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our guest today is Sita Hari Helen who is a general manager at TCS and we are going to talk with her today about
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customer experience in the age of digital transformation see that thank you so much for joining us today on
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knowledge at Wharton mokou thank you for having me here we hear so much about digital transformation these days and
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perhaps a good place for us to begin might be to look at the state of the digital economy globally
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what are some of your thoughts on that Mukul thank you for the question as we all know digital tools technologies and
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platforms have seen an unprecedented rate and pace of adoption just in the last three years and they have changed
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how we live how we work and how we interact with each other most importantly how we interact with
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companies that we do business with let's look at some statistics world's
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population is approximately seven point six billion we have nearly four billion active Internet users today about 5.1
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billion unique mobile users and nearly 3.2 billion social media accounts what is even more interesting is that we
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added nearly a billion two billion and a half users in each of these categories just in the last three years between
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2015 and 2018 now add to this mix Internet of Things in 2018 we will have nearly 28 billion Internet of Things
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think about it 28 billion everything from cars to doorbells to bracelets to cameras to appliances at
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home even my garbage cans my car today can accurately predict where I'm headed
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based on the time of day and day of the week my vacuum machine informs me when my house is clean and my garbage can
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tells me when I need to clear it this is absolutely an exciting time both for customers and businesses businesses need
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to figure out how to interact with their customers how to deliver superior customer experiences that's exactly
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right Sita and so the bills and everything you just said what are some of the implications for the way in which
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cust companies go on defining the customers experience or the customers journey and and even more interestingly
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what do you think this means for the kind of expectations that customers have of the way in which they'll relate to
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companies that they deal with in the past I mean even just a couple of years ago the company said that I need to be
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online and if I have to survive in the digital world people are spending about a billion years on the internet every
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year so I need to be able to provide access for my customers to my business online so they said let me have an
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online presence that isn't enough anymore because every business even the mom-and-pop stores that we know have
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online presence so what can businesses do more than that how do I ensure that the experiences that I provide to my
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customer is consistent across all of the channels how do I differentiate between
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my the experience that I offer versus what some of my competitors are offering to my customers so these are some of the
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challenges that businesses across industries or grappling with today well I think what you're saying is is very
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true everywhere you know we look we find retailers are getting hammered based on
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what you said how do you think companies should relate to their customers and and
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even more interesting portent Lee what has changed about the relationships between customers and their
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companies and their customers and what has not changed in in this entire digital transformation if there is one
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thing that is constant that is the customer who could have described customer experience better than some of
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the entrepreneurs here in US as well as in Britain right some of the names that come to mind or John Wanamaker Marshall
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Field's Harry Gordon Selfridge the catchy phrases that these guys came up with some of them ring true to me even
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today give the woman what she wants customer is the king and customer is always right what has changed with the
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digital technologies is that it has put more power in the hands of the customers
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and businesses need to figure out how to interact with their customers better so
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what kind of examples do you think you could we could consider to give some specific instances of so let's take a
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case of insurance company or actually two insurance companies the mission statement of the first insurance company
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is to offer health insurance policies to its customers in the digital world this
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company says that I'm going to make sure that my services and products are accessible to my customers both online
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and in the physical world they can interact with me any way they choose to interact with even on their mobile
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devices so the second insurance company on the other hand says my mission statement is to be a partner to my
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customer on their wellness journey consistent with the mission what they do is yes they of course sell health
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insurance policy but in addition to that they care for their customers well-being
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so they connect their customers to the local gym they encourage their customers as an example to exercise regularly they
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motivate them using gamification and they even remind their customers to get their annual physicals so this is an
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example of a company that cares for its customer and the healthy and healthy customer means that fewer insurance
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claims will be submitted and that would also mean that their insurance premiums could go down over a period of time so
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if you look at the example this particular example two companies the first one has a transactional
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relationships with its customers the second one based on its stated mission as well as its behavior is able to
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deliver connected customer experiences thereby on the journey of its customer I wonder I could drill down a little bit
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deeper into what you just said well that's very interesting what do you mean
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by a connected customer experience that of connected customer journey let's take
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the case of a grocery store as an example everyone will understand grocery store we all shot that almost every week
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so always I have thought of grocery stores as someone that does mass marketing at the best demographic waste
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marketing I've been frustrated that my grocery store even though I have shopped
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with them for the last 20 years I have their loyalty card they just don't understand me they still send me coupons
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by snail mail for products that I've never bought from them so as an example
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for me I'm a vegetarian so I got really excited Mukul when a couple of months
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ago one of my customers a grocery store came to us and said they wanted to understand their customers better they
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wanted to do behavior based segmentation they wanted to understand the personas of each and every one of their customers
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what they meant by that is I want to understand where they live where they work what is their education level what
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they consume how they shop why they shop what motivates them to shop what motivates
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them as an example to come into my store and based on all of this information which is the persona of an individual
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they wanted to drive customized campaigns so that is the first right step for them but then what I explained
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to them got them even more excited I painted a vision for them on how they can own the journey of their customer
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McCool let us assume that you are one of their customers and they know that you're uh fluent you work here at
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knowledge at Wharton you are highly educated you shop with them regularly and you show up on Saturdays with your
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wife one Saturday you walk into the store and you pick up a bottle of champagne because you have guests coming to your
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place and as you are walking down the aisle the store sends you a short video notification you open the video you are
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curious and you see people enjoying that bottle of champagne that you just picked up along with some
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beet and cumin soup and bread and cheese as you are watching the video the store
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sends you another notification they ask you do you want to purchase some beetroot
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you say yes to your further surprise a store a tenant comes to you and hands over some beetroot and bread and cheese
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this is a very simple example of connected customer experiences that's a great example Seeta and and what I
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wonder is but the question that it raises in my mind is that to do something like this for a customer at
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this level of elaboration and intricacy would be quite would be quite an expensive kind of exercise so the
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question is do you do it for every customer or do you select a few customers to do this for and if it's the
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latter case how do you make that choice how do you whom do you target with this lever
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of service and whom did not target so this is where the persona based segmentation comes into play personas
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help retailers understand what sort of a customer they are dealing with there are
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some customers that shop based on sale and so what kind of campaigns and what kind of experience do you want to
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deliver to them there are customers such as yourself that shop at their store on
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a regular basis you're extremely loyal to that store and so they offer differentiated experience such as the
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one we just spoke about so persona based segmentation is what is key to understanding the customer and how to
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deliver customized campaigns towards them and you know today what makes it easier as you know is we have
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technologies to do that I mean one example that came to mind as you were speaking about the grocery stores was
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Amazon's recent acquisition of Whole Foods and and and these days when you go
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to any Whole Foods store they ask you if you are an Amazon Prime member and if you are then you immediately get some
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discounts now what what I found very clever about this was that Amazon Prime already has very detailed information
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about customers and it would make it fairly easy for them to build such customer personas as you were describing
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by combining the online and offline experiences the question is in this kind of an age how do companies deal with a
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giant like Amazon and and how I watch what's what should other retailers be doing to react to this you're absolutely
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right as much as Google has become the de facto standard for searches Amazon in the last few years has become a de facto
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standard for product searchers and product for chasers and I absolutely love what Amazon offers me the comfort
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and the convenience and as you said even with the Whole Foods merger the experience was seamless
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you just had to have the app and they knew if you had the Prime membership so that experience at Whole
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foods that I had several weeks ago was quite seamless but I believe mikkel that customers will do business with
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companies that offer them differentiated experiences memorable experiences I was
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talking to my friend David very recently he has four dogs and he buys a lot of dog food from Amazon okay and I asked
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him David what would make you go into a neighborhood pet store he said Alexa reminds him when he needs
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to order dog food and the prices on Amazon as we all know are quite competitive and he simply orders them
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from the convenience of his home he didn't see a reason why he would change that behavior why he would go into a
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neighborhood pet store so I asked David would you go into that store if they offered to shampoo your dog he
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immediately said yes I would even go in if they offer to brush my dog's teeth so
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you see that is the motivation for David to change the behavior to go into a pet
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store businesses need to understand what motivates understand their customers to
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start with as individuals personas of the customers they need to understand what would motivate them to change the
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behavior of the customers once David goes into the pet store pet store can understand more about David they can
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understand that he travels a lot he would need pet sitters so they could offer even those services and figure out
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how to secure his loyalty just take my example Bed Bath & Beyond I buy all my
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appliances or I would prefer to buy all my appliances from Bed Bath and Beyond because when my appliance doesn't work
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even if it is beyond the warranty period I can take that into the store no questions asked
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they even they even give me a refund without me having receipts many times that is a differentiated
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experience that motivates me to buy products from Bed Bath and Beyond so in this age of Amazon what is important is
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how do you understand your customer and how do you deliver memorable and differentiated experiences for them to
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take one more pass that what you have been saying about the way in which companies can understand a fairly deep
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level the customers behavior and and perhaps work with not just their own business enterprises but across almost
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like a network of companies that do to deliver unique experiences to customers all this can't really be done without a
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tremendous understanding of data and and and one of the biggest issues where data
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that we keep hearing about these days is privacy what are some of your thoughts on some of the implications for
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companies and customers of how this is going to play out so we all know that GD P R which is a European regulation for
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privacy came into effect May 25th of this year 2018 and companies have been working towards complying to those
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regulations and I am 100% certain that we will see some form of those regulations here in US as well and my
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view has always been that the privacy regulations the data regulations is a good thing for customers as well as for
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businesses in the case of the customers it makes it clear that customers own their data companies need to get
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explicit permission from the customers to use their data they need to be transparent and explaining to them in
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simple language that they can understand in two to three minutes instead of 70 pages of legal document on how they plan
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to use the data and GDP or even goes a step further it says that if there is a breach you need to inform your customers
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within 72 hours along with a timeline for action so it's it's a good thing for customers
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now your other question was what does it mean to businesses and I sincerely believe it's a good thing for businesses
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now if you go into an enterprise today and look at where the data is stored it's stored across various silos of the
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organization the data customer data exists with an IT within CRM systems with an Operations in marketing and each
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of these silos have their own data strategy as well as the data governance strategy so enterprises are struggling
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to figure out how to get a handle of my customer data any kind of privacy data regulation will force
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I think the businesses to rethink their data strategy and their data governance strategy the first step that they will
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take is how do I get handle of my customer data and as you and I know getting a handle of the data allows you
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to understand your customer and that is key to delivering superior customer experiences and so there is a silver
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lining even for businesses when it comes to these regulations I think a part of the challenge around data is I think
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people are concerned about who has access to what data and even more importantly how that data is used there
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have been some recent moves towards technology companies and social media companies wanting access for example to
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financial information this is already going on in other parts of the world what do you what are your views on how
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this is likely to play out yeah we recently read about Facebook just yesterday and the Facebook reaching out
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to many of the financial companies to see if they can get access to customers financial information checking account
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information saving accounts their credit card transactions in my opinion delivering customer experiences start
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with transparency and understanding that customers owned the data and we need to
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be transparent as companies we need to be transparent with our to us on how we plan to use the data
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coming back to the customer experience issue I'm sure in your role at TCS you
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come across a number of companies that are trying to figure out the best way to use technology and their systems to
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engage more deeply with tech customers and build relationships rather than transactions what some of the challenges
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are mistakes that you have found companies make in this area and what could others learn from from their
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experiences one is I would say what I saw in the last few years is Enterprise was thinking that maybe I should bring
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people that are focused on data or digital so they fill their c-suite with chief data officer chief digital officer
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chief strategy officer x' people are important to any organization however they aren't going to solve the problem
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what I also have seen which is a little bit disappointing for me is that there have been departures of these high-level
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execs from the organization one of the second challenges is with digital transformation the business has to work
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hand in hand with the IT it is something IT has made traditionally made decisions
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on technology the businesses have always run campaigns as an example trying to attract customers or increase the basket
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size of revenue per customer now this forces the IT and businesses to work together and so those are a couple
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of challenges that I have seen the key to solving digital transformation is how do you keep customer in the middle of
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everything that you do have this unfailing commitment to listen to your customers what they want how they want
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to interact with you and provide memorable and differentiated experiences to them
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in my opinion is key to solving the problem and challenges that enterprises face technology will certainly follow
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and one last question and that is let's say just as you presented me with a hypothetical situation that we present
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you with one let's say you are asked by the CEO of a company that wants to improve its customer experience and its
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customer journey and wants to know where would be a the right place to begin what
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advice would you would you give the CEO where should they get started that's not
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a hypothetical question well it happens to me every single day when I walk into a customer the first thing for me to
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understand is where they are in their journey and where do they want to go what are their ambitions can I help them
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to understand what it means to deliver connected customer experiences in the context of their industry because that's
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what is going to be differentiator for any company to provide to their customers so start with where they are
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understand their ambition how do I bridge the gap between the two as well as move them towards thinking that they
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need to own the journey of their customers to survive and that's how I start the discussion great see that
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thank you so much for joining us acknowledge at wardens it it's been great having you here thank
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you Michael for having me it was a pleasure for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge
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