire article on this item. Linking it here for those of you who wish to hear a little more from me ;)

Article: Customer Feedback, should you care?

Link:  http://www.lavkush.co.in/2017/12/customer-feedback-should-you-care/

5. Execute with energy, enthusiasm, and urgency: Broken parts can broadly be categorized into two segments 1) education failure 2) malfunction; both of these come into existence because, there are gaps in either process, the skill of employees, systems, and sometimes even all. Some are contributed by faulty technology too but for the sake of simplicity, we can say that the process encompasses systems too. Have strong process reengineering in place, complement it with an intelligent framework to measure the skill level of your staff against desired standards so that time-bound plans for upskilling of resources can be created. At times you might have to hire from outside to speed the process, should the situation demand it, do not hesitate.

These 5 steps are not the whole deal but do serve as a great beginning. Let’s aim to create excellent customer experiences at every turn.

BTW, I’ve shifted my articles to my own website from the Google blogger platform that I used to benefit from earlier, do look around and let me know if you like what you see. Bye-bye.