 Now, ladies and gentlemen, let's start with the first panel of the day. Is technology driving the future of CX? Companies that provide exceptional customer experience set themselves apart from the competition. Achieving this requires that a company think beyond just customer service. In fact, technology is given the consumer immense power when it comes to making purchasing decisions. It is estimated that by 2025, 95% of all customer interactions will be supported by AI technology and doesn't scare anybody anymore. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together. Allow me to invite on stage Sundar Madakshira. He is the head of marketing Adobe on stage who will be moderating the discussion along with our illustrious panelists. Ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause, welcome our moderator on stage. Allow me to introduce the panelists to you. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together. Welcome on stage Ritu Gupta, director, marketing, consumer and small businesses, Dell India. Anika Agrawal, SVP and head marketing, digital and direct sales. I'm told Anika isn't around. Ritu isn't around. Yeah, I'm so sorry. I apologize. Ritu isn't around. So, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Anika Agrawal, SVP and head marketing, digital and direct sales, Max Boopa, Deepika Sabarwal Tiwari, AVP marketing, Tanish, Srivats TS, vice president marketing, Swiggy, Kashyap Vadappali, CMO Pepper Fry, Kishan Kumar, managing partner, South WaveMaker, and ladies and gentlemen, the panel is in session. Put your hands together for the moderator of the session, Sundar, can you hear a big round of applause, Sundar, it's over to you. Pepper Fry is facing problems from so far. So, it's a great way to start. So great guys, I think if you can find a more diverse panel than this, let me know. I'd definitely like to be a part of that. Five very different people coming from very different backgrounds, having worked with very different types of companies. All of them have, you know, we were just catching up absolutely colorful stories about customer experience and their own businesses. A lot of them are big revelations for me, at least, and would love to bring some of that richness into our discussion. So, the first thing I'd like to sort of kick off is the whole topic is about the technologies driving the future. Is that actually driving the future of consumer experience? But there's a promise I'd like to make before we start is that we will talk about the non-technology part of consumer experience as well. Now, that is a very, what shall I say, carry limiting question that I will put together because I am from Adobe. Okay, so, let's start. So, we got an interesting pair here, Anika Agarwal, who's bought a lot of gold from Deepika, who's sold a lot of gold. So, she's a gold medallist in everything that she's done in her career. So, over to you, Anika, with a question to all the panelists in sequence. How important is customer experience in your context? What is it that makes it business critical? Is it business critical? Are there parts of your journey which actually do not need that? You're still, you know, okay with it. So, how critical is customer experience in your context? So, I think it's a rhetorical question, Sundar. But if you look at what we do as brand custodians, we create brand value. But finally, you know, when you deliver that brand value is through customer experience. So, if you look at Max Boopa, for example, we sell health insurance. It's a promise. It's for a time when you fall sick. So, it's not just the purchase of a product. It's a promise for future. And, you know, the customer sometimes does not go to the hospital for eight years, ten years, and he still continues to pay you premiums every year. So, what do you do with that consumer? He's trusting you. You build that trust, but that promise is delivered through customer experience. And that customer experience is not just purchase. It's absolutely at every part of the journey. And then we talk about the non, you know, the non-technology part of it also plays a huge role for us when we talk about customer experience because that's the time when the customer is in the hospital, for example. So, I think for us, customer experience is actually, you know, the sum of parts and that whole actually has to be more than the part. So, when we talk about customer experience and we think about it in our business, we don't just think touch points. So, it's not just a touch point at the time of purchase or at the time of, you know, claim or renewing a policy, but it's the whole customer journey and how that whole is bigger than, you know, parts is what defines customer experience. Right. So, I'll come back to you later with the kind of challenges that you're facing. How are you trying to interface digital and non-digital parts of it? But we'll park it for now. So, over to you Kashyap in terms of, you know, pepper fry. So, tell us a little bit about the story of pepper fry and how it sort of evolved the customer experience journey. Sure. So, we, you know, started off six years back as an online marketplace for furniture and we were trying to build a platform where a lot of Indian manufacturers from cities like Jodhpur, Saranpur, etc. would be able to bring their, you know, products online and we are trying to provide the platform for them. At the same time, we realize that even if you look at big cities like Mumbai or Bangalore or whatever, this is a category which is highly fragmented. You know, you do have a few brands, but all the large brands put together is less than five, six percent of the total market. You know, there is not really high quality information about this category. You know, I mean, for example, if I start talking about types of wood, types of designs, I think after three, four minutes, the average consumer who probably spends a few lakh rupees, you know, on furniture when they're doing up their home or when they're renovating it, their level of knowledge of what is quality, you know, what is, what are the various types of design, it's all, you know, it's very superficial. And therefore, you know, there is a lot of people who trust a carpenter or you're trusting a local store or you're relying on, you know, the brand, a branded store if you're walking into it. So we figured that unlike, let's say if you're in the mobile phone business or the t-shirts business or the, you know, selling shoes, there are really large brands. There is a lot of literature about, you know, product specifications about, you know, this shoe is better than that shoe or this phone is better and that is a selfie phone and this is a so-and-so phone. So there's a lot of knowledge that consumers have, but in this segment that just didn't exist on the buyer side. And I think that reflected on the seller side, on the supply side, really small manufacturers, really small mom and pop stores, absolutely no standardization of information, no standardization of material, no standardization of quality. So trying to build a platform in such a, you know, kind of a wild west jungle of a, you know, of a market for us was very eye-opening, okay. And we realized we can't, you know, we can't compete on price. We can't say, you know, this thing is worth 3,000 bucks and you don't know whether it's great value for money. I mean, if I said it was 5,000, maybe you'd think, you know, maybe it's expensive. So you don't really have a great sense of knowledge. So for us to try and, you know, build a platform that, you know, provides the best price to customer and we will compete only on money or value delivered. I mean, in terms of cost or price, that didn't make sense. When you think of, again, this category, it's very personal in terms of somebody may like a certain piece of furniture, somebody might not like it. There is so much variety, there is so much range across all these small manufacturers that I'm talking about that, again, you can't say, you know, I have the entire supply or I have everything that anybody might like. So while the range and designs are very important, I think, again, that becomes very tenuous. And I think when we spoke to customers, when we first started out and we spoke to customers who were buying furniture from us, we figured that the biggest, you know, the biggest issue that consumers were facing when they were taking this decision is that there was a lot of anxiety. You know, typically a big occasion when people buy furniture and home decor products is when they make up their home. And, you know, they start that process with a lot of joy. There is, you know, this is our dream house. We will make it come alive like this. But when they get into the process, there is a lot of... It's not a smooth process in India. You trust a carpenter. You know, you think you can control the output. But, you know, often there are time overruns. There are cost overruns. There's the headache of the work happening within your own house. Or you need to constantly be present to provide oversight for the control that you're seeking. If you go to a smaller store, you might get seemingly great prices, but you don't really get good designs. If you go to a large store, you're always afraid you're getting ripped off. So there's a lot of anxiety in the process. And that's the feedback that we got. So we figured that, you know, our job is to actually solve that bit. The customer experience in furnishing... I mean, putting furniture and furnishings in decor into your home in India is...it's painstaking. It's time-consuming. It's a very uncertain journey. And therefore, consumers need a much more standardized experience. They need much more standardized information. They need more predictable behavior when they engage with, you know, this category. And I think for us, you know, that was really the aim that we set out to do. So typically, talking about... When you say disruption, you talk about, you know, upending or, you know, destroying an existing system. For us in this category, really the challenge or the mission that we have is actually to organize the system. You know, it's just the exact opposite of disruption. And that's really where we came in. And for us, we realized that because there are so many touchpoints and so much non-standardization, the customer experience in terms of just the overall process, being able to find something they like fast enough, being able to take an informed decision in terms of having a certain set of standard questions about materials, weight, dimensions, et cetera, and having a great standardized experience in terms of, you know, the actual delivery and installation, which itself is a big event. I mean, you have to stay at home or you have to schedule delivery at a certain time. You have to clear space in your house. A big sofa set is coming in. It needs to get assembled, installed. It's going to take two, three hours of your life. You know, it's a big event. And I think providing standardization, predictability in all of that was really what we were trying to solve for. The information, the decision-making, and the actual physical experience. So for us, given that we just can't say, hey, this is, you know, one triple nine, please buy it, and they can't really sell, or, you know, for us, really making the customers have a great experience, a confident experience, in being able to find what they like, take an informed decision, and have a great post-transaction physical experience is really what we are trying to set up for. And that's really the way. Customer experience is really everything in what we do. Right. So it reminds me of what our CEO just said, six months back, that customers never buy products, but they buy experiences. So I think you're leading to that. So from furniture over to food, Shiva, you have, he's from Swiggy. And so what's been your journey, and what's your real CX crux that you're looking at? Yeah, so from a Swiggy perspective, right? So I think the cornerstone on which we built our brand, our business, et cetera, has been consumer experience, right? And that's been like the cornerstone of what we've believed it from day one. And we genuinely believe that we have a set of eight values within the organization that we kind of champion. And number one, first among sequences, consumer comes first, right? And so that's been our kind of guiding philosophy right through. And let me kind of, you know, exemplify that by talking about how we started. So we want the first entrant into the category, the category of ordering in from restaurants around you. Right? That's what we do. And we want the first in that category. But I think what we saw was that there was a clear gap from a customer experience perspective with respect to actually getting a great, reliable, convenient, hassle-free experience when you wanted to order from restaurants near you around you. So back then the category code from an infrastructure perspective was there's no need for a delivery fleet because it's going to be difficult to scale up a delivery fleet. It's going to be difficult to control, maintain quality control, et cetera. But we actually felt that the only way we were going to be able to deliver a consumer experience that we were satisfied with and that consumers would be happy with, was if we controlled the consumer experience from start to finish. So right from the time the consumer places the order on the app to the time he receives the food at his doorstep, right? And if you want to control the consumer experience end-to-end and provide a great experience, you need to control the experience end-to-end. And that's why we invested right from the very beginning in a delivery fleet which we own and we manage. And I think that has been our differentiator, the fact that we've actually managed to deliver a reliable, hassle-free, you know, experience from a consumer perspective. I know that before I joined Swiggy, I had heard about Swiggy through friends, et cetera. And I think World of Mouth was a very strong driver of our brand, you know, user base, et cetera, in the early stages. And World of Mouth comes when you have the experience, right? So long story short, CX has been our backbone right from the very first day zero or day one. And it continues to be, you know, our core driver for a lot of our initiatives, projects, experiments going forward. And we talk about that maybe a little bit more as we want. Sure. Sure. So over to you Deepika from Tanishk. Both the earliest seekers are digitally-first companies. So I guess we are speaking about the tech-enabled CX experience. I think there are tech-enabled CX experiences and there are relationship experiences of consumers. Tanishk started 20 years ago and we were the disruptor in the category. We were coming into a category where family jewelers were the final word when you bought jewelry. And I think our journey has only strength and today we are the most dominant player in the market with, I think, the largest share of the organized market, if I can call it, one of the biggest players. And that I think is only thanks to the consumer experience that we have given our consumers. In a category where trust is very important, where loyalty runs through generations, to break that I think what we have delivered is only because of the relationship each of our RSO shares with each of the consumers across the length and breadth of this country. One of the things that I always believe and I think we always tell our retail staff is, it is okay if the consumer doesn't leave the bag from the store, but it's very important that he leaves with a smile in his heart because then he will certainly come back. The other point that we always feel is that in our category, there are two types of consumers broadly. One are the investment seekers and the second are the adornment seekers. Tanish clearly talks to the adornment seekers. And when you are buying jewelry for adornment, you are in the happiest moment of your life, even if you are just buying a two gram worth of gold. At that time I think we need to make her feel like she is the most important person in that shop in that moment. And that's what makes the consumer experience for her at a Tanish store. That's really the touch and feel and the relationship part of Tanish. As Tanish moves to e-commerce and comes on with the, on the online space, I think technology is playing a very good role in enabling us in that journey. I think we'll talk about that a little later. But I think to the question of how important is consumer experience, I think in this day and age where the consumer is quite for choices, not within our category but also from categories like in the holidaying and experiences, I think it is only consumer experience that will make consumers choose and prefer and consider brands. So because there's going to be productivity, there's going to be inter-category competition and only if we up our game on relationship as well as tech consumer experience, are we really going to be able to hold on and build loyalty with our customers? So before we go to the question, I just have to stop you and ask you one question. There are two types of customers, right? People who buy jewelry and people who pay for it. So sometime in the course of this panel discussion, you'll also like to share how do you make customer experience great for people who are paying for it as well. So that's not meant to be a sexist question. Guys, I need some care from the men. I'm speaking for you. Actually, as I will answer that question even now, there are more and more women who are buying jewelry for themselves than men who are buying jewelry for themselves. That's a great insight because it was so hidden in my life so far that I never experienced it. You know something, we only pretend that you are gifting it to us. The decisions are already made. Great. Fantastic. Over to Pishan. Yeah, so I don't think there is a choice, right? I think the decision has already been made by consumers that my experience or the experience that you're going to give me is what is going to make our brands because and I work, I lead a media agency and one of the advantages of working in a media agency is that you kind of get to see the spectrum of consumers, right? So we work with key brands, with breakfast mix brands, with Mintra, which is an online digital first company. We work very closely with Tanishk. So there are these different varied sort of consumer segments we work with and our job is to kind of arrive at the right solution for the brand so that the business prosper, right? And over a period of the last few years, we have very, very clearly seen that, you know, the shift is clearly from outputs to outcome and the output, the shift from outputs to outcome is clearly centered around consumer experiences and that is something which is driving, the driving force and it is not probably because you want it to be but that's the reality of life and that's why because today if you look at the consumers today, they are the most informed lot. They are the most difficult to please today. They are very, very finicky about what they want and they have probably the most little weapon that they have which is they have the voice to share their opinion so any good experience or any bad experience can make or break businesses today and I'm sure all of you would have seen this that there's a very interesting experience that I personally had because I am sure most of you can relate with it there is Uber and Ola on your phone and you kind of keep shifting between both, right? But at some point in time one of them takes over because of the kind of experience that they provide and also there's a lot of tech background to it in terms of how the algorithm kind of understands you and the machine learning kicks in but in spite of all of that where there is one bad experience that happens and your kind of goes back to the choice, right? Which was not there earlier. So consumers are brutal today, consumers are which is why I said that the good and the bad experience are equally important and that's why we have seen that today it is all about managing that expectations before that expectation comes to you so kind of pre-empting what consumer experience can be and what the best experience can be and then how do we kind of work towards it so that there is a delight that happens and then that delight kind of then kind of multiplies to get in more and more converts to it so that's why it is most important we don't have a choice today Yeah, so I think you've got a fair idea of what is being a journey so far but just to sort of flip it around and say when you're looking at it say from the next 18 months or 24 months from now what is your CX vision, what is your vision where do you want to take it from where you are and you've all given us how you've come here what are you doing currently and what have you achieved but in the next 18 months or 24 months just to put a time frame to it what would be the different things that you have in mind what would you like to achieve from your learning so far and how do you want to take the journey forward and then we'll come to the technology about how that kind of thing works So, over to you So I think if you look at the next two-year horizon there are two key things that we think are very important the first is standardization and the second is making connections so let me talk a little about both I think standardization to Deepika's point we are a business where you know we're a brick and mortar business we're not really a digital first business so if you look at our business only about 15-20% of our customers are buying us digitally 80% of our customers are still because it's an advisory business so if you go to a person you want advice it's relationship, it's advice and a person is buying basis trust so how do you really standardize across each of these touch points because there are a lot of people who go digitally look for you check opinions but then finally go back to a person and buying so standardization across all touch points that's a key delivery agenda on CX for us and the other is connectors and creating ecosystems because in large businesses now we saw Pepper Fry and Swiggy what they're doing is that they're controlling they're trying to control the entire experience so right from production to the end delivery you try and own everything in certain businesses like ours where you cannot control, you don't own the end experience so in insurance you actually go to a hospital which is a separate provider how do you really use customer experience how do you create connectors so what we're trying to do is create ecosystems for example when a customer is going to a hospital how do you use technology to ensure that your experience is what the customer gets there and it's a combination of offline and online right so we have something called point of care desks in key hospitals so when a customer goes there is the brand experience that's being delivered by the brand there at the hospital but also connector moments with the hospital so that technology is used to seamlessly get customer reports, get customer discharges done faster and so on so standardization and creating these connections to a health ecosystem is what we are driving in health insurance it's interesting you use what customers are not patient so there's more to it we'll come to that because I had a very specific question on acquisition so I'll come back to you so you know honestly I think the the entire customer experience piece I don't think there are any milestones in it I believe that as we tried to build the business we figured what the customers pain points are and we're trying to solve it it's obviously a working progress and you know we are able to kind of move forward so I don't know whether I can say we've been so far and what the next 18 to 24 months are looking like but if I were to look at just how we look at the various aspects of customer experience let's say the first bit really is how customers interact with us we started off as web only you know platform we later launched that app and after the app we actually launched physical stores so today we have about 32 physical stores across the country across 11 cities they contribute about 20-25% of our business obviously all the business is still online but we're able to tie back that a certain person walked into a store and then placed an order subsequently so they're kind of giving that credit to the store because we think the store played a role in influencing their customer so you know the first bit is really how do customers interact with us across all of these you know that's one and if I were to take I mean I think that we're optimizing continuously for the pangolian panel you know I think that's one place where the consumer and the brand or the company are completely aligned the consumer would like to find something that they like really fast and that's exactly what we also are trying to try for example something that we are continuously trying to do is you know first is not a very search led category you can't search for good led so far you know for you know beige color and so on you want to look at stuff you want to feel inspired you want to feel it, you want to like it and therefore it's a very browse led category that's how we think about it people see a lot of images we provide like between 8 to 12 images for help them to obviously be able to relate it we are implementing you know solutions where you can even 3D on a mobile phone you can already actually you know select items not all items but select items turn on your camera and see how it looks in your room so we are trying to kind of find the way customers are able to find something that they like so so that's the process that's going on technically getting to a position where we are able to utilize our entire product we include an AR, VR kind of an environment where customers are able to experience the product in kind of CD depending upon the technology available whether it's on you know tech available on the mobile or you know through centers like you already have the video centers and if we can actually get it into a VR area you can actually expand that 200, 200 really far something that we are trying to do so that customers can come in really find what they like to see be confident about the decision that they are taking and so on so that's just one example something that we already do for example is you know when you are very proud that size you have kinds of images for everything for us and you also need to be proud and imagine flying on the mobile computer 40% of our business happens on the mobile any person happens on the floor what doesn't happen on the mobile it's a mining tech and we know pretty much that there hasn't been a touch point on the best way then the entire touch point is on the mobile phone and so for people who take the position just how quickly you load images how quickly they do the flight for example that's the technology in helping us to kind of optimize the conversion funnel people are able to find what they like to see all aspects of personalization all aspects of using data to drive people down a broken path all of those things come in so that's one example finding things and the second area is really post transaction I talked about earlier there are two aspects to the physical touch point that happens to consumers you get somebody who delivers, there's a delivery team that delivers the item and there's a separate installation team what we do is today for example as soon as the delivery is done they have a hand tag where they indicate that the delivery is completed and then immediately there is a network of carpenters on the bike across the city who will there's a network of there's a network of carpenters on the bike across the city who would then get to know that this particular delivery is done and we are able to almost like an Uber or a ULA we are able to kind of give the closest carpenters the job so that they can go in and do it so that's another place where technology comes in just I think like I said it's a continuous process we are trying to solve problems as they keep cropping up and trying to keep fine tuning in so I think that's really our continuous path sure thanks so from a CX vision perspective 18 months out etc the two passwords one part of it is we have this concept of a perfect order but on the other hand we know even now there are a set of consumers there's a set of orders every day that are not perfect orders that are bad orders whether it's an edit from a dish perspective or a cancellation at a restaurant or a consumer initiated cancellation so that's a certain number we want to get that to something approaching near zero so out of every 100 orders we are at a certain bad order what that number is and we want to get that to zero so in an ideal world every order is a perfect order where the consumer knows what he is getting perfectly and there is no silver bullet there is no magic that will automatically get this to zero I actually think where there are hundreds of different things done where you chip away at every single point to kind of bring it down over a period of time where the three side in marketplace there's the consumer side there's the delivery executive side and there's the restaurant side so you need to chip away at each of these things at each side of the marketplace working with restaurants to make sure that we are able to predict their prep times and wait times and things like that in a deterministic way working with the delivery executives to make sure that when they are delivering a great experience when they are interfacing with consumers they are delivering the experience that we want them to deliver and obviously working with consumers to kind of figure out what are the technology interventions that we can do to kind of make it all great so that's one part of it zero bad orders the other part of it is basically addressing gaps in the market so for example the number of restaurants that we have in India is less than the number of restaurants in Beijing alone so supply side gaps exist in our nation and therefore how do we have this concept of Spiggy Access where we work with the well-known popular restaurant brands to provide them infrastructure in areas that they are not presented and thereby solving a consumer need where there is a quizzing gap or a gap some of the things that we are thinking about solve the gaps from a consumer perspective as well as get every single experience a perfect experience we have 220 stores across India some of which are company stores some of which are franchising stores and I think the continuing mandate on consumer experience are I could sum it up in three points one is standardization second is regionalization which is a contradiction to standardization and I'll explain it in a bit and the third is integration of the digital and the physical world when I say standardization I mean every Tanish consumer across the 220 stores and still counting because we will be continuing to open more stores even this year should have the same Tanish experience right from the time they enter the store to the time they build and they walk out of the store and the kind of experience that they carry back with them that's one area that we are working on the second area that we are working on is regionalization because jewelry buying a lot of it is still for wedding for wedding buying still very we purchase with the family with the mother with the regional nuances and therefore understanding what the Kasumala means down south and what a Mangasutra means in the west and what a Bihar means in the north is very very important at that moment when she is buying that jewelry so how can we become more and more regionalized especially when we are doing wedding truzos because at that time which ceremony what is an important custom and therefore what is the appropriate jewelry to be bought are nuances that each and every one needs to know across the country the third journey because we started as not the digital first brand but we are moving rapidly into digitalism how do we make the experience the same tanish experience that they are getting with the tanish warmth and the tanish trust and the tanish risk the tanish way of life how do we transform that into the digital world is the third big journey that we are taking and so these are the three big points that we will be working on in the next couple of years anybody has problems in standardization you know hope to go to and standardization and standardization standardization seems to be your favorite absolutely I want you on my side listen to Karthik who spoke sometime back he said that you know consumers are polygamist retention costs are probably higher than you know acquisition costs and the purchase journey has become so complicated over the last so many years it is imperative to understand the purchase journey so we kind of help brands to give that enhanced consumer experience by our obsession on purchase journey right so if you understand the purchase journey the best and we talked about priming bias and priming bias is about having your brand in my consideration set even before trying to get into the category and the higher the priming bias the greater is the conversion rate so how do we kind of create experiences in a manner in which more and more people are influenced to have more and more priming bias so everything then revolves around our understanding of the purchase journey so I will give you a simple example how many of you have actually used and I am also using this specific product because he is also going to be a keynote speaker the person who I am going to talk about the founder of that brand is going to be a keynote speaker how many of you actually use the Vada Vada maker how many of you have used I can see a lot of brands right a lot of people have actually used it to me it's an amazing example of great consumer experience to somebody if you actually decode the purchase journey and then I would just decoding what would have been the purchase journey right so let's say I am a single person living in Bangalore and I really want a snack at evening time and I am not a great cook and I want something to be very convenient but I also would want something to be very traditional but I don't want to go through this whole pain of making a Vada because it's messy and I don't know how to make it the way it's normally made at home but here is a product which can make the Vada it is true glory like my mom or my grandmom used to do in just five minutes time and it's amazing right and that's where I think the consumer experiences is at its best right it's a simple product and we can talk about great other brands like tech brands and stuff like that but here is a brand where actually so that is where it is so if you understand the purchase journey and kind of understand the inside then you can actually create consumer experience so that's one of the things which we will the opposition with the purchase journey to understand those triggers those small small nuances which can create great customer consumer experiences the other two things which I would probably want to leave behind and the second is how do we create that element of surprise now personalization consumer experience is all about me giving me that experience and making me feel that important right so which is why the personalization becomes important so when Minthra does its famous end of reason sale we actually try to create more than 100,000 personalized creatives that makes you feel special so that you go back and kind of purchase on Minthra right personalization is actually a very interesting story which we had done for a very not so sophisticated brand and it was in rural UP where we had data with us which said that you know the and this is Tata tea they had just finished this famous Jagore campaign Power of 49 and we had data across the country in terms of what are the specific issues by constituencies across the country or what women felt right so in UP where we wanted to actually create a campaign we knew that in UP in Gorakhpur the women in Gorakhpur actually felt that EFT black marketing these are the kind of issues that they were facing and not the larger issues like safety and all of that and empowerment and all of that so we created a campaign which is using that insight to give a very very personalized sort of campaign using mobile and content and that's something that personalization can do today right the second is the other point which I which we try to advise brands and which we do is that bring that element of surprise in the consumer experience journey if we can be ahead of the consumer it will be always helpful so if you can create an element of surprise then it will be great consumer experience and I'll give an example of for example we had this we are doing this campaign for one of the brands one of the FNCG brands again that you know normally FNCG brands are purchased off shelf it's a very boring experience you go there and there are multiple brands on the shelf and there is no exciting experience when you actually purchase right what we did was using technology we created a shelf that talks back to you and imagine if you add your favorite film stars voice which talks back to you the same film star who has been endorsing the brand on air now comes and talks to you when you are actually walking through the aisle and saying hey and imagine if you add some of his famous dialogues and some of those nuances and kind of you know actually our data proves that the purchase actually went up by x percentage by just doing that small bit of extra element of surprise we had run a very interesting one for Tanishq sometime back where we had this diamond campaign where they had Amitabhan Jaya and a wonderful creative and all of that and we wanted to educate men about buying diamond because the TV show was all about getting educated about cut clarity and all of that so we did a very different thing where we actually the TVC had a necklace which he had purchased for Jaya we said let's do a detection game where the necklace was stolen and Amitabh needs your help to find out who actually stole that necklace and there was this five suspects lined up from the shoot studio till where he from Tanishq store till the shoot where he were going and there was this the store manager the security guy and the dubbing the chaiwala and the dubbing and all of that and we worked with the creative agency Lo to create this amazing sort of element of surprise which was great and in the process we kind of educated them saying why this necklace is important because I had gone through so much of pain to buy this one because of the cut clarity and all of that so that element of surprise in an otherwise you know we won't think you can create an element of surprise like that so these are the things and then the final is to do it consistently because if you see and if you see indigo as a brand if you see that there is a certain amount of consistency across whatever they do right whether it's the ramp that you kind of walk and get into the flight to each and every small material that they do so how do you kind of bring that consistency to personalization and today the challenge is you have to make it mass personalization it's not just personalization for a few but it has to be mass personalization that's what I think technology has the role to play but personalization element of surprise and kind of do it consistently with an obsession to purchase journey is something so I'll take one just want to say one thing the next time you want a bird eye at five o'clock you can always rely on Swiggy to get it yes you know one last question then we'll take questions from the audience quickly within a minute probably if you could summarize the biggest challenge that you're facing in your customer experience journey what would that be and how do you think technology is sort of chipping so yeah you can start with you can start with 3 words the biggest challenge so one of the things that we kind of strive to understand when a consumer first opens the app right is what's his mood and what does he want ultimately we want to manage we want to manage we want to understand is the consumer there to make a quick choice does he know what's on his mind is he just there to place an order or is he in the exploratory mood does he want suggestions from us so figuring out what the mood the consumer is what he wants and personalizing like kishan mentioned personalizing the experience to be relevant to every single user every single time he opens the app that's one big challenge and we think that's the like that's the magic of you know perfect cx and the other piece that we kind of think about you know in terms of building etc like I mentioned earlier is how do we get you know how do we manage efficiencies with cx because ultimately you can be very high on cx and very low on efficiency and vice versa right so I think that is that is something that all brands will grapple with for example if our delivery times were to increase by 10 minutes we would be twice as efficient but there's a difference between a 35 minute delivery and a 45 minute delivery right so grappling between the trade-off and how do we optimize for efficiencies while optimizing for cx I think is the biggest challenge that is lost I think very well said what do you think as far as we are concerned I think the reason we have the vision of the standardization and regionalization and integration is because those are the challenges that we are really facing and that is why we are focusing on it I'll spend some time on the integration of digital and physical if you look at it consumers world over the e-commerce part of jewelry buying is very very it's a very small portion India if you look at it it's not more than 900 crores or over 300 thousand crore market so I think the biggest challenge being market leaders is how do we start working on the consumer experience and getting consumer more confident and enable them to buy online and jewelry online because that will give an exponential delta to the entire category and bring in a whole lot of new consumers so things like you know getting virtual try-ons and convincing consumers it's a good thing to buy doing things like endless aisles we are also very expensive raw material category so you can't keep stocking up all the time so therefore having an endless aisle that showcases as many regional products and as many relevant products to a customer in multiple ways for them to then make choices if you look at it CAD enable customization and personalization because there are many types of Indians there's one mass India that wants to buy everything that everybody has some kind of India that wants to buy things that only they have and therefore how do you get personalization with CAD enable designs because you can't make a piece and I'm sure that's equally relevant to PetroSry and then self destroy it if you don't like it because it's very expensive raw material and therefore how do you do CAD enable design and therefore that's where integration of tech comes into the challenges that we are trying to face and I think going on reaching out to the consumer million creators for a million Indians because there are how many castes and communities and sub castes and each of them have their own jewelry nuances so telling if we really want to be India's largest most loved jeweler and really win over those many million hearts I think reaching out to them and telling them here this is the piece that's really made for you and for your culture and every part of India is another challenge that we face so these are the challenges that we are going to face until you make it Anika? So I think if you look at it from our perspective creating this whole ecosystem has been a big challenge for us and continues to be on how do you really get the pair, the providers and all the other service providers and the customers on the same platform and give them a seamless customer experience so that's I think the biggest success factor and also the biggest challenge for us currently Kashyap? Honestly I think points that Bhochri and Deepika made are absolutely things that we keep thinking about also we have 32 stores people want to do the stores between 30 to 40% of them convert at 4 to 5x the average order value that happens online. Online conversions in a category like furniture are under 2% even when I look at unique customers over a month etc and do it it doesn't go up much more than 3-4% so obviously there is this big gap between 3-4% on one side to 30 to 40% on the other side there's a big gap between 4x, 3-4x in terms of order value and therefore being able to make customers feel more confident on the online, on the app and on the web build confidence for them is the big thing that we are looking at solving. Some of the examples that I talked about earlier improving the fidelity of the images providing an AR VR experience is one of the things that we are doing in that direction but I think it goes back to this whole point that Deepika was making about the whole online-offline integration we know what it can be offline we obviously are an online first brand so bridging that gap is something that we are working towards too also also even today if you order furniture we have only 3 large warehouses actually right now through the third one in Bangalore is getting built so most of our furniture for across the country gets shipped from either Mumbai or Delhi and Jodhpur is our source warehouse for a lot of stuff so it still takes time it still takes 15 days, 20 days customers get anxious during this period and it's again a matter of resources we can build multiple warehouses we can store things closer to market we can reach people faster but again balancing out the customer experience with the cost is the second thing that we are working on similar to what Trivath said mentioned it's a matter of hours and minutes for it's a question of days because they are much larger etc so I think those would be a couple of big things that we are looking at to me the fundamental challenge is how do we get into the minds of the consumers how do you understand the consumers and what do they want and all of that and I think to a large extent data can help that and to add to that is a lot of mindset challenges that we have we assume a lot of things and a lot of it is based on the legacy way of doing things and stuff like that probably more so with not digital first but still there are a lot of assumptions looking for this brand we were doing a research on one of these brands one of the watch brands mass watch brand and NCCSBC audience and we assumed that oh you look to Instagram and all of that and that guy told four things how to use lens and this and that and how to use Instagram so there is a lot of this assumption that goes behind and there is a lot of this mindset challenges so that is the one set of challenges and how do we understand the minds of the consumers and exactly what they want then only personalization can happen and all of that and there is where this whole challenge of man versus the machine, the jugalbandi how do we kind of do this jugalbandi machine can tell you a lot of things and increasingly it's going to be that but the next panel which is going to talk about emotions and all of that is where the man thing comes in this whole balancing act which she talked about this whole jugalbandi between man and machine how do we kind of do that the efficiency versus that challenge of this now versus the future slightly future long term so this is an interesting quote that Bill Gates said that we kind of overestimate the next two years and kind of underestimate the next ten years so we kind of talk about AI and AI and all of that and kind of overestimate the next two years but somewhere we kind of don't do enough justice to the so this whole balancing of for example voice, today let's say you can say Alexa booked me a cab we can actually book this Alexa enabled or whatever right but maybe less than 0.5% may be using it or maybe even lesser but we know that it is going to be behavior maybe two years down the line three years down the line, five years down the line we don't know how do we get ready and when do we get ready and when do we kind of do it is the other challenge so there are a lot of these balancing challenges which are there so fantastic so with that I will open it up for a short question and answer question over to the audience hi can I ask a question yes please so from a customer experience point let me say that I am a huge fan of Amazon because I believe they have the best customer experience and to be asking the questions I was a pepper fry customer I am in between becoming between a Swiggy and a Zomato customer I almost became a Max Boopa customer I am also associated with Tanish quite some time back so my first question first thing is let me congratulate let me congratulate Anika on that particular insight where you are trying to control the entire ecosystem because recently I had an experience where I had a very horrid time talking to the insurance team because there was the hospital involved in between I almost gave up on that so congratulations on that from pepper fries point of view again I was a pepper fry customer because I had a bad experience during the installation so the question to you is what are your thoughts on Ikea tying up with urban clap for the installation which is primarily from a customer experience from Indian context from a Swiggy's point of view had a bad experience recently where customer care kind of ruined the whole experience for me as a customer when you order from Swiggy you are hungry but then when the rider goes to the restaurant and then figures out that the restaurant is not active you get a customer call again half an hour is already lost and again my hunger is growing up I shout at the customer care but again there is no response so then what are you doing to actually fix that particular problem and at large to anyone who can answer this question we are still trying to ask brands or businesses we are trying to figure out the online journey versus offline journey whereas digital is kind of influencing majority of the purchases today so then what are your thoughts on that and how do you try to address that even in fact Anika as well as Deepika actually said online is only so much offline is so large but then it doesn't matter anymore whether it is purchasing from an online perspective or an offline as long as I am able to influence the customer anywhere it should do the trick so yeah that's my few questions customer grievance plus you know digital no so from a customer we quickly get the answers thank you for that essay that you just conducted like I mentioned maybe a short while back I will keep this brief because I know we are kind of running short time we know that we have x percentage of bad orders it's very low and it's an industry best but we know that there is a bad experience that's out there one out of x and it's our objective to make sure that one bad order or that x bad orders out of every 100 becomes zero and we can't we're not at 100% right now right so you are clearly amongst that x who's had one bad order so using technology solutions using like ramping up a cx4 ramping up a customer changing them there are hundreds of things that go into trying to make sure that you don't have the bad experience but feel free to connect and let's you know let's make sure that we don't you don't encounter that issue anymore so I mean like I said six years old when we first started this journey I think many people were facing a lot of issues in terms of delivery, timelines being messed and so things being broken things not being installed properly people not having tools to fix things it's obviously been a journey again you know I think we've come a long distance but we are far from perfect putting together a carpenter desk putting together a delivery boy environment in you know and managing and running it in large cities with all the issues it is a tough challenge but I think it's an absolutely important challenge for us to crack 100% we probably are not there there could be gaps there are gaps and we are trying to fix it continuously I think anybody who tries to do a business which involves a lot of physical labor distributed across the country in terms of managing standards timelines and efficiency and quality will face challenges and I think it's relentless focus in terms of how well you get it done whether it is us or anybody else we obviously recognize it's very important for us we run and very aggressive NPS collection program it's also painful sometimes but we get about 20 to 25% people participating in our NPS programs all the detractors we try to follow up with calls to try and identify where we are going wrong it's a continuous process we are able to pinpoint studio level, delivery boy level, carpenter boy level warehouse level, product group level, merchant level issues continuously repairing it and it will be there as we expand our network as we onboard new merchants it's a learning process again if you had a bad experience with the installation I'm sorry for that but like I said it's a learning process and we'll try and keep fixing things as we go along Thanks so much I think that's what the one trending question a lot of people are asking questions but I'm afraid that's all the time we have most happy to connect offline with you immediately after the session so thanks to all the panelists there's no time for a detailed summary but I think we got a very very good and very wide perspective about the challenges that each one of us are facing in our processes so as I say customer experience is about math and the magic the math is about the technology stuff that you used and all of you alluded to different technologies and different challenges you're facing we'll get to the magic part of it which is all about the emotion in our next panel discussion so thanks you've been a fantastic panel and big round of applause to everybody on this and thanks for giving me the opportunity thank you so much alright ladies and gentlemen can I hear a big round of applause for all the panelists please can we stay back we've got some mementos to be given away to do the honors ladies and gentlemen put your hands together welcome on stage Shaila Vajit business heads out Vigitan can I hear a big round of applause alright ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for your applause thank you Shaila for coming on stage during the honors ladies and gentlemen if you've seen the mementos on stage time for you with some goodies I've got an exciting announcement out here to make right now alright ladies and gentlemen this section is brought to you by 9x Jalva the channel which brings to you the best of Bollywood songs since the 1990s since the 2000s since the 2000s the best songs of all time so ladies and gentlemen we'll be playing short musical notes you'll have to guess the name of the song and you'll tell the name of the movie as well alright before we go on and play you those soundbites ladies and gentlemen we'll have a group photograph with the members of the panel can the panelists please come back again okay ladies and gentlemen thank you so much