 this is Sonali. Thank you all for coming out some time for attending today's webinar on the episode three of BX Academy, Business Excellence Mentoring and Coaching. I would now like to welcome our speaker, Mr. Gaurav Maharaj, Chairman and Founder of the Franchise India Group. A very warm welcome to you, sir. Thank you, Sonali and welcome friends and welcome to another edition with the Business X Academy. This is a series we have started. We just finished 30 episodes on the scale, invest and exit your business, which was very, very successful. And we got some good feedback. And then we started a Business Excellence series. It's all about talking about how do you really bring improvement in your business thinking and also implementation of some best practices within your organization. And every time we pick up a one topic and discuss on that particular topic, and this is a full series which we'll continue to do. And we'll seek your feedback doing that. Before this webinar started, I was actually asking Sonali that we need to really understand who comes to our webinar. We get a very overwhelming response on a lot of people joining in. But it's very important to understand where you're coming from, what is your expectation, what are the challenges you're facing in your organizations, and how this would fit in. Because end of the day, you're putting valuable time of yours. And if it doesn't come to closer to your expectation, it would not work. So it's very, very important for setting the expectation right. Our general thinking is because the business X is a fairly large community part of franchise India group. So we have one of the largest communities is actually startups in what I call the mid-sized businesses within us. So all our content we try to design around that. But there can be different expectations. You might be in a different level of journey of your organization, different challenges of impacting. You're more than happy to give you as much information we have. The whole platform is set to really enable businesses to really grow and scale themselves. And also, business X is known for helping you to raise capital at a certain stage when you want to do that. This is also an initiative now, particularly in these current times because we feel that at this stage, businesses are a little bit of a stuck because what is happening around us, it's a difficult time, difficult time for our economy, difficult time for our businesses, difficult time for our people who are working for us. Everything is a little bit distorted at this moment. Even the businesses which are didn't demand, so to say, and which are what we call the COVID resistant businesses also facing a lot of challenges, especially in the second wave. I've seen businesses which were doing pretty well also are being disturbed because of a lot of people being infected and not a smooth functioning. Every day you really start your day, even remotely you find somebody is not available, something is really stuck and so on so forth. So it's a very complex time. But it is a great time for business owners if they can really carve out some hours every single day to really think about their own organization, how they want this time to go differently and approach differently and how we can make these organizations. And we have to learn from West that how they have been actually designed as an organization which were able to work remotely and they were very efficient in terms of doing it. And they had a much bigger predictability than a lot of businesses I have seen in India. And that's something which we have to all learn on this basis. So all these webinars we do, we really are having a mix of what I call some journal best practices which I discuss. And also I'll bring in some of my own experience into this. I've been also in business for now about 28 years and in doing myself my enterprises and then had an opportunity last 23 years as chairman of French India to work with a lot of businesses and seeing them grow, work with a lot of brand owners to really see their businesses grow. So a lot of experiences have come from there. So I try to mix those both parameters. I try to bring in some kind of best practices which we have a lot of content available and also marry with some of my own experiences which would be good. So today's topic is how do you really design what I call the customer-centric organization. Now this is something which is absolute need today for organizations to change and become customer-centric. Now this is the most commonly used word in organizations. This is something which is part of almost every statement, every mission, every company you go from the outside when you enter into that, almost everybody tries to claim that they are a customer-centric organization because that's something which we are all grown up to believe that. But I can tell you about 99.9% of organizations are not designed to be a customer-centric organization and there are reasons for it and neither they are designed, neither they are practicing. They all believe that they are available to really give the best customer experience and it's all about client satisfaction and so on. But really if you go out and see that the organization design, they're not designed to do that. Very, very few organizations are designed to be a customer-centric organization. And especially in these times where the consumer has become very fluid, it's available at different levels and we all been talking about this own omni-channel approach which means that customer is buying from different channels and how do you really bring in some kind of a consistency? How do you bring the same kind of experience almost every touchpoint? Even the largest of the company, I'm the biggest fan of this company, Apple, which everybody is. Now they are really a customer-centric organization but even if you look at a market like India, if you see how you consume Apple products in India are differently being sold, you're going from multi-brand retailer to Apple store to online experience to a platform like an Amazon experience. So there is a difference of multiple experiences and so on and so forth. How do even a company like Apple would be able to cope up and deliver the value system which they're doing? It is much easier in certain environments but it becomes even more difficult when you come to markets like India where the experiences can be very, very different. So another thing which is very important, a lot of companies really feel that they have a differentiated product. Maybe that brings customer loyalty to them. Answer is no. That's not the real case and 90% of companies don't have a differentiated product. They're pretty much me too. Somebody is doing it and they would differentiate by smaller things which is not really what customer is able to see. So the only differentiation you can really create almost about 90% of the organization is how do you really deal with your customer? What is your last mile customer experience would create that experience? And a lot of other things which would also be very important to understand that sometimes the quality, the value, all these are default functions. The basic expectation from a customer is that he want to get the best quality at the best price. Now that's not really the difference. The differentiation what I am seeing largely what customer is looking for today is how easy you are available to be purchased. How can I reach out to my product or my service? How fast I can do that? How easy I can do that? And how personalized it is? So three things are becoming very, very big differentiator today. How easy, how fast, and how personalized the experience is. Apart from that, some things are default. The whole quality and the value and other things are default. Another area which is the lot of perception issue. So a lot of companies would perceive that they are having a great customer satisfaction levels but they don't really see from the customer viewpoint. While they can see the trend of the same customer buying from you consistently, now like these days we have a lot of food clients and especially these dark kitchen clients which don't have a front interface. Most of the time they are picked by Zemato or Swiggy and they don't even know the customer who's consuming them. So it's a very difficult situation to be in where you're producing, you're seeing a lot of orders increasing every day. You're having the same Zemato guys queuing up and taking your product. You feel very happy and you see that there are a lot of demand which is coming in but you really don't know what customer is telling you because you don't know the customer at all. You don't know the customer who is really making a purchase decision. This is becoming even more difficult for organizations where they are only getting indicative figures of sales been growing or the sales function going more customers coming to them but they have no understanding of who is purchasing, why it is purchasing, why it is growing is the same person purchasing over and over again. That the fact really is that 80% of people feel that they are delivering great super experience and but only 10% of them would be the it would match with the same customer feeling which means the customer has the same perception as you feeling with your product. Which means that there's so much of differentiation so about 90% of that what you're believing is not true, only 10% of people it needs to be done and that's what shocks people when suddenly their sales start dipping and they start doing a lot of experimentation because they feel that something has gone wrong but actually they never had the same customer buying so it was either driven from promotions you were running or something else which was happening that you had this kind of a structure but truth is you never own the customer. Now that's a very very worrying part and that even becomes even more worrying when you are in environments like the what I said the dark kitchens and delivery platforms which are taking up your businesses and even the online channels you know you look at the amazons and the flip cards when you are a direct to digital kind of digital first companies these days which are going only on digital and suddenly they continue to see the demand but they don't really know who's really making this purchase decision why they have done that. So it is important first to really understand why we have to be a customer centric organization and what it means to be a customer centric organization. So first you need to understand who's your target group and very sharply define that that's very very important part of it because unless and until you really know your target group and who is consuming you that's extremely extremely important first important to define that. Second you also as the customer centric organizations everything you do should come from the insights you're getting from a customer and this is now your function to really understand how you're going to get those insights coming to you and that is unless and until you are you know designed without reading customer insight and your business intelligence which is telling you you will never be able to forecast doing it and also you need to also understand how you're going to be leveraging that data and to build and nurture your customer relationship that's also very important part of a business model. How do you really nurture that relationship when you need to own the understand who's your customer you need to also understand what it makes to for them to come to you regularly and what is the insights they're giving you and you can evolve your product according to their insight and then how do you nurture those relationships. Now the problem is that a lot of people don't even know the customer they don't know why they had made the decision to consume your product or your service and what are they telling you are they completely satisfied or they missed something which was available in that thing and the last would be even more difficult part that how do you nurture that relationship with that and and all these other programs and platforms available the CRM platforms and things of that nature they continue to pick up a lot of data I personally feel that data has no meaning unless and until you find a meaningful answer on the data and really create your structure on that so you need to really understand what is the data telling you you know what is the data telling you what is kind of the customer behavior it has how many times they consume what are they consuming what are their interests how big is the engagement they have with you that's very very important you know like Briani I will give you an example of this and I think there are many many companies and we have franchising there as like today 25 different clients some are using and making sales as a commodity product which is a meal option for people who are hungry and they want a full portion and doing it and there are companies like Briani by Kilo which are more driven from celebration at home and you want to really entertain your guests and things so you really have see that they are two different buying behaviors you know one is somebody sitting in office wants a lunch and holds a meal at a lower price fast enough to be completed in 30 minutes right so whole transaction has to be done and the second consumer is somebody who's looking for a much larger delivery experience so he will appreciate the packaging the indulgence in all that pieces so unless and until you really clearly understand the both are the Briani operators but both have a different target group and hence they would need a very different kind of an experience to come there if I try to give the experience to this person a little more then I will feel a little bit cheated because I am I don't want it to pay that kind of price it's not doesn't work for me and if I give this piece to this just commoditize I'd say and then I'll take the experience away the indulgence away that also would not be able to do that so you really have to understand who you really are trying to address and then only you will be able to what I call create new product services and promotions depending on your customer group unless you have this life cycle being very very clearly defined you will not be able to create a newer products services and promotions also very important because otherwise if you really see in the whole especially in the digital world people is just copying somebody else right because they don't know their customer they're just trying to do what other person is doing and they would try to just run through you know a lot of same promotions like I was talking to one of my clients and they said look we're doing these promotions and I think we have known that should we do it should we not do it is it working for us are people buying just because we're doing promotion or we're just doing over and above these kind of promotion because other players are doing it so you need to really see why you want to do that and I can tell you there are some real studies big studies been done even a Deloitte has a statement which means the 60 percent of companies which are customer centric organizations are much more profitable than their counterpart 60 percent of these companies so now we really get into what we have to really see understand how you measure your customer experience now this is very important aspect of it and most of the times we go into the last purchase this season and try to measure that but to me it's a end-to-end you know structure end-to-end journey of a customer to actually locate you to consume you unless and until all that piece is synchronized and deliver in a certain harmony it will not create the last mile customer experience which means if I have to look at from the current space how a customer is searching you how he's getting choices on that say if I was searching say a shoe then I would need to go where all I'm going to make a search how search was convenience how I got choices how do I make my selection how I was engaged how the how the last file sale was done and how I build the perception of the entire course now that's something which is very important so smart organization smart brands would not just focus on the end product you know which is very usability we all talk about say if I was buying shoe how it would be functional how it would be you know durable how it is that aesthetic wise how it is done so all their discussions would happen in our boardrooms we will become too product-centric and talk about anything to do that product how a customer would do that but really if you see the entire buying experience what from how he searched how he made choices how he made selection how he was engaged and finally what the sale and the whole sale experience happened and then phenomenally after using the product how this entire experience in totality look to be and that's something which is which is extremely important and this is also a big problem because if you really see in our organizations our organizations are designed to really encourage people just sell more and that's why they incentivized on selling more and so on so nobody is really having any kind of structure to incentivize people to see the whole value chain you know how this whole value chain is going to be addressed now it is very difficult to really address because on the day for every organization the only thing which matters is getting revenue in the system and and defining that and that's how organizations are designed so we always would measure how much we were able to sell but we don't really measure the whole end-to-end experience cycle for for a customer now let's talk about some of the best practices which is very important what are the best practices one of the best practices is the how do you anticipate the consumer need now this is another very very complex situation to be in today because it's not at all easy to understand and define what is the consumer looking at you know there's a good quote of apple CEO Tim Cook he says the our whole role in the life is to give you something which you didn't know you wanted and once you get it you would you cannot imagine your life without it so which means that cost they are trying to locate products which customer never wanted and once they get it experience was so good that they cannot think their life without it so if you really see it's it's a very very far-sighted thinking of an organization like apple right so they are even thinking whether the consumer is not able to perceive that product but they they are human problems which they need to connect and all these human problems if you can bring in your product and understand and give that experience to somebody and they have the life around the that would be probably them that thing so how do you really anticipate what is the consumer looking at and that would be the one very important so to say a best practice to do that and the second is how do you build accessibility uh to your customer base now this is one funny example I'll give you there is a company I actually had an opportunity to visit in Bangladesh uh called Rams group you know it's a very large group multi diverse multiple places and so on and uh and I met somebody at a general manager level and you know already has a number like this you know and it's chairman's number on the card and uh and then I looked at his website if you go on website is also the number everywhere it is that number available and it's a large organization it's like a you know company which is very very diversified multiple businesses multiple structures large industrial group now the philosophy very clearly for our organization is that they want to create an accessibility to every single person who wants to reach out now people are intelligent if I get this general manager's card I'm not going to call the chairman I'm not going to call that but what he's telling as organization uh that I am accessible I'm available right so this is very hard a lot of companies try to make it uh you know a lot of call centers and other things and so on so you actually complex it if you really see around you uh you have actually see a lot of complexity of reaching out organizations even if you are every day using you're using telecom banking other things which you're using every day you if you really see it's not very simple it's it's looks like they try to make it very simple for you but it is not that simple it's not that kind of accessibility which you like as a consumer another thing which is missing very big is the human touch I think with optimization and all that pieces which is happening it might look like we are giving the user experience to the user himself that he can really go out and and do this piece but we are taking away the human touch and that's also very important that people need to really understand that uh end of the day the best consumer experience can be delivered by a human touch you know so which means that somebody calls you somebody talks to you somebody gives you a personal message and things of that nature and how you really would like to do that another best practice is how do you design the organization and democratize your consumer data so people at every level understand what is going on in the business and what is going on with the customer it's not just reflected to one single small group which is called the client servicing and most ignored and most of the times a cost side group in the organization so people really put that as a cost side that this is a customer service department which is actually a function which is not or most of the companies these days it's a department which looks after escalations that's how these departments are designed by mindset and and how do you really not really involve the entire organization and which also calls for the connectivity between what I call your culture your consumer and your communication how these three things connect the three C's your culture connect to your consumer through effective communication that's how this whole structure should really reflect so democratize your data and also try to connect these uh three C uh points which are very important so these are some of the best practices done that there are many many more which one can really touch upon do this now I'll touch upon last three points which are before we close we are coming in next three months if you have any questions go out and write on a q&a box which Sonali would take it and I will try to answer so three things which you need to really understand in your the entire customer experience cycle one is what is your turn rate how many customers you lose every single cycle and what first you need to understand what is your cost of acquisition of every customer what is the cost of retention of your customer and how many customers you lose every single year so or if your cycle of purchase is different than how many customers you lose every single quarter or a month or things of that nature depending on the the consumption cycles and you need to now then put a science behind it and it is much cheaper to really put an effort to get and retain that same customer base and not continue to do that so when you do the cost of acquisition and cost of retention you'll find the cost of retention is much smaller but it doesn't have cost of acquisition normally is a sales function right we define that how much marketing money you will put how much this but this we don't put as a structure uh you I you will have a chief sales officer but you will not have a chief retention officer you know so this would have been more productive for organizations to really think through because the I personally feel the loyalty word is relatively dead you know you need to keep the customer excited and glued then only would they would stay with you otherwise experience largely would become very very same you know like for example I'll give you my own example I was only staying in ITC and suddenly we started spending a lot of you know monies with the Marriott hotel and Marriott also has a same actually cost piece you know you know same loyalty program ITC has its own also but they also work on the Marriott's Benoy program which has now become one of the best programs there and and I didn't tell you it was phenomenally different ITC is a great hotel chain very very good hotel chain but Marriott is in a different scale altogether they absolutely go in a different level on that so now when I go to ITC I they would ask me would you put like to put your points in Marriott or in ITC I will say Marriott because I then I can make a lot of choices in the Marriott hotels including ITC and the kind of level of service which they will need to do that now but truly speaking it's not about the hotel it's not about that property it's not about the people it's about the engagement which they would create with you which is very very different to a lot of other things so so loyalty is not there I can move I can move I mean overall it would be a different level of service somebody else would be different level of service but because of my glueness they're keeping me excited they're giving me a lot of things which I cannot miss and and that's what people get attached to I remember one of the top companies I work with is President of Remax actually Global which is one of my companies I work with actually was called me I said I'm flying to Singapore for a day and if you are free then we can catch up for a for a meal and we can discuss few things in Asia we want to do so I thought he must be coming from some serious meeting to attend and this is a real story you know and this is about two years back and I felt that this guy only flying from us one single day coming in and and something much more serious about this trip because it's a it's a big hassle to really fly down and and he came and I had a meal with him and I said you had some small meeting this is no no no I am my my if I didn't do this flight then I would lose my tear which I have on on the airlines which he was traveling and because he was not well so he didn't travel for some time and he can have the loose because the stickiness was so high for the experience he get he just flew to cover this piece right so just for a day he came in he had a you know a one day in Singapore and flew back and and retain his his pieces so this is not about the loyalty about that airline or things of that nature because the the perks you get at that level keeps you stick at that particular situation so you don't want to lose that tear it's not really about any pride nobody knows that you are in this tier or that tier it's just your personal experiences which you would get using those and I think so one has to learn on on how you need to do that another thing which you need to do is divide your consumer based very clearly how is your consumer how many enthusiasts you have everybody has about 10 percent of customers which are enthusiasts like for me I used to love this brand called Muji I started buying that about 15 20 years back that time it was not available is a Japanese brand you know based on you know different philosophy of product development and things that so I started using that product and I used to come and tell a lot of people about that and especially I used to buy a lot of stationery and used to give and gift people on those stationeries so I was a kind of enthusiast on the brand but these are only 10 percent of the people and then there are passive subscribers you know they can go both sides they can come this side they can come this side they are the most important to really focus on enthusiasts also because they sometimes are too much in love with that and they can you can really disappoint them if you don't nurture them and and pamper them so to say you continue to pamper them in that and then you have the critics you know the who are not somebody who really appreciate and they have this and they would actually can damage your brand so you need to really divide who is that so unless you have a clarity of who who's buying from you and how is this this data is divided and what are you doing for different strategies for different people and the last is how do you really calculate your customer lifetime value you know first you need to understand the lifetime value lifetime value would be the average value of the sale multiplied by number of transactions and the retention time period which is average retention time so average customer how much time it's staying with you so if you if you multiply that that would give you a lifetime value and if you multiply a lifetime value with your overall profit margin that would create a customer lifetime value right so it is this is where the largest valuations are happening these days especially in a businesses which have a large subscriber group this kind of a valuations would work so this is what I wanted to share this is obviously you cannot cover the subject in in full sense you always would pick up some points which would come through and it doesn't really give you a full sense of things but idea is to really you know spark a little bit of thought in you on thinking process on few things which you can do in your organization once once you start thinking on that you obviously put some bricks around it and I think a lot of data is not a problem in life no data is too much available if you it's only alignment of you to really think towards what improvement you want to bring in your organization and I also benefit from this I mean I have a liking of these doing these webinars not for some other reasons because it also gives me one or two thoughts when I'm really thinking about it what I can do differently in the organization because it's easy to tell others but it's very difficult sometimes to implement in your organization so thank you very much over to you Sonali if you have any question I can answer thank you so much for another wonderful session and for sharing your valuable insights as you said this topic is really vast and we have already exceeded our time limit but if your time permits can we take a few questions that we are sure sure so I quickly jump on to the first question the first question is is it a good idea to be transparent to your customer even if it means to show your drawbacks or shortcomings to show the real status of of your business no it's a very tricky question to really answer if you if you use the word transparent it is fine but if you think that the customer is having that kind of you know patience or would accommodate you because you're not perfect then then that's not true it's it's difficult to believe but the customer need is immediate if I go and say why I'm good I'm improving and I will give you a better thing tomorrow normally a customer doesn't appreciate that's something which one has to really understand that you have very little window but you have to be transparent acknowledging that you are not good enough that's not a bad idea so another thing which I didn't touch upon which is very important you know sometimes you have to be very balanced on the customer feedback customer feedback can also destroy businesses and I've seen businesses which get too overwhelmed by the feedback and they don't really think from so you don't change the principle and the base of your organization right like for example let's take McDonald's great organizations so many years so many markets I don't know how many people would give them every single day a device and if you follow McDonald's I follow them on Twitter and other places you see the kind of comments people write to them if they start really following that they would have been a confused product by now you know people give them so many devices on changing almost everything they have you know but they have never changed it because they understand that there is a lot of people who are liking it but they listen to a few things and be honest on on continue to improve a small pieces of what they stand for so they stand for a great fast service right so they would continue to do work towards making an understanding and listening even if the bait was a person standing ahead of you and he took a little time in taking that that also irritated me because I didn't want to stand behind somebody and waited for him to take three minutes more to place his order because he was not efficient and he was looking around and and you can so what they did was that he created these panels now where you can go and sell for that because you see how how he did and and this might have happened with you when I have it happened with me multiple time when my kids want McDonald and I'm standing behind somebody who's not even making a decision to what to buy you know and he's looking at board and he's he's not even considerate that he can move out and just decide and then come in the queue but even for that smallest thing McDonald understood and they created these self order panels doing it and sometimes it's just surprised me like Dubai airport I saw them a big panel has been created and I saw none of them people really on the queues and people were still going and making their own order on doing it rather than going and giving down the counter they were giving it that so it just tells me how how they anticipated giving people personalized experience of doing whatever they want to do they didn't want to even talk to somebody and give order they wanted to do it themselves so these are smaller feedbacks which really excite me about how companies can be so so very clear about customer centricity absolutely sir very well explained the next question I would like to take up is are limited time offers or promotions a good way to earn a customer will these customers stay when they won't get the same offer again yeah so it depends on why they have come at the first place you know price value which I said and the quality of product is default it's everything else which would really be important so if you would continue to give a better price than the your other products available in the market in the entire thing so maybe that's a that's a point to really attract them but it is only eventually things which are beyond that the whole experience cycle is to me very very important and and now it's changing you know so companies are realizing that just because selling it on discount or selling it cheap or thing this in peace because there is no end to the bottom right so you will continue to ask even if you get 70 percent discount people who say oh only 70 percent can you not give me more on that can you not give me 70 so I have a company used to be a company called Coutons which factor and become bankrupt and they used to do this they started with buy to get one free then they came down to something else and the last was actually getting into getting some five free or six free and it was impossible for how discounting really lowered them and and they felt that only for discount they can survive and actually they got bankrupt right sir the next question I would like to take up is what is the best medium to engage our customers social media adds one on one review surveys etc according to you all all all are very important social media is sometimes too much of noise best is and leadership team should do it you know I think I last time I gave this example that when Flipkart started if you see the older days of Flipkart the Bansal's used to go and do delivery themselves and and that to me a lot of people felt that it was a good social media engagement even this matter owner founder used to do this piece but to me it was very important it was very very important for leadership to really participate in taking feedback and it's tough and it's very sometimes very annoying because you get to hear things which you which you always not want to hear it but but it happens you know so this is something which we we should all be prepared for it right and the last question that I would like to take up is from your view names of good names of good company in customer centricity to adopt good practices from them you've already given an example in the session but anything you would like to add you know so at this stage a lot of global examples all these multi global multinationals which are customer service companies especially service companies I mean I give Starbucks McDonald's all these companies if you really see and learn from their smallest things what they do because they have really the best I don't see that too much in the product companies because they they still don't have that sensitivity but service companies have a very strong sensitivity of delivering to the I think we have also great examples even we have a great examples in our cooperatives you know companies like Amul, Mother Dairy even I mean the people don't really appreciate but if you really go and see these organizations how how good the organizations these are and how they're based on the great value system I mean I love Amul and Mother Dairy as organizations for what I've said that how to deliver culture to consumer to their effective communication very very good effective communication they don't really do that so all these companies are great organizations and one has to learn from these companies and these are in conventional businesses which are even more difficult to really bring in and build that kind of a value and we have all seen in difficult times how these companies have really retained their customers deliver the correct customer experience never on but not able to deliver the promise they never disappointed so whenever we wanted them they were there as organizations so so thank you very much I think we we overshadowed our time we normally do 30 minutes but we've done 12 minutes extra idea is to give you a little bit of a what I would not say just a little bit thinking process it's not you know but we we want to really have a feedback from everybody so reach out to Sonali or me if you have anything to share which we can help us in future series we can really touch upon topics or any other topic that you would like to hear that also is we will be more than happy to do that I'm putting my email id is gm at goromaria.com so you can reach us and we will be happy to hear your feedback thank you so much for itself another wonderful session as always and for very patiently answering all the questions and thank you to our attendees for joining us for this session we really hope you were able to add some value to your lives through the session and please join us next saturday at 11 am with another episode of the bx academy business excellence mentoring and coaching as Gaurav sir said if you have any questions if you would like to know more about our services or if you want a recording of this session please feel free to reach out to me and I would be very happy to help you thank you so much thank you thank you very much thank you