# The Bharat Connect > Everything Customer Service > Admin Email: farzanafathima01@gmail.com ## Posts ### The Blending of AI with Customer-Centricity – The Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Way Bajaj Allianz General Insurance uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to re-imagine the customer journey, orchestrate critical data and decision points, and introduce straight-through in most processes.   At Bajaj, we have always focused on leveraging technology to introduce simplicity and speed in our processes. It has helped us solve numerous issues and allowed us to understand and cater to the needs of our customers.   These are some of the initiatives where Bajaj Allianz General Insurance has leveraged AI:   Saksham Bajaj Allianz has a large base of corporate customers, and managing the massive amount of data generated from them was a demanding task. Taking an example of group health insurance, we need to collate the details of thousands of employees and their families spread across the country, which was tedious.   Even after collating massive data, processing inclusion, exclusion, and endorsements are challenging. With the launch of Saksham, we have moved from a traditional endorsement process to a tech-based innovative approach with the help of ML algorithms. It is also integrated with the corporate portal for ease of access.   Raftaar Raftaar, which means speed in English, is an RPA-based bot launched specifically for policy issuance. With Raftaar, the per policy processing time has drastically reduced by 60%. In addition to speed, a quality check is maintained as less human intervention takes place and multiple sources of information are avoided.   DigiSwasth One of the challenges for underwriters is the pre-insurance medical check-up results. We leveraged AI and IoT to develop an industry first Android and IOS application with integrated lean medical check-up process to ease it out.   The integrated labs send the data directly to our database, and Digiswasth enables quick analysis of the results leading to hassle-free and faster policy issuance. With Digiswasth, many cases get a straight-through pass, and only the filtered ones go for underwriting. This has enabled a seamless onboarding process and increased efficiency.   Farmitra We launched the industry-first farming app, which caters to the specific needs of farmers. We intend to help farmers address their worries and provide them with relevant information to optimize their farming practices through this app.   Users of this app can regularly check weather forecasts specific to their area, advisories customized as per the selected crops, market position, news regarding agricultural developments, and locate seed/soil testing labs.   Regarding insurance, the farmers can access “Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana” (PMFBY) portal to buy crop insurance and register claims. They can also purchase motor and health insurance policies offered by the company.   Caringly Yours (CY) App Our customer self-service mobile app “Caringly Yours” is technically our office at the fingertips of our customers. Every process is a click away. The customer can buy and renew the policy and seek a claim over it.   Claim by Direct Click (CDC) Pioneered by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company, “claim by direct click” is an app-based feature that allows policyholders to initiate and track their claim settlements in a hassle-free manner. The customer needs to install the Bajaj Allianz Insurance Wallet app to avail of this benefit. Using this app, claims can be made up to a limit of Rs 20,000.   Motor on the Spot (MOTS) We created the motor on the spot (MOTS) feature within our customer self-service mobile app “Caringly Yours.” Through this, customers can click images of their damaged vehicles and submit them for the claim processing. Through Motor OTS, claim settlement takes place within 30 minutes up to specific amounts.   TravelEzee Having travel insurance assists you with any financial aid you might need when traveling. Usually, we would love to have travel insurance when we travel for vacations. At the same time, hassle-free claim settlement if any misadventure occurs, as nobody would like to spend holidays running after claim settlement.   Therefore, while purchasing a travel insurance policy, the claim settlement process is of topmost importance.   TravelEzee is an automatic claim settlement service for Bajaj Allianz customers. The uniqueness of this service is that the customers need not initiate the claim process. The process of claim registration and settlement is automated, and it is the insurer (i.e., us) that keeps track of claim events and initiates payout.   Connected School Connected school initiative includes an IoT-enabled technology solution combining safety, security, and insurance coverage for school students, thereby addressing the parent’s worries around school travel and transport. Connected school initiative was launched with Fidel Softech as an IoT technology partner. It is an industry-first initiative as Bajaj Allianz believes in a relationship beyond insurance.   Drive Smart Bajaj Allianz introduced a new telematics-based service called DriveSmart, which customers can opt for while purchasing policies for their cars. With this new service, a customer can monitor his driving habits through data feedback, and in return, their safe and sound driving behavior gets rewarded with discounts in premiums.   Doc On Chat/Call Using the “Caringly Yours” app can even land an appointment with the doctor on chat/call without the need of physically going to the doctor. You can get online assistance for all general medical queries from certified and registered doctors.   These initiatives have helped us deliver excellent customer experiences. As they say, “AI is a Science, and Customer centricity is an Art.” At Bajaj, we blend the science of AI with the art of customer-centricity to offer customer-centric AI. ### Press Release - The Bharat Connect Marks Its First Anniversary, Quickly Expanding as India’s Only Community Group That Serves the Customer Service Industry Co-founded by ClearTouch, the organization experienced substantial growth in its first year to more than 600 members, offering numerous industry articles and webinars   CHENNAI, India -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ClearTouch, a pioneering provider of a cloud-based call center platform for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and financial services companies in India, today celebrates the first year of The Bharat Connect (TBC), India’s only industry community group for call centers, contact centers, BPOs and KPOs. As a founding member and platinum sponsor, ClearTouch, a subsidiary of TCN, Inc., a global contact center technology provider, has helped grow TBC’s membership to more than 600 professionals in its first year.   “We are excited about the value and energy TBC has brought to hundreds of call centers, customer service and customer experience professionals in India,” said Uthaman Bakthikrishnan, executive director of ClearTouch. “We are confident that TBC will continue to make a positive impact on India’s call center industry and look forward to serving this unique community by staying at the forefront of ever-changing industry innovations and trends.”   “We are confident that TBC will continue to make a positive impact on India’s call center industry and look forward to serving this unique community by staying at the forefront of ever-changing industry innovations and trends.” - ClearTouch   TBC was created during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the increased communication needs of consumers and the high demand for Indian professionals working in the customer service industry. Its aim is to be the voice of the Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) industry, engaging with call centers, customer service departments and customer experience representatives of corporations and outsourcers in India. A creative portal for the customer service community, TBC offers an extensive library of contributed blog posts and hosts online events to help its members network and learn from industry leaders and colleagues.   In the coming months, TBC plans to launch several initiatives for the UCaaS industry, including virtual and in-person events, research reports on latest industry trends and a series of training workshops.   TBC’s membership is free and open to all customer service industry professionals in India. For more information, visit www.thebharatconnect.com.   About The Bharat Connect (TBC) Established in 2020, The Bharat Connection (TBC) is India’s only industry community group for professionals working at call centers, contact centers, BPOs and KPOs. With more than 600 members, TBC serves as a creative portal that offers an extensive library of blog posts about industry news and trends and regularly hosts online events and webinars.   For more information, visit www.thebharatconnect.com or follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-bharat-connect/.   About ClearTouch ClearTouch is a pioneering provider of a cloud-based call center platform for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and financial services companies in India. A subsidiary of TCN, Inc., a global contact center technology provider, ClearTouch introduced the first cloud-based contact center platform in India in 2016. ClearTouch combines a deep understanding of the needs of call centers with a unique approach to pricing – no contracts, monthly minimums or maintenance fees – that supports rapid scaling and instant flexibility to changing business needs. ClearTouch’s contact center platform features a holistic set of easy-to-use, automated agent tools and advanced apps for omnichannel communications, workforce engagement, compliance & data management, integration & automation, intelligence, reporting & analytics and collaboration & accessibility. Its suite of compliance tools helps businesses meet the requirements of telemarketing and telecommunications regulations both in India and North America. Trusted by companies of all sizes in the healthcare, insurance, financial services, banking and BPO industries, among others, ClearTouch is headquartered in Chennai and maintains offices in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai. For more information, visit www.cleartouch.in.   Source: Business Wire Release. ### Illness to Wellness – The Patient Care Journey Is Fast-Changing Good health is a Journey. Every individual must be the CEO of their health and be armed with information to make informed decisions. The biggest stakeholder of good health is the individual's family and the Society at large. The cost of poor health not only impacts the individuals and their families but the entire society at large.   In a country like India, which is home to one-sixth of humanity and with such vast diversity in education, nutrition, health, and income, good health is getting its due attention now.  The state of Healthcare presents a vast opportunity for innovation, patient engagement and drive transformation like never thought before post the pandemic.   The pandemic has allowed the stakeholders to redefine their approach to health. The world is waking up to the dream of putting patients' safety first and taking a holistic view of their needs. Proactive patient engagement is now becoming mainstream in many provider organizations, and for good reasons.   The quality of patient care is determined by the quality of infrastructure, personnel, and operational efficiencies. Patient orientation is the fundamental requirement, and this is where digital technologies can help providers in offering the best patient care.   Digital advancements in healthcare are propelling innovation and driving long-term structural changes in how healthcare is delivered – trends that the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated.   Healthcare at a broader spectrum can be divided into Critical care, Chronic Care & Wellness. The key mantra for engagement success is quality, access, & reduced costs, with patient safety and welfare as the critical criteria for the outcome measure.   How Do You Ensure the Success of Patient Care? Access: Accessibility and availability of the hospital and the physician to all those who require healthcare. Post-procedure access to be made available using telemedicine besides physical visits.   Appointment: Minimize waiting time for all services and ensure that appointment schedules are adhered to, guaranteeing optimum resource utilization and happier patients.   Information: Information and instruction about all procedures should be made clear in an understandable language to the patients —  regular communication during and post-treatment to ensure successful patient care.   Quality: Access to trained professionals providing patient care is a must to ensure the desired outcomes. Usage of adequately maintained and latest equipment with newer technologies help in appropriate diagnosis and patient care.   Improvement of patient care is a dynamic process and should be uppermost in the minds of medical care professionals and providers alike.   Enhancing Access Indian health care had mainly been underfunded, and many of the indicators in terms of coverage, number of beds to population, number of doctors to population are vastly skewed. Further, their availability is also restricted in cities and towns, and it is not uncommon for people to travel a long distance to get even basic health care.   Accessing quality information and care will be difficult without the use of technology. It is necessary now to enhance access through innovative use of technology to reach out to patients, and it makes a lot more practical sense during these extreme pandemic times.   People often consider excellent customer service as an essential part of healthcare. The use of technology minimizes room for error, and providing a superior user experience enhances patient satisfaction, thereby improving the quality of care.   How do we enhance access using technology is something that we will see in Part 2 of this article - Illness to wellness – improving patient care using technology. ### Focus On the ‘C’ Word in Customer Service I want to bring your attention to two statements that I keep hearing about customer service.   Customers do not have a choice when it comes to customer service. Customer service is a big-ticket cost item, and we are looking at ways to reduce the cost impact. Having been in the customer service industry for close to a decade, I keep thinking, how wrong can these statements be?   To be successful in business, you need paying customers. Why would you not treat them the way they want to be treated?   Let us try and answer this question and see how it relates to the two statements.   Customer Retention vs. Customer Acquisition It costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. It is a well-established fact that 44% of the companies are more focused on customer acquisition, while only 18% focus on retention.   The reason behind the focus on customer acquisition is that most organizations are sales-driven. The first rule for any business will be to retain customers and build a loyal relationship with them, thereby avoiding high customer acquisition costs.   Every organization should look at the lifetime value of a customer and base all their customer service decisions on that.   The critical factor in ensuring customer loyalty and retention is the customer service that you provide.   Given this, why would you not offer the choice to the customer, or why would you not spend a small portion of your customer acquisition cost in servicing your existing customers.   Cost of Servicing a Customer The highest cost in customer service is the workforce cost. This is what every organization wants to cut down, and hence they move towards automated customer service options. Therefore, they say that customers don’t have a choice when it comes to customer service.   Companies have already cut down their workforce by more than 80% in the last ten years. They have replaced the voice agents with IVR, self-service apps, and chatbots.   While this is a welcome move by customer service functions, the fact that the customer does not have an easy choice to reach a voice agent is killing customer satisfaction.   This has the potential to result in a lot of customer churn. 76% of the customers are always looking to change their service provider, for lack of excellent customer experiences.   Read More: Personalized Customer Experience.   Imagine… Imagine a situation where you as an organization bucket all your customer service requests in the last year.   You can quickly identify the ones that self-service apps can address. Let us assume that it amounts to about 40% of your requests.   You can address a sizeable number of queries using your chatbots. Let us assume that it amounts to about 40% of your requests.   Your website FAQs and HOWTO videos can address, say, 5% of customer queries.   Now, you are left with 15% of queries that need to be addressed by your live agents. Sweet, and your live agents can handle this.   Also, there would a segment of your customer base that may not have the necessary knowledge to access self-service apps, chatbots, or websites. They can be provided the choice to reach out to live agents at the first instance.   Wouldn’t this be the holy grail of every customer service function? ### 5 Reasons Why You Have to Look At the Cloud for Your Contact Center Two-thirds of the contact centers moved to the cloud in the last 12 months. The contact centers moved to the cloud to keep their floors running as a response to the pandemic.   That being said, the contact centers now have started seeing several other reasons why the cloud makes sense for them.   There are several reasons why cloud would make sense, and the top 5 reasons are:   1. Flexibility It allows you to avoid high capital investments for your contact center infrastructure. You are only talking about operational expenses, where you pay by the minute for all of the infrastructure that you use. You pay for your dialer, integrations, telephony, storage, and analytics, all put together by the minute.   Besides, you can scale up and down the number of agents based on your business demands. No infrastructure is lying unutilized with zero sunk costs at any point in time.   2. Increased Uptime What does cloud bring to uptime issues? You are most likely to host it on a platform like Google Cloud, AWS, or Azure. They have put in all that it takes to make their infrastructure scalable and redundant. All of these are available on a need basis. You can safely assume an uptime of 99.9% and add a redundant carrier to this, and you are good to go.   Just imagine the customer service that you can provide with close to zero downtime on your offerings.   3. Access to Applications and Intelligence Think of a situation where you want to add speech analytics to your contact center and integrate it with your CRM. We are easily talking thousands of dollars as additional investments that might be prohibitively expensive for a mid-sized contact center to procure and maintain. However, we are looking at a few cents extra for every minute of your usage with the cloud offering.   This would allow your agents to manage every customer conversation better, and the intelligence adds up over a period that will enable you to provide a better and better customer experience.   4. Security and Compliance You name your need, and your cloud provider would most likely have – disaster recovery plans, high visibility of the environment, monitoring logs of cloud activity, identify access management tools, automated services, and encrypting data at all times.   Imagine the amount of effort and dollars needed to have this infrastructure up and running. All of these are already addressed by your provider.   What About Compliance? Your cloud infrastructure comes with compliance like HIPAA, HL7, PCI-DSS, SOC, ISO 27001, SSAE16/ISAE 3402 Type II standards. This makes you call center compliant with most customer compliance requirements as well. Isn’t that a significant advantage?   5. Reduced Reliance on IT The biggest challenge that traditional contact centers face is that they are far too dependent on IT to set up, maintain, and operate the contact center. There are too many variables associated with internal IT – capabilities, infrastructure availability, and reliability. You can remove all of these unknowns and safely do away with the dependence on IT to operate your contact center.   While the cloud provides all of these advantages, people were initially hesitant to adopt this model. It has taken a pandemic to make people realize the benefits of the cloud. From here on, I guess there is no looking back for the cloud contact centers platforms. It is only onward and upward, mainly because of the benefits that it offers its customers. ### The Ubiquitousness of Cloud Contact Centers – The Accidental Discovery When the pandemic struck in 2020, all of a sudden, contact centers had to figure out a way to make agents’ work from home. Most on-premise solution providers couldn’t react to that situation, as they wanted at least a few months to come up with a solution to help agents’ work remotely.   The second option that the contact centers had was to let their agents connect to their on-premise contact centers remotely using their VPN clients. This was expensive for organizations, and it wasn’t working as expected.   They had to pay for every license, and it was a considerable drag on the bandwidth consumption. Most homes of agents did not have stable broadband connections. This solution was not feasible.   The only option that the contact centers had was to look at cloud options to be operational immediately. And they chose the cloud options. Two-thirds of the call centers migrated to the cloud once the pandemic set in.   Once they moved to the cloud contact centers software, they realized that they could massively unlock the business potential.   Some of the values that cloud helped contact centers unlock are:   Better customer engagement – cloud made it easier to invest in social channels, chatbots, or business intelligence platforms. Flexible scheduling – agents can work from anywhere and flexible timings, allowing organizations to address the needs of customers from various geographies. Analytics-driven strategies – integration with analytics tools help improve agent-customer interactions. Integrations – easy integrations with helpdesk software, CRM, and ERP systems, making better decisions and customer service. It enhances the relationship between the dialer and other tools by easily sharing information across systems. Anywhere access – live call monitoring is easier to implement. Calls are recorded, stored, and analyzed, and supervisors can access this intelligence from anywhere to make data-driven decisions. Resource ramping – you can ramp up and down the number of resources with just a click of a button. Reduce implementation timeframes – you can be up and running within 24 to 48 hours, unlike the legacy days. Less barrier to entry – we are talking only about operational expenses and not capital expenses. Performance and security – 99.9% availability of contact centers, with stringent security standards and in-built compliance to industry standards like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001. These were possible only for enterprise-level contact centers earlier, not for the mid-sized and smaller ones.   Today, the agents are happier than ever, as it allows them to engage their customers better and have flexible and remote work schedules. ### Illness to Wellness – Improving Patient Care Using Technology In Part 1 Blog (the patient care journey is fast-changing), we spoke about how providing and ensuring patient care is critical. In this part, we will talk about how you can improve patient care using technology.   How Do You Go About Ensuring Patient Care? Accessing quality information and care will be difficult without the use of technology. It is necessary now to enhance access through innovative use of technology to reach out to patients, and it makes a lot more practical sense during these extreme pandemic times.   People often consider excellent customer service as an essential part of healthcare. The use of technology minimizes room for error, and providing a superior user experience enhances patient satisfaction, thereby improving the quality of care.   We have covered some of the critical attributes of leveraging technology and bringing in accountability to enhance patient care:   1. Improve Accessibility – Leverage Technology A medical emergency can happen at any time. Patients need to know that they can contact their healthcare provider 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Traditionally, a receptionist functions as the main point of contact between your business and the public. However, an in-house receptionist can only work so many hours a day and so many days in a week.   You could hire multiple receptionists to work on a rotating schedule. With the technology disruption, Virtual patient counselors through automated bots are becoming mainstream. Virtual Patient counselors' advantages are that they start learning at a fast pace based on the clinical condition and integration with the Patient clinical records providing a superior and consistent user experience.   These Virtual patient counselors supported by Trained Patient counselors from the hospital supplement the personal touch and compassionate care. We have consistently seen patient satisfaction going up where technology and humans co-exist, resulting in improving quality of care and optimizing costs.   2. The Telemedicine Revolution A lot of people prefer scheduling medical appointments online. It saves time and, if executed properly, limits the risk of miscommunication. As more businesses move to the digital sphere, making your healthcare website or online portal user-friendly is essential for providing excellent customer service.   The digital disruption is also leading to broader adoption of Patient care portals which provide extensive and personalized information based on their clinical conditions besides becoming a single point of contact for managing patient data between the provider and receiver.   The pandemic has accelerated the disruption of certain care areas with the innovative use of technologies. Telemedicine is now being increasingly reinvented in many ways with a choice of online digital portals and medical devices for continuous monitoring of patient health conditions assisted by video consultations with caregivers. The new Digital cocktail is leading a tremendous upsurge of innovations in point of care. Without exception, every home can now have access to high-quality care at affordable costs from the best of the consultants, a dream till around a year ago.   We are also seeing Innovative usage of Telemedicine being integrated with AI-assisted medical imaging solutions reducing time and significantly reducing costs to patients. The rise of AI in medical imaging itself is set to transform early detection and intervention and save high costs to patients over time.   3. From High Touch to High Tech – Leveraging the “Bottom-Up” Approach to Patient Service Not long ago, we have seen providers using a "top-down" approach to patient services. This means a set of protocols being defined, and the patient service counselors rigorously follow the routine in providing the care. For a long time, these regimes have isolated the medical administrators from the reality of what patients want and resulted in higher patient dissatisfaction impacting patient outcomes and inconsistent financial performance.   With the advent of the digital revolution, we see providers use technology and automation to try and manage the outcome by exception. This has resulted in more informed patients, counselors, and providers improving the quality of care.   Further, with the extensive feedback system at every point of care, you can probably narrow down the feedback loop to the point where it gets dysfunctional and run quality programs to enhance outcomes. This has seen every patient participating in the feedback process and intelligent systems running the exceptions leading to higher satisfaction levels with patients, satisfied employees, and other caregivers.   Extensive use of multiple digital channels like SMS, emails, IVRS, BOTS, etc., help to collect patient feedback, surveys, patient education at the point of care, resulting in a significant amount of data for future use. The learning also becomes a valuable guide to enhance internal training and fine-tuning protocols, optimizing costs, and significantly enhancing value.   4. Rewards & Recognition in Patient Care With the extensive availability of data, the medical administration now has many data points to act upon and more so to really recognize their Star performers and suitably recognize them for their outstanding and consistent work. We have seen extensive data integration from feedback. Work performance going into the rewards and recognition program has worked wonders.   Patient service suffers when a healthcare organization lacks accountability, and more so when he knows they will not be held accountable for their actions, they're more inclined to provide poor customer service. Moreover, with accountability, you can help your business identify areas where it can improve more, mainly when a patient service issue arises.   Bottom Line Excellent patient service can help you create a loyal fan base. A happy, satisfied patient is more likely to come back – and even refer people – to you and your facility if they have received exceptional care. If a patient gets a less than warm feeling, they are likely to search out the next option because they assume that's a reflection of the care they will receive. However, if they encountered pleasant service, they would be likely to retain services. The reputation that you develop will be vital in determining whether patients seek you out in the future.   Digital leaders adopt newer technologies to drive operational efficiency, proactive patient care educating patients through their wellness programs and other outreach programs. They are increasingly relying on data leveraging proven and next-gen technologies to enhance patient experience and delight.   At the end of the day, you want your patients and customers to be happy. Happy patients return – and refer others. Hence sustained investment in patient engagement and leveraging technology for outcomes and engagement significantly improves loyalty, leading to patient retention and referral and more likely to enhance revenue in view of better engagement and outcomes. ### You Pick Up the Phone! I Can Reach a Real Person I was honestly surprised that my company, CD Baby, was such a runaway success. But I was even more surprised to find out why, said Derek Sivers.   CD had lots of powerful, well-funded competitors, but after a few years, they were all but gone, and we dominated our niche of selling independent music. 150,000 musicians, 2 million music-buying customers, $139 million in revenue, $83 million paid directly to musicians.   What was the secret to CD Baby’s success? Derek adds I never did any marketing. Everyone came by word-of-mouth. But why?   For years, Derek asked hundreds of clients why they chose CD Baby instead of the alternatives.   Was it the pricing? The features? Nope.   The #1 answer, by far, almost every time someone raved about the company, was this:   “You pick up the phone! I can reach a real person.”   Their customer service principle has always been, your call gets picked up in the first two rings.   This was in the year 2014. They continue to do it even today.   Why Wouldn’t Other Organizations Do This? Isn’t customer more important than the company? The easiest way by which you can improve customer loyalty and make your customer a brand ambassador is through better customer service.   Exceptional customer service is a revenue generator. Customer support is the lynchpin in the entire customer journey. Proactive organizations leverage customer service as an opportunity to delight customers and engage them in new, exciting ways.   Exceptional Customer Service Stories These are some exceptional customer service stories made available by live agents on call.   Rackspace – a Rackspace employee, was in the middle of helping a customer through a marathon troubleshooting session when she heard the customer tell a colleague that she was hungry. The support professional put them on hold and ordered her customers a pizza.   They were still on the phone when it arrived 30 minutes later. The customers were delighted, and the support professional knew that everyone would have fuel to power through until it was resolved. [Source: Helpscout.com]   Trader Joe’s – Trader Joe’s has a cult following for a reason. Everyone has a favorite Trader Joe’s customer service story, and here is one of those.   One day, an 89-year-old man was snowed in at his Pennsylvania home around the holidays. His daughter was concerned about getting him food and called a bunch of stores to see if anyone delivered.   Trader Joe’s broke their own policy to deliver the gentleman items that fit his low-sodium diet – all free of charge. In fewer than 30 minutes, a Trader Joe’s team member was knocking on the door with a full delivery. [Source: Helpscout.com]   Customer service, after all, is a philosophy. Derek Sivers says the things to keep in mind are:   You can afford to be generous. The customer is more important than the company. Customer service is a profit center. Every interaction is your moment to shine. Lose every fight. Rebelliously right the wrongs of the world. ### Customer Touchpoint Effectiveness – What Should You Measure? You run a customer service function, and you want to offer the best possible experience to your users. The demography of your users ranges from 18 to 70 years across geographies.   To address their demands and needs, you have a presence in all the channels – telephone, emails, web, and social. Besides, you have integrated your customer service system with your CRM, ERP, and Accounting. At the click of a button, your agents and intelligent systems have access to all the customer information.   You need to have the right systems and the right resources to manage and maintain high-quality service across every channel.   While you are optimistic about all the channels, are you putting your money where it is needed the most?   Organizations use multiple metrics to measure customer satisfaction levels across channels. They are:   Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT) Net Promoter Score (NPS) Customer Effort Score (CES) Customer Churn Rate Customer Health Score Abandonment Rate Not all of these metrics would apply to your business. You need to be aware of why you are measuring, which would help define what you need to measure.   Voice of the Customer Customer listening is an essential practice of any CX program. It would help if you had the feedback from customers – without which you can't understand customer's perceptions and make plans to improve.   About 90% of customer experience initiatives use surveys. You, as a brand, request your customers to fill out a survey, at the end of a completed experience. Structured questions can help you calculate scores like CSAT, NPS, and CES.   The biggest drawback of surveys is that they are solicited feedback, and only happy and unhappy customers provide the input. Response rates of less than 10% are standard for most customer satisfaction surveys.   Survey-based listening gets you only less than 10% of responses. While the reactions provide you a direction on what needs improvement and what needs optimization, brands should not stop at solicited feedback.   How Do You Extend Your Customer Listening? There are a bunch of things that you can do that are right up your alley. Few pointers are:   Begin with call recordings – analyze them to learn about customer sentiments and issues. Seek feedback from your frontline employees and service technicians. They tend to see and observe several unstated needs of customers. Text captured in customer emails, web site forms, call center agent notes, chat interactions, or even SMS. Social media mining – listen to comments posted on social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blogs, and review sites. Customer churn rate – keep monitoring this and figure out why they are leaving. Google analytics – if you observe a high bounce rate or abandonment rate on your website from visitors coming from Facebook, it's indicating a disconnect between your website and social marketing. Customer health score – a combination of product/service usage, customer support, customer satisfaction, and business outcomes. An average of this would provide a view of your customer's health. While surveys are the foundation of customer experience feedback, you should complement it by extending your customer listening to even inferred input based on customer interactions. ### Building Intelligence at the Customer Touchpoints: Real-Life Experience My bank blocked my card, and the reason given was that I did not submit my KYC (Know Your Customer) documents for renewal. I was asked to submit those documents by mail to reactivate the card.   I promptly sent my scanned and self-attested KYC documents. I received a response with the ticket number. In a couple of days, I received a mail and a message stating that the address in the documents that I submitted doesn’t match the address they have on file.   I was stuck.   So, I called their customer service number. I was told to submit my KYC for the previous address where I lived about eight years ago. Once that is accepted, I was told to change the address and submit the documents for the new address.   I felt stupid listening to this suggestion. Also, I did not have any documents for the old address where I lived.   I explained to them the situation, and the customer service representative politely asked me to write about this situation to another email address.   I wrote to the new email address explaining the situation. I promptly received a ticket number, and within a day, I received an automated response stating that the details they have in the file don’t match the new KYC documents that I submitted.   I was surprised by this response. So, I decided to cancel my subscription and hand over my blocked card back to the bank.   Within a few hours, I received another response stating that my KYC has been accepted and the card is reactivated.   They saved me the botheration of calling up the customer care again and cancelling my subscription with this mail.   What Are the Touchpoints That I Used Here? I used email and telephone as two touchpoints to reach the bank. Were they helpful in resolving my issue? Partially yes, as there was some intervention from someone that made the resolution possible.   What Could They Have Done Differently? They could have provided me with an option to update my address in their records and provide the KYC documents for the new address. They could have confirmed my new address with a phone call. They could have provided me with a web link to upload my KYC documents along with the change of address. They could have automated the process of document acceptance. They could have provided access back to my Internet login for a couple of days, allowing me to update the change of address and then submit my KYC documents.   Intelligence at the Touchpoint Level This entire process of updating the KYC took about ten days. This could have easily been just a couple of days.   There was very little intelligence with both the touchpoints. When I sent an email, it had the intelligence to generate the ticket number and nothing beyond that. When I called up the customer service, the executive had the intelligence to provide me with the new email address to explain my issue and nothing beyond that.   If there were ways that these two touchpoints can be made intelligent, it’d make the lives of customers and the customer service staff easier. ### Measuring Touchpoint Effectiveness in Customer Experience As a brand, you can influence some of the touchpoints, and some are beyond your influence. I will take a moment to define what a touchpoint is.   Touchpoints are channels that your customers encounter or use to interact with your brand. This can include channels like email, website, chatbots, IVR, telephonic interactions, and social. Some of the touchpoints beyond your influence include online review sites and 3rd party websites where they write about your product.   Let us not worry about the touchpoints that are beyond your influence. Let us look at the touchpoints that you as a brand run and how effective they are.   Before Getting There, Why Do You Have So Many Touchpoints for People to Interact With? It is driven by the demography of the customers that you have. A sizeable percentage of your customers would prefer to reach you by email and phone, a portion of your customers is fine with self-service options of your chatbot, few are comfortable with websites, few prefer the social channels, while a few prefer talking only to a live agent.   Being available on a channel is the easiest part, but servicing customers through each channel is challenging. You will need to have the necessary infrastructure, workforce, and integrated systems.   This is where measuring the touchpoint effectiveness becomes essential. You can continue with the ones that are effective and drop those that aren’t.   But, how do you measure the effectiveness?   Some pointers that you can look at include:   What percentage of your customers use a particular channel? Any channel used by <10% of your customers should be a red flag. What does it cost for you to run a channel? If the percentage of your total customer service experience is higher than the percentage of customers that use that channel, then that is a red flag. How often are you able to resolve customer queries using a particular channel in the first instance? If >50% of the questions are resolved in the first instance in a specific channel, continue with it. Rate the customer questions on a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the most critical. See if a touchpoint is effective in resolving critical questions. Any touchpoint that can resolve more than 60% of the critical questions is a key touchpoint. Device means to gather the voice of the customer, such as feedback forms, market surveys that help you understand how your current and prospective customers respond to your brand in each channel. Your operational goal of having a touchpoint should be directly proportional to the customer experience effectiveness on that touchpoint. Anything that scores high here is a definite choice for you to continue serving your customers. ### What Do the Customer Experience (CX) Leaders Do Differently? Leading-edge companies outperformed lagging companies on business outcomes like profitability, quality, growth, market share, and customer retention rate.   Source: HBR   Seven out of ten leading-edge companies say that customer experience is a strategic priority, while nearly half of the lagging companies don't consider customer experience important.   This seems to have affected not just customer satisfaction scores and net promoter scores but also the intangibles like stock price and profitability.   What Are the Leading-Edge Companies Doing Right? While building their customer experience programs, leading-edge companies allocate sufficient budgets, systems, processes, and plans.   Some of the critical things that customer experience leaders do include:   Develop the proper organization and skills to provide systematic customer experience management. Set up the right tools and systems to make data-driven customer experience decisions. Optimizing the processes to leverage inputs from customer experience support tools. For instance, they have processes in place to manage customer dissatisfaction and, if the issue is hot, they have processes to escalate to the senior management. The CX leaders don't rely on past behaviors and patterns. Instead, they focus on the process. They understand and map the whole flow of the customer experience so that there is a true understanding of all the touchpoints. They respond to individual customers based on their feedback about an experience. The biggest lesson that you can take out of CX leaders is that they think like the customers. A host of different people can impact customer experience. You need to put it all in the customer's voice from the get-go, not just for the frontline employees but for all the support personnel as well.   Here Is an Example One of the leaders in the CX space makes their leaders taking phone calls from customers. This allows them to understand what it's like to be a customer and what it's like to support that customer. This starts a change in the customer experience culture of the organization.   Here Is Another A CX leader created centers of customer excellence within each business group. This is not just another flavor of the week kind of message, but true customer service champions lead them – not just at the VP level but also deeper.   While the customer experience champions the initiative, it eventually turns out to be a business initiative. After all, the customer journey is not limited to one or two functions, but it is pervasive.   Everyone plays a key role in effective customer experience management. ### Do Customers Have a Choice in Their Customer Experience with Brands? I recently wanted to switch my Internet connection from one location to another. I called up the customer care facility and gave my request. This process took me about 20 minutes.   The service provider accepted my request and suggested that they would check the feasibility of migrating the connection to the new location. The new site did not have additional ports, and hence they could not fulfill my request. It took them 72 hours to come back with this information. However, they did not offer any solution.   So, I called them again and asked them about the next steps.   They mentioned that they would add ports and provide me connection at the new location in 72 hours. I had to be on the phone for 20 minutes to get this done. I waited 72 hours, and nothing happened.   So, I tried reaching them three more times. Every time, it took me 20 minutes to speak to an agent, and every time they promised me immediate resolution. However, they did not migrate the connection.   Then, I decided to cancel the Internet connection, and despite trying repeatedly, I could not do that on the phone or their official mobile app. So, I went to their experience center and went through all the Covid formalities before meeting with a representative. I filed my request for disconnection, and they accepted it.   Then, as soon as I reached home, I received a call from their disconnection team asking me to reconsider my decision. They also suggested that they’d waive my charges during the period of inactivity due to this migration. Also, they made sure that the new connection was up and running in the new location within four hours.   What Does This Teach You? This means that you have ways and means by which you can deliver excellent customer experiences, but your process does not allow you to do so.   You end up creating friction at every stage of your customer journey.   Let us look at all the friction in this journey of mine:   Friction 1 – there was no automated menu option for shifting my connection to a different location. There wasn’t an option for me to reach a customer service representative directly. I had to go through the entire IVR menu that was unnecessary for me before speaking to a live representative. This process took me 20 minutes. Friction 2 – the feasibility took about 72 hours, which ideally should have taken only a couple of hours. Even after figuring out that it is not feasible, they did not offer a solution. Friction 3 – I tried reaching them multiple times, and every time I had to wait for 20 minutes before contacting a representative. Instead, if they let me key in a complaint number, they can address my queries faster. Friction 4 – there was no choice for me to disconnect on their official app or the customer care number. This requires an OTP authentication, and that never happened. Friction 5 – I had to take time out to visit their experience center to file my disconnection request. That took me about 90 minutes, including travel time. After all this, they were able to fix my issue within four hours.   Is It That Difficult for a Service Provider to Map This Journey in a Way That I Feel Delighted? I understand that organizations are trying to make the customer experience a self-service process and automate more than 80% of the tasks. While this would save the service provider money and make things easy for the customer, is it being implemented correctly?   In my case, they should have just provided me the choice to speak to an agent directly when my request is not a part of your automated customer service process. This would have eased things and reduced the friction.   As a service provider, with any automation or intelligence that you add to your customer experience journey, you have to ensure zero friction. Else, it would affect the customer journey and result in dissatisfied customers. ### Is Customer Experience (CX) the New Brand Differentiator? Gone are the days when people competed on product’s capabilities and pricing alone. Today’s customers have thousands of overwhelming choices, making purchasing decisions challenging to choose.   The entire ecosystem has become commoditized, and how do you differentiate yourself from the pack?   It has to be through Customer Experience (CX) and not just Customer Service. CX is the total sum of customer’s perception of how a brand treats them. These perceptions affect behaviors that lead to customer loyalty.   Do We Agree That CX Is Going to Be the Differentiator? Let us look at some of the CX numbers:   Gartner says that 89 percent of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience. A Walker study reveals that by 2020, CX will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. The Temkin Group found that companies earning $1 billion can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million within three years of investing in CX. Bain reports that although 80 percent of companies believe that they deliver awesome experiences, a mere 8 percent of customers agree.   This means that companies have a long way to go. Delivering excellent customer experiences can be a tremendous opportunity to disrupt a competitor and gain market share.   Focusing on customer experience management may be the most critical investment a brand can make in today’s business environment.   How Do You Provide Remarkable Customer Experiences? There is no silver bullet to this question. However, there are two critical elements that you should be aware of, and they are:   1. Personalize Everything Personalized experiences win over customers every single time. This means that the company remembers you, anticipates your needs, and delivers relevant and timely information. What does this do?   Forty-nine percent of customers have bought items that they did not intend to buy due to personalized recommendations from brands.   Besides, brands should create a one-view of their customers across all channels. McKinsey reports that only 1 percent of the data collected is ever used, stressing the disparity between the potential of data and the company’s ability to convert it into value.   When you set out to turn data into value, that would help improve customer experience.   2. Focus on the Customer Journey and Not Touchpoints The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that the customers go through while interacting with your brand – awareness, pre-sales, purchase, post-sales support, and repurchase.   Each journey consists of multiple online and offline touchpoints. While each touchpoint is important, the sum is always greater than the parts. The experiences will have to be consistent, and for that, you need to have integrated systems and channels.   Aberdeen Group states that the companies with the strongest omnichannel CX report an average customer retention rate of 89 percent versus 33 percent for businesses with a weaker presence. ### How Do You Make Your Life and the Lives of Those Around You Better – The Customer Service Way! Sales are down, the competition is brutal, and we have zero chance of hitting our year-end profit target if we don’t bring down our costs.   This is what your CEO tell you when you meet with him. He further adds the target for customer service is 20%. You have till tomorrow morning to come up with a plan and present.   This wasn’t the first time the costs have been reduced. You did all the possible cost-saving measures and managed 20% savings with automation. You addressed it by not filling open positions, and nobody had to be fired.   The Plan  Within a few months, you are pressed to target another 20% cost reduction. This time it is going to hurt. The agents taking the calls are already stretched beyond capacity. You are 20% lower than your required strength. That’s what your CEO wants to reduce.   You set out to look for more automation to reduce the costs by 20%. You spend the next few hours squeezing out the possibilities, and now you say, “Tada, the numbers seem to work out,” and you are ready with your presentation for your CEO.   You leave for the day.   New Day You get up in the morning, and you realize that all of your automation that you are attempting to do will make your customers wait longer to talk to your agents. You are already getting complaints about the existing system, and people are looking for ways to bypass the whole thing and get to an agent.   You don’t provide that choice as you guess that many of your customers would choose to talk to the agent directly.   You feel that the entire work you did the last evening was wrong. Your system is designed to make your customers spend more time and effort so that you wouldn’t require as many agents.   You have heard some of your existing recordings, and you have figured how frustrated your customers are.   Making your customers work harder and spend time to cut costs on your end is a death spiral. Your sales will go down, and you’ll again be in cost-cutting mode.   So, you start to think, what if I ask my supervisors to take customer calls during peak periods. No way, they are all busy preparing reports.   What if I cut out a lot of that stuff? This looks workable to you. Why don’t I automate the report generation? It’d make things easy for your supervisors. They would be available to take customer calls, and that’d make things easier for your customers.   Read More: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and customer experience – the endless possibilities.   Everyone Is Happy Employees would be happy as they would be working less on mundane stuff like generating reports and work on actionable stuff like improving sales. Customers would be pleased to get the personal attention they constantly sought. The organization would be happy as they have achieved the necessary cost-cutting, while the outlook for improved sales looks promising. ### Frictionless Customer Experience – Should This Be Your Goal? In 2016, an estimated $4.6 trillion of merchandise was left in abandoned eCommerce shopping carts. The US economy loses $3 trillion in productivity annually due to excess bureaucracy. China’s economy as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) grew a cumulative $82 trillion more than India’s from 1987 to 2017, even though the two economies were initially similar in size. In March 2020, about 88% of all shopping carts were abandoned across these verticals – automotive, childcare, luxury, car rental, travel, airlines, fashion, gardening, cruise & ferry, mobile providers, departmental stores, hotel, cosmetics, consumer electronics, retail, sports & outdoor, groceries, pharma, and insurance. All these are distressing statistics.   Can You Attribute One Reason to All of These? It will be difficult, but the common thread would be friction in customer experience.   The most important thing that any and every customer servicing organization should do would be to reduce friction in their experience.   Jeff Bezos of Amazon calls customer obsession the most significant success factor for any organization. Customer obsession is equivalent to zero friction on customer experience.   Jeff Bezo’s famous quote on customer friction is, “When you reduce friction, make something easy, people do more of it.”   How Do You Reduce Friction for Your Customers? How do you become a relentless advocate for the customers and minimize customer efforts?   Some pointers that you can look at:   Talk to your customers regularly – this would help you discover friction and act on it. Remove everything unnecessary or something that does not improve the customer experience – stamp out ridiculous rules and pointless procedures. Provide choices to your customers to reach you. If they want to speak to an agent, so be it. Don’t offer an omnichannel experience without putting in the necessary infrastructure to address customer needs across all the channels. The experience will have to be consistent. Have one view of your customer journey so that the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves whenever they have to interact with you. Promise only those that you can deliver and deliver beyond expectations. Ask them this question, if they are willing to refer your service to their friends or relatives? If the answer is no, there is a lot for you to work towards. Focus on reducing friction one step at a time. Sometimes, friction is not apparent. You will have to put yourself in the shoes of your customer to ensure that their journey. Read More: Customer experience and digital – how important is it? ### The Contactless Approach to Customer Service In the last year, most things have moved remote and online as far as customer service is concerned. Agents working from home will be the norm from now on, and the customers would want to get in touch with an agent only when necessary.   The contact centers have discovered that moving their agents to work from home hasn't affected their productivity, and they continue to provide world-class service to their customers.   Customers still demand accessible, high-quality support, but the liking towards speaking with a live agent has come down considerably in the last few quarters.   With face-to-face interactions coming down, most organizations have migrated to multi-channel and omnichannel operations. They are looking at migrating 60% of their customer service to be handled by intelligent apps and automated bots that would be offered as self-service.   The Self-Service World What Do You Need to Do to Make the Self-Service World up and Running?   You need to get the technology in place and integrate it with your enterprise systems, which would help solve your customer issues.   The most important thing is agents' ability to access your enterprise systems from a remote location – cloud access or VPN access. Once this is done, look at having automated IVR, chatbots with natural language processing, web self-service, FAQs, asynchronous messaging, SMS service lines, among others.   An Example I use a broadband connection at home. Whenever I have Internet connectivity issues, I was initially calling their customer service and registering a complaint. Once I register the complaint, I get an SMS with a complaint number. Then a support engineer calls me up to understand the issue. After a point in time, they provided me with an app to easily register my complaint.   Once the pandemic set in, they migrated the entire support part of the app into an intelligent application. There is no need for you to speak to anyone as all possible combinations are available in the chatbot itself.   Though it is only a rule-based engine, you do not have to talk to anyone, as every possible combination is captured as a part of the chatbot. They have all the options like:   Internet not working at all Internet access is slow I am not able to access a few sites Whenever there is a power shutdown, and upon resumption, my Internet doesn't work Router configuration A few others You provide every information needed for the support engineer to address your issue within a minute and with just a few clicks. You get your ticket number with the approximate resolution times.   I can't be happier.   This is a straightforward example that I have quoted. This is only the tip of the iceberg on what is possible with self-service. Imagine building intelligence to your self-service, and you would be laughing your way to the bank with happy, satisfied, and loyal customers. ### Agent Experience Is an Essential Piece in the Customer Experience Journey There is very little room for error when it comes to customer experience.   In 2021, as is the case with every year, consumers will care even more about the customer experience than they did earlier when deciding which companies to support or buy from.   Any friction in the customer journey will mean loss of business and potential gain for your competitors.   How Do You Go About Consistently Ensuring Great Customer Experiences? It is an arduous task, but you have technology and tools to help you make the customer experience a genuinely seamless one for organizations and customers.   The most critical aspect of any customer experience journey is your agent, and putting them in the middle of your customer journey would greatly help your customers and business.   Agent Experience – What Should I Look At? What is that one thing that an agent is expected to provide when it comes to agent experience?   An agent is expected to resolve customer queries and challenges in the shortest possible time to their satisfaction. How do you make this available?   It would help if you equipped them with all the tools that would allow them to provide resolutions in the shortest possible times for your customers.   Some of the key things to keep in mind include:   Do you provide an omnichannel experience, with agent access to all your customers' interactions with your brand? Do you have all of your enterprise applications integrated to allow the agent to pull information together that will enable them to offer resolution in the shortest possible time? Do you have intelligence built into your systems that allow the agent to access information based on customer preferences and needs? Do you have frequently asked questions and their responses documented so that the agent can access them easily? Do you have systems in place to allow your agents to access the right talent by the click of a button to help resolve customer queries? Have you defined the performance metrics of your agents that are aligned with customer outcomes? People often look at call hold times, and resolution times without giving weightage to the customer's challenge or issue. Is your agent training in alignment with your customer experience vision? Do your agents have the means to provide feedback to the customer service and product management functions on ways and means to enhance to customer experience journey? As an organization looking towards providing delightful customer experiences, you should invest in these eight areas to make your agents successful and make your customers happier. ### Customer Experience Journey – It Is About How You Respond to a Negative Experience! I was working for an organization where we had many customer relationships. After being with us for two years, one of the customers decided to look at other providers for their needs.   When we inquired, we were told that they faced three issues in the last two months, and they weren’t handled well by our team.   Needless to say, we didn’t want to lose them, and especially after knowing the reason why they wanted to look at an alternate provider.   What Did We Do? Our executive management team got together, and we decided to have one of the management folks as the executive sponsor for that account.   We communicated this to the unhappy customer, and we told them to put us on probation for the next 90 days, and they can pay us half the fee that they were paying otherwise during this period.   The offer was irresistible, and they decided to give this approach a try, and we floored them with our service and responsiveness. It has been a decade now, and they continue to be a happy customer.   How Did We Communicate This Story? We got them to be a part of a webinar that we were doing for our leads and prospects. Their Software Engineering Director was one of the speakers. She spoke about the fact that they decided to discontinue their relationship with us, how we responded, and where we are currently.   You won’t believe we picked up 40 leads from that webinar and a handful of them became our customers. I’d attribute that success to this customer service story.   Why Is This Experience Significant? 80% of customers will switch to another company after just one poor customer experience. So, you compete with your competitors now on pricing and selection and the experience.   Customer experience is being looked at as the product nowadays, as there is little else to choose between offerings.   When you look at customer service, you have to look at them from start to finish and close the loop. It is a given that you won’t delight your customers 100% of the time, but how you respond to their challenges plays a significant role in how they perceive your customer service.   This is what they call the ‘peak and the end’ experience in customer service vocabulary.   The peak is when the customer experiences the strongest positive or negative emotion, whereas the end refers to how the experience concluded.   You must maintain a positive customer experience throughout the customer journey and respond to a negative experience.   Read More: How do you make your customer experience stand out? ### Zoho Is Leading the Pack in Moving to Tier – 2 and Tier – 3 Cities. What Can You Learn from Them? Zoho has been running their development and support centers from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities for many years ago.   They started a development center in Tenkasi in 2011 that develops some of Zoho’s products that they sell across the world. Tenkasi has about 500 Zoho employees. Zoho then established a customer support center in the town of Renigunta in Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh. 120 Zoho employees work out of Reningunta.   Zoho calls these offices Village Offices.   Zoho and Village Offices Zoho, just like any other organization, was forced by the pandemic to move their entire workforce to their homes and hometowns. During this time, Zoho ran an internal survey, and close to 40% of their workforce – around 3500 people – said they would like to work closer to their hometowns.   This sped up their village office move. Currently, Zoho is experimenting with ten villages in Tamil Nadu, where 200 of its engineers – 20 in each village – will collaborate and build software for the world.   Once this is set in motion, Zoho has plans to implement a similar model in two villages in Kerala and one in Andhra Pradesh. They are also looking at taking this model to Mexico (Queretaro), the US (Austin, Texas), and Japan.   We are sure that Zoho will successfully implement this model. This would be an example for anyone looking at setting up a satellite office in the villages and Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.   What Are the Advantages of This Model? All along, Tier-I cities have been glorified. Your employees want to stay in their hometowns, and work is an eye-opener for most organizations. I guess that is something that every organization should run as a survey and figure it out.   The most prominent reason organizations were flocking the Tier-1 cities was infrastructure – uninterrupted power supply, Internet, transit connectivity, accessibility of airports; and qualified resources.   Now, most infrastructure challenges are addressed even in remote villages. Most locations in places like Tamil Nadu have accessibility to the airport within 100 Kms.   All of the challenges for which organizations were focusing on Tier-I cities are addressed now in most villages. Hence, the move to Tier-2, Tier-3, and villages would make a lot of sense.   Some of the advantages of moving to villages include:   Look at the cost of infrastructure between Tier-I and the village offices. Organizations would easily hive off 50% of their expenses. What about resources? Their standard of living would go up many notches while reducing their cost of living. Working from hometowns can help people maintain greater work-life integration. They can meaningfully contribute to their villages’ growth by volunteering in community activities, agriculture, and education. Staying with family and staying closer with friends and relatives would also ensure better mental health. Increase the disposable income of people in the villages by indirectly helping build the economic ecosystem to support your office and its people. This can also help in reverse migration from cities to villages.   What Can We Learn from the Zoho Model? Zoho has proved that this model works favorably for them since 2011. They have been successfully building world-class products from a facility in Tenkasi and have been supporting their global customers from a facility in Renigunta.   They have now started ten satellite offices in 10 different villages in Tamil Nadu and have operationalized it successfully.   While they were skeptical about moving to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, most other organizations were forced by the pandemic to figure out work-from-home and work-from-hometown options. They continued to provide world-class services and products even from remote locations.   This proves that this model works, and every organization should take efforts to move their needles towards villages. This would help the organizations cut costs, leverage skills available in remote areas, help employees have better work-life integration, and grow the villages.   The growth of this nation lies in the development of its villages. The future of work lies in the village offices.   It is time to think smart and help the village economies prosper. It is in your selfish interests to do so as well. ### How Do You Create Your Customer Experience Strategy? Recently, I called up our service provider, who developed and hosted our website. We have been working with them for the past three years. They didn’t update the site’s SSL certificate, and people couldn’t access the site.   All we wanted them to do was to download the SSL and install it. But, we were told that their system administrator is available only later in the night, and they can get it resolved only after a day.   The website not being accessible was a complete ‘NO’ for us. So, we requested them to get it resolved immediately. The response from them was that it wouldn’t be possible.   So, we took it up, and we did the installation ourselves.   What Were the Issues Here? Employees who did not understand our needs. The expectation that we would be willing to wait a day for a simple but critical request. Unresolved issue. What would you do with this kind of experience?   Naturally, we have started evaluating other vendors who can provide this service.   How Do You Get Your Customer Experience Strategy, Right? Customer Experience (CX) is the result of every interaction a customer has with your business, pre-and-post-sale. This can be from the moment they read about you in a blog, their visit to your website, their interaction with your sales, product teams, customer service, and support.   While evaluating your customer experience strategy, you should include all your departments and not just your customer-facing roles.   Read More: How do you provide excellent customer experiences?   Some pointers in figuring out your customer experience strategy:   Look at your customer support function and look for metrics like Net Promoter Score, customer satisfaction score, and customer churn rate. If you’re scoring below expectations, this would be a good starting point to dig deeper. Create a customer journey map. It would outline all the interactions between a customer and your business, including any challenges found along the way. Once you understand where you ought to improve, share this information with your team and train them to handle the service better. Map out the different ways your customer would feel about their interactions with you. Always act towards delighting your customers and in their best interests. Do proactive customer service by enabling your customer success teams to work closely with your customers to prevent issues, enhance adoption and business value. Ensure that you have self-service tools, as customers prefer to get their basic needs addressed with chatbots and knowledge bases. Continuously collect feedback from your customers. Never leave a customer without interaction for more than six weeks. Track the performance of your customer service and support teams regularly. These are good starting points that would allow you to define your customer experience strategy and vision. With this in place, you can proactively and progressively keep improving the customer experience function for your customers’ benefit and delight. ### The Next Level of Call Center Growth Lies in Tier-2 and Tier-3 Cities India has been the preferred back office of the world for many decades now - skills availability, mature processes, low-cost, and the ability to scale are some reasons. Most large corporations outsource their customer service, support, and experience functions to India.   In the last few years, the low-cost nature of call centers in India has vanished because of the maturing market and high input costs on human resources, infrastructure, and utility infrastructure. This has prompted businesses to move their call center operations to locations like Philippines and Vietnam. The cost structure in the Philippines is 30% lower compared to India.   The Tier-I locations in India shouldered the entire services agenda until about the mid-2010s, which added to the call center’s cost structure. Towards countering competition from countries like the Philippines, the Indian call center industry in the last 5 to 8 years have started looking at Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities to move their workforce. Currently, about 10-15% of the workforce works from Tier-2 and Tier-3 facilities.   National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) says that 70% to 80% of the call center employees work from home, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s probably the largest work from home project, anywhere in the world.   This means that most people are currently working from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, as they have moved to their home towns that are the hinterlands of every state in India.   The COVID-19 forced work from home, and satellite offices strategy would help the industry in the long-term. It would allow organizations to become competitive and help them retain and recruit the right talent due to its flexibility and quality of life.   Work from Home Initially, it was a reactive response that every organization followed when the lockdown was announced by the end of March 2020. Once everyone understood that this isn’t going to end soon, they started putting together processes to make work from home easier for the employees, customers, partners, and other stakeholders.   With almost 80% of the workforce operating from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, call centers continued to provide world-class services to their customers. This made them sit up and take notice that they can effectively deliver services from remote locations.   This has prompted several organizations to look at opportunities to move their workforce to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. For example, Zoho is experimenting with ten villages in TamilNadu, where 200 of its engineers – 20 in each village – will collaborate and build software for the world. These feeder officers are situated 20-30 kilometers away from their hometowns.   In a recent survey, the company found out that a little over 40 percent of its total employees – around 3,500 people – said they would like to work closer to their hometowns. This would allow people to save more, remain healthy, and maintain a work-life balance. Living close to family and friends is also good for mental health.   Now, every organization, including the call centers, knows that this model is working. It is only a matter of figuring out what percentage of resources will have to be moved to these locations.   The call centers would most likely move between 25 and 40% of their resources to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities in the next few years.   What Are the Advantages of Moving Your Call Centers to Tier-2 and Tier-3 Cities? Cost savings – 20 to 30% compared to a Tier-1 location, due to lower facility costs and compensations.   Lower attrition – 20 to 25% lower attrition compared to Tier-1 cities. This would result in better service delivery and lower hiring and training costs.   Better standard of living – less traffic congestion, better health, and better quality of life leading to improved living standards.   Happier employees – available for the elders in the families who are not very comfortable moving to Tier-1 cities.   Location agnostic – you can hire any talent who is right for your organization without having to worry about whether they are willing to relocate to your location. This also brings in diversity and inclusion by moving work to the workforce.   Moving to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities is not about setting up physical offices at each of the locations. Instead, it would be about setting up satellite offices in those cities, besides letting their employees operate from their homes.   The most significant challenge is the organization’s ability to scale when it comes to technology, to accommodate multiple satellite offices, and work from home resources.   Cloud-Ready Technology Most call centers still function using on-premise technology, and they connect to them using VPN from remote workspaces. This would make it prohibitively expensive for call centers to operate.   The easiest way by which they can promote satellite offices and gain all the advantages associated with it is by moving towards cloud infrastructure for their technology needs.   There are available software bundles, which can help migrate your entire call center to the cloud. So, choose an appropriate option, and you are good to go with your migration to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.   Conclusion While the pandemic has created a lot of havoc, it has also pushed organizations to optimize their costs and resources. This has paved the way for moving work and resources to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.   This migration, we believe, will be good for the industry in the long run. It would make the industry move towards a truly global workplace, without worrying about real estate costs, lifestyle challenges, and general living standards.   Read More: Zoho is leading the pack in moving to Tier – 2 and Tier – 3 cities. What can you learn from them? ### How Do You Address the Most Significant Technology and Infrastructural Challenges in Remote Working? 70 to 90% of the call center workforce have moved to a work-from-home model or remote working model since the onset of the pandemic.   This move was forced, and organizations did everything in their capacity to move their agents’ homes. This helped them to continue serving their customer needs without massive interruptions.   Organizations faced several challenges – cultural, social, infrastructural, and technological challenges.   We will look at the technological and infrastructural challenges in this article.   Technological and Infrastructure Challenges Most organizations had an on-premise dialer or contact center solution. It didn’t make it possible for them to move their agents’ homes. Besides, for the agents to connect to their office systems from home, they needed VPN connectivity.   VPN licenses come at high costs, and also the bandwidth required to access in-house systems using VPN connectivity is reasonably large. Most home broadband connections do not provide this level of support.   Most agents did not have good quality computer systems at home for them to start working at home. Many of them had access to only shared computers, tablets, and mobile phones.   Also, you have to consider the dependency of the entire family on the home broadband availability. It has to be shared between people trying to access in-house office applications, collaboration apps, online schooling, and entertainment needs. Getting additional lines and upgrades was also an issue during the pandemic.   Moving to Cloud The easiest solution was to move its call center infrastructure to the cloud. However, most incumbent vendors weren’t focused on the cloud, and they needed anywhere between 4 to 6 months to get to a basic version of a cloud offering.   This is where we helped most customers by moving their call center function to our cloud offering. We made them operational within 24 hours, with the option to connect to their internal systems at a later point in time.   The advantage with this move was anyone with a browser – be it tablets, mobile, or computers, can access the cloud contact center solution without any hassles. This allowed them to ensure business continuity.   Low-Bandwidth Connectivity Internet connectivity from home broadband solutions has low bandwidth connectivity that results in poor call quality with jitters, delays, and choppy voice.   We circumvented low bandwidth issues using a connected method for telephony with regular PSTN connectivity. We provided credentials to every agent that made their voice calling secure and integrated the connected method telephony with the contact center platform seamlessly.   The most significant concerns that call centers have while moving their agents’ homes are overcoming the technological and infrastructural challenges.   You don’t have to worry anymore.   Solutions are available to circumvent most technological and infrastructural challenges. ### Why Should Brands Think About Customer Journey Orchestration? There are multiple schools of thought when it comes to customer journey orchestration. According to Blueconic, some of them are:   Customers – and only customers – own their decision journeys. Customers own their entire buying journey – from start to finish. The customer, and only the customer, decides which company to research, business websites to browse, brand apps to download, and, ultimately, products or services to buy. Given this fact, should you worry about customer journey orchestration, for you don’t have much control over there? Or, should you look at customer lifecycle orchestration?   Customer lifecycle orchestration is where you focus on the individual needs of your customers. This would move your customers from one lifecycle stage to the next based on actions taken.   This sounds interesting. Are there any examples that you can derive knowledge from?   I am going to take the example of Netflix here.   Netflix Customer Lifecycle Orchestration The most important lesson from Netflix is to look at your product or service, not in terms of what it “is,” but from the value it provides customers.   Netflix focuses on customer data, not based on rudimentary data points like genres watched, viewer ratings, and so on.   Netflix bases all it’s business decisions on both broad, high-level numbers and specific, granular information.   As a Netflix user, what is the most evident user of Netflix’s ability to use data? It is the system’s ability to provide personalized movie suggestions to you.   That is only the tip of the iceberg. Among many other pieces of data, Netflix collects information regarding:   When viewers pause, rewind or fast-forward. Completion rates of all content viewed. Logistics such as the device used, time of day, and current location. Netflix knows that you like to watch comedy in the mornings, binge watch shows during the weekend, and courtroom dramas are your all-time favorite.   There are 2 million subscribers in India. This means there are 2 million versions of Netflix in India.   Everyone’s Netflix experience is personalized based on factors specific to the individual user.   Data-Driven Business Decisions Beyond using data to provide laser-focused content recommendations, Netflix also relies on making major business decisions – whether to purchase certain movie rights or invest in new original content.   Shows like ‘House of Cards’ were predicted to add millions of subscribers on board, and it delivered on those predictions.   Data analysis shows when users are most satisfied, engaged, or happy while using the service.   Netflix works towards providing content that achieves the maximum happiness per dollar spent.   In Conclusion We are a family of three, and we have subscribed to multiple OTT platforms, including Netflix. I pay the highest for Netflix, and despite that, the experience that we get in Netflix is unbeatable.   There are three users in my house, and all three of us would vouch for the Netflix experience over anything else.   Netflix is truly a customer-focused company, where they have co-created customer experience with the customers’ inputs. That’s what makes it a blockbuster.   Every business has a blockbuster in them. Go ahead, and identify it by focusing on customers individually. ### What Does This Designation Customer Success Manager Mean? When a business buyer purchases from a seller, a customer relationship begins. However, as the customer benefits from the purchase, the association expands into a long-lasting one.   Ongoing customer care and growth were the forte of Account Managers till about ten years ago. But, now that responsibility is with Customer Success Managers (CSMs).   Customer Success Managers don’t just make additional sales, but they manage the gap between sales and service, between company interest and customer interest, and between product expertise and customer insight.   Heard of this….   Have you ever heard of anyone from your organization reaching out to your existing customers and telling them that they should cancel their subscription to your product?   Even the customer would be surprised to listen to this. The reason attributed to the suggestion was that the customer wasn’t fully utilizing the solution they have subscribed to. There is a lot more that they can do with their subscription.   This person then takes them through what they can do with what they have bought and how it would help them.   Imagine the level of loyalty that the customer would feel towards you after this exercise.   This is precisely what a Customer Success Manager is expected to do.   The Difference Between Customer Service, Customer Experience, and Customer Success Now that we have a signpost to understand what customer success is, it remains cloudy, and it is interchangeably used with customer service and customer experience.   How Do You Differentiate Between the Three? The ‘Future of CIO blog’ attempts at this differentiation, which I found to be best representation of the difference.   Customer service is reactive, available when customers need it, in the channel when customers want it.   Customer experience needs to be interactive to delight customers at every touchpoint.   Customer success is proactive, identifying ways to help customers gain value from the product or service you provide.   Customers need all of these areas to be a focus of the business, if you want them to continue to buy and recommend your products/services to others.   Voice of the Customer A CSM is ideally placed to advocate the customers’ needs, as they work directly with them. They constantly run surveys, reviews, and feedback to find out what the customers like or dislike about the product and share it with the other functions.   They make sure that the voice of the customer is always heard.   Besides doing all of this, the CSMs should help your organization articulate how to sell the hole instead of selling the drill.   The CSM makes sure that your customer understands the benefits of what they are buying into and not just the product or service features.   Read More: How do you provide this kind of customer service? ## Pages ### Blog CommunityArticles Tech TalksThe Blending of AI with Customer-Centricity – The Bajaj Allianz General Insurance WayJanuary 28, 2022By Dipu K VBajaj Allianz General Insurance uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to re-imagine the customer journey, orchestrate critical data and decision points, and introduce straight-through in most processes. A... Share: Press ReleasePress Release – The Bharat Connect Marks Its First Anniversary, Quickly Expanding as India’s Only Community Group That Serves the Customer Service IndustryOctober 8, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanCo-founded by ClearTouch, the organization experienced substantial growth in its first year to more than 600 members, offering numerous industry articles and webinars CHENNAI, India — (BUSINESS ... Share: NewsIllness to Wellness – The Patient Care Journey Is Fast-ChangingAugust 17, 2021By Chandra MouliGood health is a Journey. Every individual must be the CEO of their health and be armed with information to make informed decisions. The biggest stakeholder of good health is the individual’s fa... Share: InsightsFocus On the ‘C’ Word in Customer ServiceAugust 5, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanI want to bring your attention to two statements that I keep hearing about customer service. Customers do not have a choice when it comes to customer service. Customer service is a big-ticket cost ite... Share: News5 Reasons Why You Have to Look At the Cloud for Your Contact CenterJuly 31, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanTwo-thirds of the contact centers moved to the cloud in the last 12 months. The contact centers moved to the cloud to keep their floors running as a response to the pandemic. That being said, the cont... Share: InsightsThe Ubiquitousness of Cloud Contact Centers – The Accidental DiscoveryJuly 24, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanWhen the pandemic struck in 2020, all of a sudden, contact centers had to figure out a way to make agents’ work from home. Most on-premise solution providers couldn’t react to that situation, as they ... Share: Tech TalksIllness to Wellness – Improving Patient Care Using TechnologyJuly 17, 2021By Chandra MouliIn Part 1 Blog (the patient care journey is fast-changing), we spoke about how providing and ensuring patient care is critical. In this part, we will talk about how you can improve patient care using ... Share: NewsYou Pick Up the Phone! I Can Reach a Real PersonJuly 10, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanI was honestly surprised that my company, CD Baby, was such a runaway success. But I was even more surprised to find out why, said Derek Sivers. CD had lots of powerful, well-funded competitors, but a... Share: InsightsCustomer Touchpoint Effectiveness – What Should You Measure?May 11, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanYou run a customer service function, and you want to offer the best possible experience to your users. The demography of your users ranges from 18 to 70 years across geographies. To address their dema... Share: InsightsBuilding Intelligence at the Customer Touchpoints: Real-Life ExperienceMay 2, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanMy bank blocked my card, and the reason given was that I did not submit my KYC (Know Your Customer) documents for renewal. I was asked to submit those documents by mail to reactivate the card. I promp... Share: InsightsMeasuring Touchpoint Effectiveness in Customer ExperienceApril 22, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanAs a brand, you can influence some of the touchpoints, and some are beyond your influence. I will take a moment to define what a touchpoint is. Touchpoints are channels that your customers encounter o... Share: InsightsWhat Do the Customer Experience (CX) Leaders Do Differently?March 16, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanLeading-edge companies outperformed lagging companies on business outcomes like profitability, quality, growth, market share, and customer retention rate. Source: HBR Seven out of ten leading-edge com... Share: Tech TalksDo Customers Have a Choice in Their Customer Experience with Brands?March 13, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanI recently wanted to switch my Internet connection from one location to another. I called up the customer care facility and gave my request. This process took me about 20 minutes. The service provider... Share: Tech TalksIs Customer Experience (CX) the New Brand Differentiator?March 10, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanGone are the days when people competed on product’s capabilities and pricing alone. Today’s customers have thousands of overwhelming choices, making purchasing decisions challenging to choose. The ent... Share: Tech TalksHow Do You Make Your Life and the Lives of Those Around You Better – The Customer Service Way!February 16, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanSales are down, the competition is brutal, and we have zero chance of hitting our year-end profit target if we don’t bring down our costs. This is what your CEO tell you when you meet with him. He fur... Share: InsightsFrictionless Customer Experience – Should This Be Your Goal?January 29, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanIn 2016, an estimated $4.6 trillion of merchandise was left in abandoned eCommerce shopping carts The US economy loses $3 trillion in productivity annually due to excess bureaucracy China’s economy as... Share: Tech TalksThe Contactless Approach to Customer ServiceJanuary 12, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanIn the last year, most things have moved remote and online as far as customer service is concerned. Agents working from home will be the norm from now on, and the customers would want to get in touch ... Share: Tech TalksAgent Experience Is an Essential Piece in the Customer Experience JourneyJanuary 8, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanThere is very little room for error when it comes to customer experience. In 2021, as is the case with every year, consumers will care even more about the customer experience than they did earlier whe... Share: InsightsCustomer Experience Journey – It Is About How You Respond to a Negative Experience!January 4, 2021By Uthaman BakthikrishnanI was working for an organization where we had many customer relationships. After being with us for two years, one of the customers decided to look at other providers for their needs.   When we i... Share: Tech TalksZoho Is Leading the Pack in Moving to Tier – 2 and Tier – 3 Cities. What Can You Learn from Them?December 7, 2020By Uthaman BakthikrishnanZoho has been running their development and support centers from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities for many years ago. They started a development center in Tenkasi in 2011 that develops some of Zoho’s products... Share: 1 2 Next » ### About Us About TBC About TBC A Creative Portal for Call Center Community We realized that there isn’t any meaningful association or a body that represents call centers, contact centers, BPOs, and KPOs in India. There aren’t even any events that are targeted towards this segment. This is why we decided to launch this community, “The Bharat Connect (TBC).” The Bharat Community will engage with call centers, the customer service and customer experience functions of corporations, and the outsourcers from across the world. TBC would function as the voice of this industry. The idea is to moot innovative ideas in this space for everyone to participate in. Also, the community will strive to arrive at good practices to ensure better customer service, customer support, and customer experience. We would be conducting regular events – both online and offline, come up with research reports on various trends in the country, write blogs and articles relevant to the industry, and take up training and resource enablement for the industry. Do you want to be a part of this community and contribute towards the growth of this industry? Please write to us as jointhecommunity@thebharatconnect.com, and we shall be happy to host you. ### Our Events Panel Discussion on 19 November 2025, 05:00 pm Hallucinations, hype, and guardrails. How do you build safe GenAI without losing speed? Days Hours Minutes Seconds Use this Form to Nominate Yourself or Suggest a Speaker BIGGEST EVENT FESTIVALS UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND EVENTS Next Upcoming Event Hallucinations, hype, and guardrails. How do you build safe GenAI without losing speed? 19 November 2025 00 days 00 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds EVENT DETAIL PAST EVENTS December, 2020It takes a village to run and grow a call centerView More InformationJanuary, 2021The customer service trends for 2021View More InformationMarch, 2021Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?View More InformationApril, 2021Do customers have a choice in their customer experience with brands?View More InformationJune, 2021How do you measure touchpoint effectiveness in your omnichannel strategy?View More InformationJuly, 2021Did customer service fail the covid test?View More InformationAugust, 2021Two-thirds of the service providers will move their contact centers to the cloud – is this for real?View More InformationSeptember, 2021How important is the voice channel in your customer service mix?View More InformationOctober, 2021What performance tools are you using in your call center platform to enhance customer experience?View More InformationNovember, 2021Self-service is your priority. But, what do your customers think about it?View More InformationDecember, 2021Customer service is your organizations’ differentiatorView More InformationFebruary, 2022How do you build agility in your customer service?View More InformationMarch, 2022Fix it, improve it, make changesView More InformationMay, 2022Listening is the key to understanding. Are we listening to our customers?View More InformationJune, 2022Your call is important to us, please stay on the line while we transfer youView More InformationJuly, 2022Attrition is considered the No. 1 challenge in a call center environment, how do you address them?View More InformationAugust, 2022How to build the best customer service organization?View More InformationSeptember, 2022Sorry, we don’t have an answer to that questionView More InformationOctober, 2022How do you nurture a customer-centric culture at your workplace?View More InformationNovember, 2022What performance tools are you using in your call center platform to enhance customer experience?View More InformationJanuary, 2023How do you measure the success of a customer-centric organization?View More InformationMarch, 2023Specific actions that you should take to be more customer-orientedView More InformationApril, 2023How do you create a customer-centric strategy overnight?View More InformationMay, 2023Is technology the solution for contact center productivity?View More InformationJuly, 2023Can we afford to do what customers are asking for?View More InformationAugust, 2023How do you use data to elevate the customer’s journey and CX?View More InformationSeptember, 2023Customer experience is the productView More InformationOctober, 2023Every function has a role to play in CXView More InformationJanuary, 2024How do you make customer satisfaction an attainable goal?View More InformationFebruary, 2024What do you need to know when you choose your cloud contact center?View More InformationMay, 2024How do you add a personal touch to your customer’s journey?View More InformationJuly, 2024Do you agree with 'Give us fast horses'? We wouldn’t have automobiles todayView More InformationSeptember, 2024Does empathy play a role in your customer experience function?View More InformationNovember, 2024Customer service data hides more than it reveals. Do you agree with this?View More InformationJanuary, 2025ASAP is not a timeline. How profound is this statement in customer service?View More InformationMarch, 2025Why are you still working with us? Have you ever asked your customers this question?View More InformationMay, 2025Have you ever been a customer yourself? How does that help in providing exceptional customer experiences?View More InformationJuly, 2025How satisfied are you with the customer service we offer?View More InformationSeptember, 2025How easy was it to complete your task today? How easy was it for you to reach our customer service?View More Information Previous Next OUR WEBINAR VIDEOS It takes a Village to run and grow a call centerView HereThe Customer Service Trends for 2021View HereWould you recomment this company to your friend or relative?View HereDo customers have a choice in their customer experience with brands?View HereHow do you measure touchpoint effectiveness in your omnichannel strategy?View HereDid customer service fail the covid test?View HereTwo-thirds of the service providers will move their contact centers to the cloud – is this for real?View HereHow important is the voice channel in your customer service mix?View HereWhat performance tools are you using in your call center platform to enhance customer experience?View HereSelf-service is your priority. But, what do your customers think about it?View HereCustomer service is your organizations’ differentiator.View HereHow do you build agility in your customer service?View HereFix it, improve it, make changes.View HereListening is the key to understanding. Are we listening to our customers?View HereYour call is important to us, please stay on the line while we transfer you.View HereAttrition is considered the No. 1 challenge in a call center environment, how do you address them?View HereHow to build the best customer service organization?View HereSorry, we don’t have an answer to that question.View HereHow do you nurture a customer-centric culture at your workplace?View HereWhat performance tools are you using in your call center platform to enhance customer experience?View HereHow do you measure the success of a customer-centric organization?View HereSpecific actions that you should take to be more customer-orientedView HereHow do you create a customer-centric strategy overnight?View HereIs technology the solution for contact center productivity?View HereCan we afford to do what customers are asking for?View HereHow do you use data to elevate the customer’s journey and CX?View HereCustomer experience is the productView HereEvery function has a role to play in CXView HereHow do you make customer satisfaction an attainable goal?View HereWhat do you need to know when you choose your cloud contact center?View HereHow do you add a personal touch to your customer’s journey?View HereDo you agree with 'Give us fast horses'? We wouldn’t have automobiles today.View HereDoes empathy play a role in your customer experience function?View HereCustomer service data hides more than it reveals. Do you agree with this?View HereASAP is not a timeline. How profound is this statement in customer service?View HereWhy are you still working with us? Have you ever asked your customers this question?View HereHave you ever been a customer yourself? How does that help in providing exceptional customer experiences?View HereHow satisfied are you with the customer service we offer?View HereHow easy was it to complete your task today? How easy was it for you to reach our customer service?View Here Previous Next ### Contact Us Get InTouch +91 44 6620 3303 jointhecommunity@thebharatconnect.com "Sai Krupa", 3rd Floor, DP No 30-AThiru Vi Ka Industrial EstateGuindy, Chennai 600032 Let's talk and Meet Interested in being a part of this community. Do write to us at jointhecommunity@thebharatconnect.com  Or Fill Up This Form FAQ Most frequent questions and answers What is the procedure to join the community Please share your information to this mail ID: jointhecommunity@thebharatconnect.com Is this free service? TBC trying to give awareness & business growth to our users. It’s completely free service. ### Home The Bharat Connect Initiative Community Opportunities, trends, expectations, and good practices in the customer service space - would be addressed in this community. Details Voice of the Industry Innovative Ideas The Bharat Community will engage with call centers, the customer service and customer experience functions of corporations, and the outsourcers from across the world. Details Space for Everyone to Participate Regular Events We would be conducting regular events – both online and offline, come up with research reports on various trends in the country, write blogs and articles relevant to the industry, and take up training and resource enablement for the industry.  Details Facebook Linkedin YouTube ABOUT TBC The TBC Community The better community to ensure better service, support, and customer experience We realized that there isn’t any meaningful association or a body that represents call centers, contact centers, BPOs, and KPOs in India. There aren’t even any events that are targeted towards this segment. This is why we decided to launch this community, “The Bharat Connect (TBC).”The Bharat Community will engage with call centers, the customer service and customer experience functions of corporations, and the outsourcers from across the world. TBC would function as the voice of this industry. The idea is to moot innovative ideas in this space for everyone to participate in. Also, the community will strive to arrive at good practices to ensure better customer service, customer support, and customer experience. We would be conducting regular events – both online and offline, come up with research reports on various trends in the country, write blogs and articles relevant to the industry, and take up training and resource enablement for the industry. Do you want to be a part of this community and contribute towards the growth of this industry? Please write to us as jointhecommunity@thebharatconnect.com, and we shall be happy to host you. Next Upcoming Event Hallucinations, hype, and guardrails. How do you build safe GenAI without losing speed? 19 November 2025 00 days 00 hours 00 minutes 00 seconds EVENT DETAIL Panelist/Speaker Registration We are looking forward to new ideas, suggestions, and voices to add to our community. Through our panel discussions, one-on-one interviews, and webinars - we take your ideas and suggestions and make sure that it helps the community. So, use this opportunity to register yourself as a speaker or suggest a speaker we must have on our platform. Register Recent Articles Latest from communities ## My Templates ### Header Template ### New Single Post About TBC Get Innovative ideas to grow for call centers, contact centers, BPOs, and KPOs industries. Our goal is to ensure better customer service, customer support, and customer experience.Follow Us Facebook-f Linkedin Youtube Recent Posts Share: Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn ### Footer Template “Sai Krupa”, 3rd Floor, DP No 30-A, Thiru Vi Ka Industrial Estate, Guindy, Chennai 600032. Phone: +91 44 6620 3303 THE COMMUNITY Home About Us Contact Us RESOURCE Blog Our Events SOCIAL LINKS Facebook-f Linkedin Youtube Copyright © 2025. All Rights Reserved. ### 404 No Results Found The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.  ### Default Kit ### Kit Styles: Hando - Corporate and Portfolio Template Kit ### Default Kit ## AE Global Templates ### How easy was it to complete your task today? How easy was it for you to reach our customer service? Meet The Panelist Customer Relations Specialist Shreeya GangulyShreeya is a Customer Relations Specialist. Previously, she was part of the customer experience teams at Welspun, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra, HDFC, and Shriram Housing Finance. Her expertise includes customer service, change management, project management, strategic planning, negotiation, and team building, among other areas. She has led cross-functional initiatives that enhanced employee experience and generated 100 crores in revenue through workforce productivity solutions. Head of Customer Service at Jupiter Nikhil GodboleNikhil has over 20 years of experience in building high-impact customer service organizations that scale, perform, and delight across the Fintech and Travel tech domains. He has had customer experience stints with EXL Service, Infosys BPO, ClearTrip, and Jupiter Money. He believes in transforming customer support into an organization's growth engine, and he has various accolades throughout his career. Assistant General Manager Operations at AGOS Aviation Soumitra ChakrabortySoumitra currently functions as the AGM Operations of AGOS Aviation. Prior to this, he has held stints with Aircel, MTS Group, Domino's, INOX Leisure, Sulekha, Fusion BPO Services, and Hansa Direct. He has over 17 years of experience in setting up high-performing operations teams and scaling operations to support large-scale performance. His expertise includes customer lifecycle management, customer engagement, customer success, workforce management, and strategy formulation & execution. Executive Director at Kaima Asset Abhishek LuthraAbishek, an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta, is the founder of Kaima Asset. His expertise encompasses the entire investment advisory process. Prior to founding Kaima, he had stints with Aditya Birla Finance, Axis Bank, and Kotak Life. He is a personal finance professional, financial literacy coach, orator, poet, writer, and investor. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ## Events ### Hallucinations, hype, and guardrails. How do you build safe GenAI without losing speed? The GenAI revolution has transformed the way brands interact with customers. Now, we discuss chatbots, virtual agents, knowledge assistants, and personalized responses. However, the same technology that promises scale and speed also risks misinformation, bias, and privacy breaches. In CX, even a small hallucination can have an outsized impact on trust. So the challenge isn't whether to adopt GenAI, but how to deploy it safely, at scale, and without slowing innovation. This panel aims to explore how organizations can accelerate GenAI-driven CX while staying compliant, responsible, and customer-trusted. We would discuss specifically: How do we detect, reduce, and manage AI hallucinations before they reach the customer and damage trust? Where does GenAI truly enhance customer experience, and where is it just shiny technology with no ROI? What ethical, operational, and compliance frameworks can balance innovation speed with responsible AI use? How can organizations innovate fast while ensuring GenAI deployments remain accurate, secure, and explainable? How do we establish transparency and accountability as the foundation for safe and scalable GenAI in customer experience? Registration Form Name* Phone Number* Business Email* Company Name* Designation* Submit ### How easy was it to complete your task today? How easy was it for you to reach our customer service?   In an era where customers expect everything instantly and intuitively, ease isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a key driver of satisfaction and loyalty. Two moments define how a customer feels about your brand: When they are trying to complete a task, and when they are trying to get help. If either one feels like hard work, the damage is already done. This panel aims to explore the real meaning of ease in customer experience. How do you measure it? How do you improve it? And more importantly, how do your customers perceive it? In this panel, we want to discuss specifically: Do we know what our customers actually find hard? Do seemingly simple tasks become a point of friction for customers? Ease vs. Delight: Are we chasing the wrong metrics? Should we aim for 'wow moments' or eliminate friction? How do you design support journeys that feel reachable and responsive, even when agents aren't immediately available? Proactive vs. reactive support. How have you reduced inbound support by proactively addressing friction points? Whose job is ease anyway?   Meet The Panelist Customer Relations Specialist Shreeya GangulyShreeya is a Customer Relations Specialist. Previously, she was part of the customer experience teams at Welspun, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra, HDFC, and Shriram Housing Finance. Her expertise includes customer service, change management, project management, strategic planning, negotiation, and team building, among other areas. She has led cross-functional initiatives that enhanced employee experience and generated 100 crores in revenue through workforce productivity solutions. Head of Customer Service at Jupiter Nikhil GodboleNikhil has over 20 years of experience in building high-impact customer service organizations that scale, perform, and delight across the Fintech and Travel tech domains. He has had customer experience stints with EXL Service, Infosys BPO, ClearTrip, and Jupiter Money. He believes in transforming customer support into an organization's growth engine, and he has various accolades throughout his career. Assistant General Manager Operations at AGOS Aviation Soumitra ChakrabortySoumitra currently functions as the AGM Operations of AGOS Aviation. Prior to this, he has held stints with Aircel, MTS Group, Domino's, INOX Leisure, Sulekha, Fusion BPO Services, and Hansa Direct. He has over 17 years of experience in setting up high-performing operations teams and scaling operations to support large-scale performance. His expertise includes customer lifecycle management, customer engagement, customer success, workforce management, and strategy formulation & execution. Executive Director at Kaima Asset Abhishek LuthraAbishek, an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta, is the founder of Kaima Asset. His expertise encompasses the entire investment advisory process. Prior to founding Kaima, he had stints with Aditya Birla Finance, Axis Bank, and Kotak Life. He is a personal finance professional, financial literacy coach, orator, poet, writer, and investor. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How satisfied are you with the customer service we offer?   Think back to the last time you reached out to customer service. Maybe you found yourself stuck on hold, wondering if anyone would ever pick up. Or you spoke to someone who listened carefully and resolved your query in a single interaction. On the flip side, many of us experience the frustration of robotic scripts, having to repeat our issues multiple times, bouncing between agents, and receiving confusing responses that leave us more confused than reassured. All of these moments stay with us, which shapes our perception of the brands that we interact with. This panel aims to discuss how these lived experiences influence not just how customers feel but also how organizations can better design their service strategies to meet and exceed expectations. In this panel, we want to discuss specifically: What is the most memorable customer service experience you've had, and how has it shaped your view of great service? Why do some companies forget that their employees are customers, too, and how can we bring a stronger customer mindset inside the organization? When things go wrong, how can a business turn a frustrating experience into a moment that builds customer loyalty? Is empathy something people are born with, or can it be taught and developed in customer service teams? What small but effective changes can brands make right now to show customers that they truly understand their experience? Meet The Panelist Principal Consultant at Wipro Krishnan ChidambaramHe is a Principal Consultant at Wipro and a Salesforce specialist with over 16 years of experience in IT. He holds 23 Salesforce certifications and has led global implementations across industries like life sciences, banking, and regulation. With deep expertise in Service Cloud and CX transformation, Krishnan bridges technology and user experience to deliver scalable, human-centered solutions. His work has helped organizations simplify complex systems and elevate customer engagement at scale. Head of Customer Support at Signzy Nandan KamatA seasoned customer experience leader with over 15 years of experience across Signzy, Gameskraft, Amazon, and more. At Signzy, he heads Customer Support and has led innovations like an AI-driven self-service portal that improved CSAT by 28% and cut support queries by 25%. Previously at Gameskraft, he introduced in-app support and WhatsApp for Business, a few CX firsts in the real-money gaming space. Nandan brings a powerful blend of operational expertise and customer empathy, making him a strong voice on how technology and strategy can transform customer experience. Head Customer Service at Parag Milk Foods Kailash SwamiAn accomplished CX leader with 15+ years in customer service and operations. At L&T Finance, he led a 130-member team across 11 business lines, driving improvements in First Contact Resolution and NPS while ensuring strict regulatory compliance. Now the Head of Customer Service at Parag Milk Foods, Kailash specializes in CRM optimization, automation, and CX strategy. A PMP and Six Sigma professional, he combines operational precision with a passion for innovation, and even has experience leading high-altitude treks. Unit Head - Customer Experience at Equitas Bank Anish MAnish is a seasoned customer experience leader with over 18 years in banking and financial services. Since May 2024, he has functioned as Unit Head - Customer Experience at Equitas Bank, where he champions process redesign, boosts net promoter scores, and embeds lean six sigma methods for continuous improvement. Before this, Anish transformed complaints and service-excellence teams at RAKBANK and ADCB in the UAE. He’s a Prosci-certified change practitioner and master black belt, with leadership training from IIM Ahmedabad, and regularly shares insights as a blogger and speaker on CX and digital transformation. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Have you ever been a customer yourself? How does that help in providing exceptional customer experiences?   Think of the time you were stuck on hold, listening to repetitive music for 20 minutes, wondering if your call would ever be answered. You remember the frustration and uncertainty. Have you ever had a barista remember your name and order? Or a support agent solve your issue in one go, then follow up the next day to check if things are fine? Have you ever been on the receiving end of listening to robotic scripts, having to repeat the same issue to multiple agents, endless transfers, and unclear communication? Do these statements resonate with you? Being a customer gives you something that no tool or dashboard can offer. It is empathy backed by real-life experience. It would make you ask, "What would I expect if I were in their shoes?" We want to discuss how our real-life experiences influence the customer experience we provide. In this panel, we want to discuss specifically: What's the most unforgettable customer experience you've had? Did that experience influence how you think about customer service today? Why do brands forget that their employees are customers, too? How can CX leaders bring the 'customer mindset' into internal training, process design, and culture? What happens after things go wrong? How can businesses turn frustrating experiences into loyalty moments? Is empathy teachable, or does it come naturally? Should empathy be a hiring filter or a skill that's trained? What small changes can brands make today to show they've been there as customers? Can you give some examples that you use? Meet The Panelist Transactional Quality (GM) Romi BhattacharjiRomi is a customer experience and contact center transformation leader with over 21 years of experience in driving customer satisfaction initiatives across BPO, telecom, BFSI, and eCommerce initiatives. She currently serves as the General Manager of transactional quality at Hexaware Technologies, where she leads AI-driven CX transformation initiatives, focusing on omnichannel transactional quality, compliance optimization, and digital process automation to enhance service excellence across multiple industries. Senior Vice President - Head Broking and MFDs at Pramerica Life Insurance Rahul KarmarkarRahul functions as the Senior Vice President of Broking and MFDs at Pramerica Life Insurance, where he leads the alternate distribution channels. Rahul has over 25 years of experience across the BFSI industry, where his expertise includes team management, sales channels, P&L management, partnerships, and collaborating with cross-functional teams. He is an astute leader who has delivered impactful results in his career. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Why are you still working with us? Have you ever asked your customers this question?   Asking customers, "Why are you still working with us?" is a powerful and often overlooked question. It shifts the focus from transactional feedback to loyalty and uncovers what truly resonates with your customers. Understanding the answer to this question can help you strengthen your relationships with your customers, improve offerings, and create a competitive edge. In the fast-paced world of business, customer loyalty is no longer guaranteed. Research shows that 65% of customers leave a brand due to poor experiences, even when they are satisfied with the product or service. However, a staggering 80% of customers say they are more likely to stay loyal to companies that truly understand them. We want to explore how seeking feedback that allows you to understand the true intentions of your customers helps in building loyalty. In this panel, we want to discuss specifically: What are some innovative ways that organizations use today to understand the reasons behind customer loyalty? Can you give an example from your organization? How can you balance quantitative metrics with qualitative insights to understand loyalty? Once you know why customers stay, how do you ensure those insights lead to meaningful changes? What challenges have you encountered in turning customer feedback into actionable insights? Can you give some examples? Have you used any other ways to understand loyalty apart from surveys? Meet The Panelist Vice President - Digital Consulting at Firstsource Allwyn Deepak DavidAllwyn is a seasoned six sigma and digital consulting professional with 2 decades of experience driving business innovation using new generation technologies across verticals like financial accounting, contact centers, insurance, human resource, payroll and benefits, and banking. He currently functions as the Vice President at Firstsource. He has had stints with organizations like Alorica, Capgemini, Aon Hewitt, Xchanging technology, and Accenture. CEO & Co-Founder at The-Connections Harshal ThoratHarshal specializes in BPO and call center services, and his mission is to transform how businesses engage with customers and manage sales processes through clear, direct communication. His expertise includes customer service, lead generation, outsourcing, customer support, and virtual assistance. He currently functions as the CEO of The-Connections. Managing Director at Spacestyles Vikram DassVikram currently functions as the Managing Director of Spacestyles that help clients better their workspaces. He has worked with multiple multinational organizations in helping their with their workspaces, and he has had multiple senior executive stints with Steelcase, Armstrong World, Grohe, and Aspire Systems. Associate Director - Program and Project Management at LTIMindtree Umar IbrahimUmar functions as the Associate Director of Program and Project Manager at LTIMindtree. He is a PMP certified project manager with around 13 years of experience in project management, client liaison, implementation and delivery of projects. Prior to LTIMindtree, Umar has had stints with Revinova, Sanmina-Sci technology, and Sysvine technologies. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### ASAP is not a timeline. How profound is this statement in customer service?   The phrase ASAP (As soon as possible) has become a ubiquitous shorthand for urgency. Whether it's a support ticket, a complaint resolution, or a simple query, service teams are often expected to address issues ASAP. However, ASAP is ambiguous and unworkable as a timeline, as it's highly subjective and non-specific. A lot of room is left for interpretation. Sometimes, ASAP is used to create urgency. In an era where immediacy is celebrated – whether through instant messaging, one-day deliveries, or real-time updates – ASAP can seem inadequate. It shifts the burden of interpretation onto the customer, potentially eroding trust when outcomes fall short of expectations. We want to explore how ASAP shapes customer service today. Is it time to retire ASAP in favor of clear, actionable timelines? In this panel, we want to discuss specifically: What does ASAP mean to you in the context of customer service? Are there specific scenarios where ASAP is not the best approach? What are the operational barriers moving beyond ASAP? Does using ASAP as a directive create undue stress for service teams? Can you share examples of where ASAP worked well and where it fell short? Is there a case for moving towards hyper-personalized service timelines? Can you give some use cases? Meet The Panelist Head of Customer Success at FREED Shilpi MishraShilpi has more than two decades of experience in the customer experience space, working with organizations like Convergys, SBI Life, AmEx, BMW, and Acko General Insurance. Currently, Shilpi heads customer success at Freed, which is India's 1st Debt Relief Platform. She firmly believes that customer experience is the biggest differentiator in today's commoditized market offerings, and she tirelessly works towards creating end-to-end experiences for all stakeholders. Managing Director, Operations at Continuum Global Solutions Jaydeep GhoshJaydeep currently functions as the Managing Director of Operations at Continuum Global Solutions, where he manages the delivery of 5 businesses out of the Philippines and India. He has more than 25 years of experience working with organizations like Dell, eClerx, Teleperformance, and Conduent prior to Continuum. His expertise includes customer service, service delivery, process and transaction quality & standardization, client engagement, customer lifecycle, training, and development. Director Of Field Marketing at Relevantz Dayananth VarunVarun currently functions as the Chief of Marketing at Relevantz. He believes in the power of Generative AI to transform the customer experience. He specializes in providing personalized interactions and targeted campaigns at scale. In his two-decade-long career, he has had stints with various IT services organizations like Futurnet, Aspire Systems, Cognizant, and Ziffity Solutions before joining Relevantz. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Customer service data hides more than it reveals. Do you agree with this?   Customer service data originates from a variety of sources like support tickets, chat logs, surveys, social media interactions, customer feedback, and user adoption metrics, among others. While it reveals insights on common issues, response times, and customer satisfaction levels, it often hides deeper, nuanced insights that are critical for long-term success. Consider these numbers: A Harvard Business Review study suggests that 91% of unhappy customers will leave without complaining, making it hard for companies to identify dissatisfaction through customer service data alone. Forrester Research reports that 20-30% of customers are at risk of churn despite seemingly favorable metrics, but customer service data won't always pick up on these signs. While businesses collect and analyze customer service data extensively, they often fail to capture the full picture of customer experiences, leading to potential blind spots in organizations. So, there is a huge need for organizations to relook at their customer service data and see how they can ensure exceptional customer experiences. In this panel, we want to discuss specifically: How do you avoid incomplete data narratives? What are the ways to address silent signals like non-complaints, churn precursors, and emotional context? Is there a need for qualitative insights? Should organizations move towards delivering personalized quality experiences that discount the quantitative metrics? What role does AI have in collecting and analyzing customer service data – both quantitative and qualitative? How do you narrow the gap between customer service data and churn prediction? Real-life examples of early warning signs that organizations should be wary of when it comes to customer service data. Meet The Panelist EVP and Head Operations at SBI Card Monish B VohraMonish, as the EVP and Head of Operations at SBI Card, is in charge of driving customer experience and operational excellence. Monish has over 28 years of experience and is the recipient of the Golden Stevie for customer service executive of the year 2019. Under his guidance, the SBI Card team has won numerous prestigious awards, including the Stevie Awards for years 2019, 2021, and 2022 and the Golden Bridge Award 2019. Global Practice Head - Channels, CRM and Customer Experience Solutions at Tech Mahindra Rajendran MurthyRajendran has more than 25 years of global experience and is currently functioning as Global Practice Head – Channels, CRM, and Customer Experience solutions at Tech Mahindra. He is currently responsible for driving consulting and delivery for channel, CRM, and customer experience solutions. He has successfully implemented customer engagement solutions for digital experience platforms, CRM, CX redesign, contact center, hyper-personalization, loyalty, customer onboarding, and customer analytics. Director - Business Intelligence & Analytics at Zuci Systems Rajkumar PurushothamanRaj currently works as Director of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Zuci Systems. Raj has more than 18 years of experience managing and delivering enterprise programs and projects of small, medium, and large-scale initiatives in Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, Software Engineering, and IT infrastructure & operations. Prior to Zuci, he had stints with FSS, YuMe, Minvesta, iNautix, and Sutherland. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Does empathy play a role in your customer experience function?   Consider these numbers from PWC research: 82% of US and 74% of non-US customers crave more human interaction in their future customer experiences. A staggering 59% of consumers feel companies have lost touch with the human element of customer service.   What do these statistics say? Customers want to feel heard, understood, and cared for. And empathy is the key that unlocks this door. Here is an example of empathy in action from Slack. We hear where you're coming from and can understand how it would be useful to be able to track your time in Huddles. We have shared your suggestion with our product team and appreciate the valuable feedback! The above tweet has some powerful phrases that reveal empathy towards the customer – this reply indicates that the company has truly heard the customer and taken action on their query. In this panel, we will address the significance of empathy in customer experience. We want to discuss specifically: How do you program empathy as a part of CX technology? How do you prioritize empathy in the battle of empathy Vs efficiency? Do organizations have to invest in empathy training? How do you measure empathy in customer interactions? Real-life examples of how you practice empathy as a part of your CX? Meet The Panelist Director - Service, Operations & Regulation at Bright Money Sumiran BhatiaSumiran currently serves as the Director of Bright Money, heading Risk & Regulatory compliance. She champions high-quality service, operations, and regulation for Bright Money. She oversees all avenues of customer interactions, including Social Media, Reviews and Ratings, and handle all regulatory and non-regulatory complaints. Chief Technology Officer at IndBank Global Support Services Limited Sathish PrabuSathish is the CTO of IndBank Global Support Services. With strong people/product leadership, and strong foundation in infrastructure, development, cyber security, ITIL and expertise in cloud technologies, Sathish handles solutions that enhances customer experience and operational efficiency. Head Of Customer Experience at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Ankit GoenkaAnkit currently serves as the head of customer experience at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. He has received a lot of accolades in the CX space, including CX Leader of the Year, CX Personality of the Year, BFSI Leader of the Year, and Top 100 CX Leader. His interests are varied and it includes dancing, acting, travelling, and event management. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Do you agree with “Give us fast horses"? We wouldn’t have automobiles today   Just as sticking to "faster horses" would have limited the development of automobiles, relying solely on traditional methods of enhancing customer experience can constrain the potential for groundbreaking improvements. Companies must think beyond incremental changes and be open to innovative approaches that can transform the customer experience. True customer-centric innovation involves looking beyond the noticeable improvements and considering what fundamentally new offerings could redefine the customer journey. For example, rather than just improving call center wait times, businesses could explore automated chatbots, virtual assistants, or self-service portals that provide faster and more efficient resolutions. This panel discussion aims to address how you can bring customer-centric innovation into the mix. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How do we anticipate customer needs and bring innovation to customer experience? How do we leverage technology to deliver exceptional customer experiences? How do we balance the need for continuous improvement with pursuing groundbreaking innovations in CX? What role does organizational culture play in fostering innovation in CX? Real-life examples of how you have implemented innovation in CX or examples of other organizations. Meet The Panelist State Head Customer Service Delivery at Reliance Jio Bikash MohantyBikash has about three decades of experience working with majors like Reliance Telecom, Bharti Airtel, Essar, Tata Teleservices, Tate Tele Business Services, Jindal Steel & Power, and JIO Telecom. He is currently the state head of customer service delivery for JIO in Odisha. He has more than eight years of experience in managing end-to-end customer life cycles for diverse and complex portfolios. Head of Customer Experience & Operations at Huru Hitesh DuaHitesh is an experienced product leader in Fintech, Mobility, and Building Startups. He has 8+ years of experience in crafting customer-centric solutions. He currently works as the Head of Customer Experience and Operations at Huru. Before this, he had stints with INDmoney, Uber, Avenue Growth, and Testament, handling product development and customer experience functions. Managing Director at Instivate Learning Solutions Narendra KumarNarender has been an entrepreneur for more than three decades. In his career, he has helped organizations of various sizes, from startups to Fortune 500 organizations, with their training and development needs. He has offered sales and process consulting to organizations of various sizes and has helped many organizations enhance their customer focus. He has had an impact on the lives of more than 30000 professionals. He is currently the managing director of Instivate Learning. Senior Manager - Sevice Delivery at Bill Gosling Outsourcing Karan GuptaKaran is the Senior Manager handling service delivery at Bill Gosling Outsourcing. He is a visionary and a results-driven, client-centric professional with close to a decade of experience in driving business and revenue growth. Karan has extensive experience in a wide range of outsourced industries. He drives operational excellence with customers in the middle of everything. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you add a personal touch to your customer’s journey?   In today's competitive market, standing out isn't just about offering a great product or service; it's about crafting memorable customer experiences at every touchpoint. Organizations have started applying personalization principles to transform ordinary interactions into extraordinary moments. Does personalization really matter? These compelling statistics give a huge thumbs up to personalization. According to a study by Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. Infosys found that 59% of consumers who have experienced personalization believe it has a noticeable influence on their purchasing decisions. In a report by McKinsey, companies that personalize experiences across the customer journey typically see revenue increase by 5% to 15% and increase marketing spend efficiency by 10% to 30%. This panel discussion aims to address how you can bring personalization into the mix. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: Strategies for collecting and leveraging customer data responsibly. Creative ways to tailor your messaging and offerings to individual preferences. The role of technology, such as AI and machine learning, in delivering personalized experiences at scale. Real-life examples of brands that have mastered the art of personalization. Examples that you follow in your organization. Tips for maintaining authenticity and building genuine connections with your audience. Meet The Panelist Founder at Aayan Akshaya GaurAkshaya has more than four decades of experience in technology leadership and management with a strong customer focus. He is a seasoned and reputed conference speaker on various banking, fintech, and digital disruption topics. He performs multiple roles for organizations, including Aayan, Solvecube, The Partnerships Consulting, ORP2b, and 1Crowd. He has previously held several senior management positions at Standard Chartered Bank, Mashreqbank, FixNix, RightManagement, and Peak Performer. Sales Engineer at PayHuddle Harshitha SinghHarshitha handles sales for Payhuddle Solutions, a payment testing and certification organization. She handles some of Payhuddle's product lines. She handles sales and customer experience for customers across 40+ countries. Her customers include leading banks, processors, and merchants worldwide. She brings the B2B perspective of customer experience. Head Of Customer Experience, Learning & Development at Kissht | Ring Suraj ShettySuraj currently functions as the head of customer experience, learning & development at Kissht, which offers small merchants an instant line of credit using QR codes. He manages the overall customer experience from check-in to check-out, whether online or offline. He ensures overall customer experience across all customer touchpoints through practical technology usage. Suraj has had stints with HDFC Bank and three exciting startups. He has worked across finance, operations, marketing, technology, and automation functions. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### What do you need to know when you choose your cloud contact center?   More than 50% of the contact centers have moved to the cloud, and the rest are at some stage of moving their operations to the cloud. Most platform providers have started moving their on-premise solutions to the cloud. Everyone would inevitably want to move their contact center to the cloud. However, you have to be wary of how you choose your cloud contact center. Not all cloud contact centers are the same. What questions should you ask your provider before signing up? Is it a simple pricing, or do they follow something very complex? How does the cost add up compared to on-premise solutions? What about your custom workflow requirements? What about change requests? Does it comply with security standards? Does it provide availability at all times? Does it comply with standards and regulations like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC, TCPA, DoT, and TRAI? Organizations considering moving to the cloud will have many questions like this. This panel discussion aims to address all of these questions and more. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How do you define a cloud contact center? What are the costs associated with cloud contact centers? What pricing models are used by providers? How do you integrate your cloud contact center with other best-of-breed systems? How do you ensure the security of the cloud contact center? What pitfalls should you guard against while moving your contact center to the cloud? Real-life use cases of success and failures using a cloud contact center. Meet The Panelist Global Head - Customer Experience at BDx Data Centers Mithila MahajanMithila is the global head of customer experience at BDx Data Centers. She is an experienced customer success professional with a demonstrated history of working in telecommunications, consulting, and academics. She is skilled in service delivery, CRM, contact centers, customer engagement & experience. Director & Co-Founder at Mavin RPO Solutions Mahesh IyerMahesh is the Director and Co-Founder of Mavin RPO Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a boutique RPO & HR consulting organization. He is a dynamic and innovative human resource professional with strong entrepreneurial acumen and over 25 years of extensive people experience across varied specialties in Human Resource Management, Training and Development and General Management. His exposure to employee experience coupled with customer experience will add tremendous value to this discussion. Business Head at VKALP Hemant VermaHemant is the Business Head at VKALP. He is conversant with telesales, e-commerce, BPO services, energy savings, and lead generation. As the head of a successful BPO business, he handles the end-to-end operations and leads a team of over 1000 employees. He is adept at successfully balancing the needs of the business with the needs of his clients. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you make customer satisfaction an attainable goal?   Customer satisfaction directly impacts customer retention, loyalty, lifetime value, and long-term success. It is the degree to which a product or service meets or exceeds customer expectations. Businesses increasingly recognize the importance of customer satisfaction, as it leads to repeat business, positive word-of-mouth, and a competitive edge. Here are some interesting statistics: A report by American Express states that happy customers are willing to spend 17% more on average for a product or service. A Nielsen study reported that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over advertising. The World Economic Forum highlighted that customer satisfaction is vital for international competitiveness, influencing a country's economic prosperity. The discussion aims to understand the importance of customer satisfaction and how it can be enhanced. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How do you understand your customer expectations? What kind of surveys, feedback, and data analysis do you use? Customer experience is at the core of everything a business should do, and personalization plays a huge part. How do you personalize your offerings for your customer segments? What impact does your customer support and service have on your customer satisfaction levels? How do you measure them? What role do people in your organization play in ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction? How do you empower them? Can you give some examples of how you have made customer satisfaction a top priority in your organization? Meet The Panelist Senior Manager - Service Delivery at MattsenKumar LLC Karan GuptaKaran is the Senior Manager handling service delivery at MattsenKumar. He is a visionary and a results-driven, client-centric professional with close to a decade of experience in driving business and revenue growth. Karan has extensive experience in a wide range of outsourced industries. He drives operational excellence with customers in the middle of everything. Chief India Operations Officer at Mondee Vinay KanchiVinay is currently Chief India Operations Officer at Mondee Tech. His focus has been in CX, operations, and strategy in the outsourcing and captive space. He has been instrumental in setting up successful delivery sites in multiple countries like the Phillipines, India, China, and Canada for various clients. He believes in ensuring employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, NPS, and revenues with strong bottom line. Prior to Mondee, he has had stints with Innowia, Fareportal, Datamatics, InterGlobe, WNS, Airtel, and Philips. Principal Product Manager at Ring Pramod MohandasPramod is a product manager with over ten years of experience scaling products, leading teams, and solving business problems through digital solutions. He has had stints with TCS, Hidden Brains Infotech, and LEAD School and is currently with Ring. He works closely with the CX teams to gather feedback and insights to enhance the product to meet customer needs better. He firmly believes that customer satisfaction is everyone's responsibility, and his product management philosophy revolves around the customers. He is an award-winning public speaker and a distinguished Toastmaster. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Every function has a role to play in CX   In today's age, customer experiences are scaling new heights. According to a recent survey conducted by PwC, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Studies also show that 89% of consumers have switched to a competitor following a poor customer experience. These statistics underscore customer experience (CX) 's critical role in attracting and retaining customers. However, what often gets overlooked is that CX is not the sole responsibility of a single department but a collective endeavor that spans the entire organization. It is not just about the customer service team; it's about marketing, product development, IT, HR, and every other function working harmoniously to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How can organizations cultivate a customer-centric culture that permeates all functions? What strategies can organizations employ to align product development and service design with customer needs and desires? What technology challenges do you foresee in integrating various functions with CX, and how do you address them? How is employee experience related to CX, and how do you motivate your employees to prioritize CX? How do you gain data-driven insights and use them to enhance CX? Meet The Panelist Vice President at KFin Technologies Madhulika SanghviAs a CXO Incubator Member, Katalyst mentor, writer, panelist, and Podcast guest – Madhulika, shares her insights and perspectives on various topics related to leadership and transformation. She is an empathetic leader, a growth mindset advocate, and a transformation leader awardee. She serves as Vice President at KFin Technology, leading domestic and international business development for fund services. She has over 17 years of experience delivering value to clients and stakeholders in the financial services sector. Vice President - Head of Customer (Patient) Experience and Training at Pristyn Care Mohit VarshneyAs a Vice President at Pristyn Care, Mohit heads the patient experience and training function. He works towards uplifting patient experience across all touchpoints. He has devised and implemented many initiatives through which he influences key functional leaders to keep patients at the center of everything they do. He is instrumental in implementing various programs to improve product offerings and processes. Director at Energethics Engineering Solutions Rohith B VRohith is a young entrepreneur with interests in the energy sector. He currently functions as the Director of Energethics Engineering Solutions. He firmly believes in improving the customer experience with every interaction with his customers. With his customer-focused approach, he has grown his organization multifold since its inception in 2021. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Customer experience is the product   History has shown that every product and innovation gets commoditized eventually, and it is just a factor of time. So, what is the moat that you should look at? It is the customer experience. The concept of customer experience has evolved from being just a buzzword to a fundamental driving force behind business success. In most cases, the quality of your customer experience is more important than your products or services. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: Defining customer experience as the product and the shift in business perspectives. How do you measure the value of a good customer experience? How do you integrate customer experience into your product or service strategy? What experiences should you look at – multichannel, omnichannel, personalization? How do you correlate employee experience with customer experience and its impact? What is the role of technology in enhancing customer experience? Meet The Panelist Business Lead, Wealth and Retail Distribution & Digital Banking at SBM Bank Komal KhullarKomal has had more than 20 years of experience in the BFSI space with extensive experience in retail, commercial & SME banking, wealth management, digital initiatives, foreign exchange, and customer experience. Prior to SBM, Komal has had stints with ICICI, Kotak Mahindra, and HDFC banks. Product Marketing Professional Arun KailasamArun Kailsam is a Senior Product Marketing Professional with expertise in product marketing, sales enablement, content marketing, and global communications. He has over a decade of experience in the B2B marketing, especially in the product marketing space. He has consciously employed creativity and critical thinking to deliver world-class marketing experience, while keeping customers at the center of everything. He has successfully led product marketing and growth at FarEye, ABB, and SolarWinds. Senior Director - Instructional Design & Content Development at MPS Interactive Vivek AcharyVivek is currently the Senior Director at MPS Interactive, handling their content development and instructional design. He is an engineer from IIT with a passion for everything creative. He has had varied experiences – working as a copywriter at multiple ad agencies, running his own agencies, software development, content development, and core marketing. In his three decades of experience, he has greatly aligned the organizations’ objectives with customer needs and has championed customer experience across roles. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you use data to elevate the customer’s journey and CX?   The digital-first customers are not afraid of switching brands if their experience during their customer journey is not a positive or valuable one. 86% of consumers will leave a brand they were once loyal to after only two or three bad customer experiences. Brands must ensure their customer journeys are as accurate and relevant as possible and provide the most relevant, personalized customer experience along the way. To get an in-depth understanding of your customers and prospects, you need to have access to clean customer data. To do this, you need the right technology solutions to both gather and integrate the data and display it in a way that provides actionable, data-driven guidance to construct and tailor the customer journey and the accompanying customer experience. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: What kind of tools and technology do you deploy to gather and gain insights from customer data? How do you orchestrate the customer journey to have a positive impact on the customers and prospects at every interaction? What are the different types of customer journey maps that brands can use? Does AI have a role to play in customer journey mapping and elevating the experience? What kind of investments should CMOs and CIOs look to ensure exceptional experiences? Meet The Panelist Vice President and Head of Digital Partnerships at Max Life Insurance Manish MahajanManish is the Vice President and Head of Digital Partnerships at Max Life Insurance Company Limited. His specialties include contact center solutions, customer management, analytics, and business development. Before Max Life, he had stints with HFObserver, Quattro FPO Solutions, and Aviva India. Chief Manager, Fintech & Strategy at TVS Credit Services Abhishek KumarAbhishek currently functions as Chief Manager, Fintech & Strategy at TVS Credit Services Ltd. Kumar works with banks and other financial institutions to deliver digital transformation and fintech strategy through innovator and accelerator programs. Prior to TVS, he had stints with EY, Medici Global, Societe Generale, JPMorgan Chase, and Lifestyle Properties. Senior Director at Teleperformance Jaspreet JoshanJaspreet Joshan currently functions as Senior Director at Teleperformance. He has managed contact center operations across various organizations, including Convergys India, 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd., HCL Technologies BPO, and Videocon Telecommunication Ltd., Hinduja Global Solutions, before Teleperformance. He believes in standardization of processes, business planning & monitoring, knowledge & skills enhancement, transparency & ethics for sustained customer trust and patronage. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Can we afford to do what customers are asking for?   Customers have an infinite choice; if you don't give them what they want, they'll switch to someone who can. But do customers really know what they want? The simplest example comes from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who recently noted that customers need data security, even though what they want is widespread freedom to use social media. Apple is making itself an expert on how to balance those two things. Every organization must evolve a process to understand what customers mean regardless of what they say. How do you figure out what customers need? It's a combination of customer conversations, market and industry insights, and feedback loops, especially via insightful data about user actions. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How do you find out what your customers really want? You may have built your offerings with certain assumptions, but your customers may use them in ways you did not intend. What do you do then? Most customers do not know what they need. How do you communicate to such customer segments what they should look at? How do you differentiate between customer needs, wants, and desires? How do you prioritize them? When to say no to a customer request, and how do you do them? Meet The Panelist Heading Customer Service - Retail Finance at Hero FinCorp. Anamika ChatterjeeAnamika heads customer service in the retail finance division of Hero Fincorp. She has had stints with Amex, Religare, and ETMoney. Anamika has been recognized as a Top 100 CX leader. Her focus has always been on ensuring customer delight, and her skills include operations management, project management, client relationship management, people management, training, quality, complaint management, and customer service. Head Contact Center at Mahindra Integrated Business Solutions Naresh HotwaniNaresh heads the contact center operations at Mahindra Integrated Business Solutions. He has a demonstrated history of working in the consumer services industry on customer experience management. His skills include operations management and business process design. As a contact center head, he has his ears to the ground when it comes to providing a customer experience. Chief Executive Officer at Mahagram Ram ShriramRam currently functions as the CEO of Mahagram and an Investor & Advisor at FidyPay. He believes in a participatory leadership style with excellent relationship-building, interpersonal, and communication skills. He has enormous experience in the payments domain and financial services in product management, consulting, marketing, business development, planning, strategy, and new initiatives. Mahagram serves 800 million people through 4 lac banking stores in rural India. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Is technology the solution for contact center productivity?   Most contact center productivity issues are associated with the agents or the frontline employees. The customer-facing agents are at the bottom of the pyramid and are the most stressed in the hierarchy when it comes to delivering customer experience. According to a Forbes study, the reasons for their stress are: 26% mentioned finding the right answers to customer questions. 25% mentioned different systems and information sources, giving different answers. 20% mentioned hopping from one application or window to another. 14% mentioned it was hard to keep up with all the new information and changes. 15% mentioned other issues. If you look at this, the right technology platform could handle 85% of the stress, directly influencing the delivery of a great customer experience. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How do you choose the right technology infrastructure for your contact center? What are the must-haves and nice-to-haves? How do you choose channels for providing customer experience? – voice, chat, SMS, WhatsApp, email, website, mobile, social, etc. Does omnichannel make sense for you? Should you look at integrating your contact center platform with other IT applications? What productivity applications should you specifically look at – workforce optimization and management, list management services, voice analytics, and the like. Meet The Panelist Chief Technology Officer at Inditrade Scalerator Limited Balaji TKBalaji has worn many hats in his illustrious career, including CTO, CIO, digital transformation expert, and mentor. His specialties include rural tech, Fintech, innovation, and digital architecture. He currently functions as the CTO of Inditrade Saclerator. He is a tech addict with expertise in BFSI, Fintech, and Retail. He is skilled in AI, ERP, BI, RPA, Business Processes, Business Planning, IT Cloud, and Infrastructure Management. Director - Cybersecurity & Technology at Expleo Group Balakrishnan KanniahBala currently functions as the Director of Cybersecurity and Technology at Expleo Group. He has had experience working with MNCs on IT and business transformational engagements & IT security projects. His specialties include IT infrastructure, complex global IT solutions, Information technology & services, and IT security solutions. He has handled compliance demands in the BFSI sector like PCI, ISO, SSAE, and SOC. Co-Founder & CEO at Kapiital Kapslock Vignesh SandaradasseVignesh is a fintech enthusiast with more than 10 years of banking experience. Before co-founding Kapiital Kapslock, he had stints with Axis, SBM, Yes Bank, and Ippo Pay. Kapiital serves NBFCs, MFIs, Co-operative Banks, Trusts, Section – 8, Nidhi Limited, and the lending sector. They help customers with EMIs, BNPL, NACH, and UPI 2.0. They are on the cutting edge of technology. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you create a customer-centric strategy overnight?   We all understand that it is impossible to create a customer-centric culture overnight. It requires a lot of effort, and customer-centricity needs to be a part of the organizational culture to achieve overnight success. We have reached a stage where customers prioritize experience over products and pricing. Customers aren't averse to jumping ship to a competitor when the experience does not match their expectations. We don't need to overemphasize the financial incentives of being a customer-centric organization. It takes significantly less to retain and grow your existing customers than it does to acquire them. We want to discuss how organizations can bring in customer-centricity as a part of their DNA. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: How do you anticipate customer expectations? How do you personalize your offerings to your customers? How do you collect customer feedback? How do you share and discuss customer insights within functions? Is customer-centricity a part of your organizational culture? How do you get that right? What should your customer support look like for being proactive? Meet The Panelist Chief Executive Officer at Unlimit - A Reliance Group Company Pradeep SreedharanPradeep is a business leader with experience in sales, strategy, service delivery, and operations management. Pradeep truly believes in the coming together of technology and customer needs. He currently functions as the CEO of Unlimit – a Reliance group company. He has had stints with Verkko, Ooredoo, and Indosat Ooredoo. Co-Founder & Head of Technology at Zuci Systems Anil Kumar SannareddyAnil is the co-founder and head of technology at Zuci Systems. He understands the software development lifecycle from ideation to execution and ensures customer delight at Zuci systems. His forte is in the B2B space, and we look forward to hearing his perspectives on customer-centricity. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Specific actions that you should take to be more customer-oriented   To build a customer-oriented culture, you must understand your customers and their needs. This involves collecting customer data from disparate sources and having a 360-degree view of your customers. You should derive insights from this data and put them into action. The key components of customer orientation include: Understanding what your customers need. Listening to your customers. Considering customer impact at every interaction point. Giving customers what they consider valuable. Getting sales and customer service to collaborate. We want to discuss how organizations can bring in customer orientation as a part of their culture. Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: The fundamentals of customer-orientation. How do you create a culture of customer orientation, and how do you sustain them? What kind of data should you collect to understand what your customers want? How do you act on the insights and feedback that your customers provide? Talk about some life examples. How do you ensure a people-first attitude within your organization toward providing better customer experiences. Meet The Panelist Head - Customer Experience at Equitas Small Finance Bank Smitha KumarSmitha is a specialist in customer experience with over 20 years of experience in the BFSI segment. She currently heads customer experience at Equitas Small Finance Bank. Prior to this, she has had stints with Franklin Templeton, Cholamandalam MS General Insurance, Cholamandalam DBS Finance, and GE Money. Smitha is a COPC-certified coordinator. She is a lean sigma black belt certification holder and a ISO internal auditor. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you measure the success of a customer-centric organization?   Customer centricity is about putting the customer first and keeping your customers at the center of everything you do. It is about truly understanding the customer so that you can anticipate their wants, needs, and communication preferences, create meaningful experiences and build lasting relationships with them. The importance of customer experience is backed by research: Brands with superior customer centricity bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in it. Companies that lead in customer centricity outperform laggards by nearly 80%. Every customer-centric organization wants to improve that delta on an everyday basis. For this, they constantly measure their customer-centricity. How do you measure the success of a customer-centric organization? Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: The fundamentals of customer-centricity. How do you create a culture of customer centricity, and how do you sustain them? How do you track the financial performance of your customer-centric initiatives? How do you measure employee satisfaction levels, and how do you relate them to customer satisfaction? Real-life examples of a customer-centric approach toward the needs and expectations of customers. Meet The Panelist Head Of Customer Experience, Learning & Development at Kissht | Ring Suraj ShettySuraj currently functions as the head of the customer experience, learning & development at Kissht which offers an instant line of credit to small merchants using QR codes. He manages the overall customer experience from check-in to check-out, be it online or offline. He ensures overall customer experience across all customer touchpoints through effective usage of technology. Suraj has had stints with HDFC bank and three interesting startups. He has worked across functions that include finance, operations, marketing, technology, and automation. We are excited to have you as a part of this panel, and we look forward to listening to your views. CEO and Co-Founder at LXME Jasmin B GuptaJasmin is the CEO and co-founder of LXME. She is relentlessly working towards building India’s 1st financial platform for women. She is skilled in banking, sales, P&L management, CX, strategic alliances, fintech, neobanks, business management, L&D, analytics, digital banking, project & product management, leadership, and intrapreneurship. Prior to LXME, she had stints with Equitas, Kotak Mahindra, and HDFC banks. She is multi-talented – she can speak German, French, and Japanese. She is a trained classical dancer and excels at fine arts, and she is a public speaker. Senior President - Head of Operations & Customer Service at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Dipu KVDipu currently functions as the Senior President and Head of Operations and Customer Experience at the world’s 8th largest digital insurer, Bajaj Allianz. In his current role, he drives digital transformation, innovation, and industry leadership. He has been instrumental in Bajaj Allianz, receiving numerous awards. Dipu’s passions include connecting with people, reading, speaking, writing, and traveling. He is a widely published author across magazines – mainstream and industry. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### What performance tools are you using in your contact center platform to enhance customer experience?   Your customer service reps are the most important part of the customer experience puzzle. They influence about 70% of the outcomes of your CX. Enhancing your customer representatives’ performance means improving CX. How do you go about enhancing their performance? What tools do you use to monitor, measure, and scale? Some questions to look at include the following: Do you use call recording, screen recording, and quality monitoring? How do you identify the training and coaching needs of your reps? Do you use gamification to get your reps to punch above their weights? How do you measure and monitor the efficiency of different performance tools? Are there specific use cases where performance management tools have enhanced CX? Real-life examples of performance management tools. Our panelists would specifically address these questions. Meet The Panelist Co-Founder and CTO at Yitro Consulting and Stratforge Jesu ValiantJesu has more than 21 years of experience handling various strategic and operational roles. He has built and managed turnkey solutions for clients addressing customer experience, omnichannel customer engagement, process automation, knowledge management, knowledge engineering and data analytics. He currently serves as the CO-Founder of Stratforge, a DeepTech AI company, looking at transforming the enterprise tech ecosystem. Earlier, he has had stints with Nittany, SlashSupport, E4E business solutions, and CSS corp. CEO at Payhuddle Prakash SambandamPrakash serves as the CEO of Payhuddle Solutions, a leader in the testing and certification space addressing the needs of the entire payment ecosystem. Payhuddle works with some of the leading brands in the world with customer across 26 countries. Prakash has more than 25 years of experience in building and managing high-performance teams with the core focus of customer delight. He believes in customer experience being a part of every activity that an organization does. He believes in the adage, “Usability and Simplicity over everything else.” Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you nurture a customer-centric culture at your workplace?   We are in the middle of the experience economy, and there is no better differentiator than customer experience. How to provide the best possible customer experience is the question that every C-suite leader is grappling with. The importance of customer experience is backed by research: Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in CX. Companies that lead in CX outperform laggards by nearly 80%. 66% of consumers consider customer service to be a dealbreaker when buying something. Providing excellent customer experiences is all about cultivating a mindset, a philosophy, and a cultural identity that empowers your organization to want to serve customers in the best way possible. This brings us to customer-centricity and how it can be cultivated. How do you nurture customer-centricity in your organization? Listen to our panelists discuss specifically: The fundamentals of customer-centricity. Customer-centricity runs across the organization, and how do you create that culture? How do you link everything you do in your organization to your customers? How do you use technology to promote customer-centric culture? Real-life examples of a customer-centric approach. Meet The Panelist Chief Marketing Officer at Fino Payments Bank Anand BhatiaAnand currently serves as the CMO and EVP – Marketing, Analytics, and Business Intelligence of Fino Payments Bank Ltd. He is involved in building a phygital customer-centric bank – one transaction, one experience at a time. Chief Operating Officer at INNOWIA Vinay KanchiVinay has two decades of experience in the contact center industry, driving innovative technology solutions for his customers. He has worked with top business brands, online travel companies, and global airlines worldwide. He has set up contact center operations for various clients in India, Canada, China, and the Philippines. Vinay is an expert in operations, sales & account management, business excellence, automation, and many other aspects of contact center operations. Currently, he is COO at Innowia, building a building ground up in the business process management space. Marketing Expert Sreejith NairHe has spoken directly to over 2000 customers across 50 cities, walking with them through the customer journey – sometimes to their doorsteps. This is the tip of the iceberg on how he innovated branding and marketing for some of the large brands in the banking and retail space. Over the years, he has helped launch some of the most customer-centric brands in the Indian banking space using traditional media, digital, social, and artificial intelligence without underestimating the power of a warm smile and a gentle touch. Marketing Head at ClearTouch Dhivakar AridossWith due credit to Rene Descartes, Dhivakar lives by the saying, “I Think Therefore I Am.” He believes in 80% thinking and 20% execution on anything creative. He executes the digital marketing strategies of ClearTouch on this 80-20 rule. Besides, if you want to chat up on automobile, formula 1, Hollywood, Music, Food, Single Malts, and any conspiracy theories, Dhivakar would be all ears and is equally a great conversationist. ### Sorry, we don’t have an answer to that question   As a customer experience function, 'Sorry, we don't have an answer to that question,' would be the last thing you want to communicate to your customer. There are a bunch of other things you should not tell your customers. They are: That's against our policy. Let me try to do that. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I'm not sure, but I think. You won't have answers to every customer situation, but these are still complete no-no's when responding to your customers. What are the best ways to handle such situations? Listen to the panelists specifically discuss the following topics: Are your customers always right? How do you resolve your customer situations to their satisfaction? How do you maintain control of the conversation, set expectations, and work towards a solution? How do you treat your customers with respect? Real-life examples of how customer situations are diffused. Meet The Panelist Head of Customer Insight & Customer Experience at Dvara SmartGold Siddhartha GhoshSiddhartha currently serves as the Head of Customer Insight & Customer Experience with Dvara SmartGold. He is a part of the management & executive leadership team. He has earlier had stints with Tilt, Scootsy logistics, Carlo car rentals, GEP, Sitel, Reliance Jio, and Wipro. In his current role, he is accountable for providing strategic leadership, oversight, digital transformation and management of operations, propositions, change & systems. Director - Customer Success at CoinDCX Aalok R PradhanAalok currently functions as Director – Customer Success at CoinDCX. He is a known leader and speaker in the CX space. He has earlier had stints with Amazon, eClerx, Mphasis, Aegis, and Vodafone. Aalok has more than 15 years of experience in the fields of customer support, customer experience, workforce, command center, capacity planning, program management, program management, process management, and stakeholder management. He has proven expertise in designing service policies, and strategies to acquire, retain, and create high-value propositions for customers. Senior Director at Uniphore Sudha BhatSudha is currently with Uniphore as Senior Director. Her specialties include CX strategy & transformation, experience management, CX design, customer analytics, customer insights, and contact center analytics. She has earlier had stints with Genpact, Concentrix, and IBM. She is a certified customer experience professional with a demonstrated history of working in the services industry. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How to build the best customer service organization?   Customer service representatives are the face of your industry, and they are your brand ambassadors. Each interaction a customer has is an opportunity to enhance the loyalty of your customers towards your brand. That said, excellent customer service isn't just down to your frontline staff, but a customer might be won or lost there. That's why it is so essential for everyone in the organization to work together to create memorable moments. We all have heard of legendary examples of customer service by organizations like Zappos and CDBaby. How do we provide such exemplary customer service? Listen to the panelists discuss specifically the following topics: How do you empower your agents? How do you train your agents on your offerings? How do you bring problem-solving as a part of your customer service culture? How do you personalize your service and make every customer feel welcome? What would be the strategy to help customers help themselves? Live examples of excellent customer service implementations. Meet The Panelist Chief Executive Officer & Director at Depoc Solutions Pvt Ltd AV DevidasDevidas is currently the Chief Executive Officer & Director of Depoc Solutions Pvt Ltd. He has more than 27 years of industry experience with 18 of them in the insurance industry. He has worked with almost all the large insurance organizations in his career. His expertise includes formulating strategies and business expansion in unexplored markets. He is an expert in product development, underwriting, claims, and compliance. Customer service lies at the core of everything he does, and we would be keen to listen to his views. Sr. Vice President & Chief Customer Experience Officer at IIFL Securities Ltd Dharmender NarangDharmender currently serves as Senior Vice President – Chief Customer Experience Officer at the leading stock broking firm IIFL. Prior to this, he functioned as Vice President – Customer Experience at Motilal Oswal Securities. His expertise include digitalizing servicing through various initiatives like WhatsApp and Chatbots. He has received the CX – Head of the Year – Stock Broking Company and has been presented with the Top 100 CX leaders award in India. He has also appeared in the ‘CX champions’ coffee table book of Skit.ai. He has the pulse of customers across all functions of capital markets and the banking domain. He has a rich experience of 27 years in the industry. Digital Transformation Futurist Shefali Sonpar Shefali is a recognized digital transformation expert who received the Insurtech Woman Achiever of the Year (India) 2021 award, was named in the Top 100 Global Women in Leadership by GCPIT in 2021, and received the Power Women Award by Lead India Foundation in 2021. Shefali has held global leadership roles across business and technology with Fortune 500 companies. Shefali is best known for pushing innovation boundaries to improve customer experience and deliver enhanced business outcomes. At a personal level, she harbors a deep interest in nurturing talent and has received global recognition for her efforts toward inclusion and diversity. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Attrition is considered the No. 1 challenge in a call center environment, how do you address them?   The industry average for call center attrition is between 30 and 45%, which is a huge number. Besides, we are in the job-seekers market, and attracting top talents has become difficult. Most organizations in the industry have come to expect high attrition as a characteristic of this industry and work within these constraints. What is the biggest problem in this mindset? It affects the ability of the call center to provide the best possible experiences to their customers. The high levels of attrition also put a lot of stress on your recruitment by making it costly and time-consuming. How do you avoid/reduce the attrition rates? Listen to the panelists discuss specifically on the following topics: How do you reduce voluntary attrition? What should be the secret sauce for call center recruitment – identifying the right talent, onboarding, and ongoing engagement? How do you make it enjoyable for your call center agents to perform their jobs without feeling repetitive or stressed? How do you manage your compensations to keep it attractive for top talents to continue working with you? What technology tools to use to ensure that the workplace remains attractive? Meet The Panelist Head Of Customer Experience, Learning & Development at Kissht Suraj ShettySuraj currently functions as the head of customer experience, learning & development at Kissht that offers instant line of credit to small merchants using QR codes. He manages the overall customer experience from check-in to check-out, be it online or offline. He ensures overall customer experience across all customer touch points through effective usage of technology. Suraj has had stints with HDFC bank and three interesting startups. He has worked across functions that include finance, operations, marketing, technology and automation. We are excited to have you as a part of this panel and we look forward to listening to your views. Head of Customer Experience at Reliance Jio Sailesh RupaniSailesh has more than 20 years of experience in customer experience, customer service operations, service delivery, change/demand management, and projects. Sailesh has worked in the Indian as well as the international work environments. Sailesh has experience building processes from scratch, delivering high-impact digital programs, and leading hyper-collaborative CX teams. Sailesh currently functions as the head of customer experience at Reliance Jio. Chief of Marketing and Corporate Communications and Head of Growth at Easy Pay Sakshi MahajanSakshi has demonstrated success by enhancing the value proposition for customers through the digitization of products, crafting solutions, and optimizing processes. She is recognized for the efficacy of offline and digital marketing campaigns to acquire, engage, and retain customers by leveraging data and insights. Her deep understanding of the customer journey has helped her develop solutions to improve customer experiences. She has had stints with Lowe Lintas, Tradelinks, Reliance Entertainment, Yes Bank, and Tesco, handling various functions. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Your call is important to us, please stay on the line while we transfer you   "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line while we transfer you." This is considered to be the most annoying customer service phrase. More so if they happen to hear it after an extended hold time. This does not happen only on the phone or IVR channels. It happens across channels – this is a classic case of an organization starting a service channel and does not bother to staff them well or equip the staff with the necessary technology infrastructure. This kind of experience would result in increased customer churn. How do you prevent it? Listen to the panelists discuss how you can prevent yourself from providing such bad customer experiences. This panel will discuss the following topics: How do you reduce the hold times of customers who try to reach you irrespective of the channel they contact you? How do you bridge the expectation–experience gaps of your customers? Given the depth and breadth of customer queries, how do you adhere to your committed SLAs? How do you ensure a positive customer experience at every touchpoint? Live case studies and real-life examples of getting the customer experience right. Meet The Panelist Head of Customer Engagement at Mahindra Integrated Business Solutions Harshdeep Singh GrewalHarshdeep has an entrepreneurial orientation combined with people management & problem-solving skills. He has over two decades of experience in BPO, Aviation, ITES & Retail segments in multi-cultural and multi-national setups in India and the US. His expertise includes operations, quality management systems, ISO 9001, process mapping & improvement, training, service quality, auditing, data analysis, and enhancing customer experiences. He currently functions as the Head of Customer Engagement at Mahindra Integrated Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. He recently received the award as ‘Customer-Centric Leader for 2022.’ Vice President Digital & Business Transformation Services at Conneqt Business Solutions Rinoo RajeshRinoo has varied experiences across functions like business development, marketing & communications, corporate relations, and digital & business transformation. He currently functions as an angel investor. He has been actively involved in ITES, telecom, and the contact center industry. He has stints with Nortel, Avaya, and Tata – BSS. His varied expertise has resulted in effective digital and business transformation for many organizations. He has more than 22 years of experience and is currently involved in introducing platform-based services, consulting, thought leadership, program management, and business transformation projects. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Listening is the key to understanding. Are we listening to our customers?   We've all had bad and great customer experiences. But, what do we talk about the most? We talk more about the bad experiences than the great ones. That is human nature. Customer churn is the biggest threat you should guard against, irrespective of the products or services you offer. According to a recent study, 82% of customers said they would switch products or service providers after a bad experience with its customer service department. Most often, the problem arises because the customers feel that they are not appropriately heard by the customer service functions of the organization. The issue or the challenge itself is not acknowledged, and there is absolutely no empathy. This forces customers to look for alternatives and can cause massive damage to your revenues and your brand value. You can listen to the panel discuss how active listening can help with the following: Reduce customer churn, improve customer loyalty, and customer retention. Receiving feedback that you can act on. Identify opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell. Create delightful customer interactions. Avoiding crisis. Meet The Panelist Chief Operating Officer at Spice Money Srivaths VaradharajanSrivaths is a leading global fintech & digital evangelist with laser sharp entrepreneurial, innovative, and strategic execution skills. In his more than 23 years of experience, he has worked on various functional streams like customer service, operations, strategic planning, and financial accounting across domains like BFSI, Telecom, BPO/KPO, and airlines. He currently functions as the Chief Operating Officer at Spice Money. Founder Director at Aibo Insurance Eswaranatarajan NEswaranatarajan is the founder Director of Aibo Insuretec, a startup. Earlier he was President and Chief Operating Officer at Kotak General Insurance company. He has had various stints heading sales & distribution, underwriting, and operations. He has also had stints with TATA AIG Insurance, and ICICI Lombard General Insurance companies. He is a cost accountant from ICW and an Alumnus of IIM Bangalore. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Fix it, improve it, make changes   We've all had customer experiences that range from outstanding to infuriating. Customers today have come to expect more out of companies. This has put pressure on companies to get the balance right to fulfill customer expectations with limited internal resources. Getting the customer experience strategy right is a collective responsibility as it involves every way a customer interacts with a company, at all stages of the customer journey. It is not an isolated activity. According to a survey, 63% of CX managers say their company prioritizes CX more than a year ago. CX can help increase customer retention, boost customer lifetime value, build brand loyalty, impact brand reputation, and give the organization a competitive advantage. Listen to the panel discussion about getting your customer experience strategy right. This panel would discuss the following topics: How do you ensure a positive customer experience at every touchpoint? How do you determine the expectations of your customers and fulfill them? How do you identify CX pain points and remove them? CX is everyone's responsibility. How do you align everyone in your organization to look at their work from a CX perspective? What are the good practices that we have adopted towards getting this right? Meet The Panelist Vice President - Customer Experience at Private Bank Girish SharmaGirish is currently the Vice President of Customer Experience at One of the Small Finance Bank. Girish has had stints with Genpact and ICICI Bank, and he comes with 13 years of experience in the customer experience, customer service and process reengineering space. He spearheaded the contact center team of 500 associates involved in omnichannel sales for retail assets and liability products. He is one of the champions in the customer experience space. We look forward to hearing his views on continuously enhancing customer experiences. AVP - Head Of Global Customer Success at Vauld Nanda Gopal VNanda is currently the AVP and Head of Customer Experience at Vauld. He has been actively involved and witnessed the evolution of customer service in the last two decades, from being reactive to preventive to being proactive and now trending towards a predictive approach. He believes in an entirely data-driven approach to customer experience. He handled the customer experience function at various organizations that include 247 customer, Convergys, Ola, Tesco, and Ninjacart, before joining Vauld. He believes technology, personalization, empathy, and AI are the next CX mandates, to define the real customer experience. We look forward to hearing his views on enhancing customer experience in the evolving space. Sales Director - Global Sales at Payhuddle Goutham YVGoutham is the Sales Director at Payhuddle Solutions Pvt. Ltd. He is responsible for customer success and growth in customer revenues in his current role. He comes with the B2B background and brings a different perspective to customer experience, as he works in a niche domain where they deal with a few high-value customers. His approach to the customer experience is about doing the right things by the customers and offering value at every step of the customer journey. We look forward to hearing his views on experiences on how his organization helps enhance the customer experience. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you build agility in your customer service?   Today's customers have high standards and are more willing to switch their solution providers. Remote working is becoming the norm, both in customer service and beyond. Disruptions to the way you operate your business are becoming very common – from extreme weather to non-availability of fuels to fluctuations in supply is becoming common. According to Forrester, nearly 95% of leaders say that providing a good customer experience is a strategic priority, and 75% want to use customer service as a competitive advantage. Juxtapose this with ever-changing customer expectations, and it is imperative that your customer service function needs to be agile. For which, you need to invest in the right technologies, empower your agents, leverage data to innovate, and ensure work-from-home policies. This panel would discuss the following topics: What is the right technology infrastructure that I should look at to bring agility to my customer service function? How do I empower my agents to solve my customers' problems? How do I proactively leverage my data to anticipate and innovate in my customer experience initiatives? Given that hybrid working will continue, how do I enable my agents to work from home without missing the office environment? Live examples and case studies how agility has helped customer service organizations. Meet The Panelist President Marketing & Sales at World Infracons Vvirender RainaVvirender talks about finance, education, insurance, advertising and presentation skills. He has more than 3 decades of experience in marketing, sales, and advertising. He has triggered enormous growth in startups through creative and strategic use of resources and innovative marketing. Vvirrender currently functions as President, Sales & Marketing, at World Infracons. Vvirender, we are very happy to have you as a part of this panel, and we look forward to your invaluable inputs during this session. Director & Head of Customer Success at Cashfree Payments Fasih Abbas MFasih has managed business and people helping organizations grow exponentially for more than 19 years now. He has 10+ years of experience ensuring Customer Success in the Fintech and eCommerce space with knowledge and hands-on experience in every customer experience function. He was instrumental in setting up the CS and merchant support teams for PhonePe from scratch. He is a tech enthusiast and has successfully created models to maximize capacity and increase efficiency through process engineering and technological changes, thereby reducing costs. He currently functions as Director & Head of Customer Success at Cashfree. Fasih, we look forward to your views on bringing agility to customer service. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Customer service is your organizations’ differentiator   According to Forrester, nearly 95% of leaders say that providing a good customer experience is a strategic priority, and 75% want to use customer service as a competitive advantage. Providing superior levels of customer service is a key differentiator for any organization. This would improve client relationships, retention rates, and the lifetime value of a customer. No matter what you do, or where you work, providing great customer service should be central to your job. This panel would discuss the following topics: How do I go about creating great customer experiences? How do I bring out my differentiation? How do I make customer service central to all functions within an organization? How do I measure and iterate the success of my customer service initiatives? What are some of the live examples or case studies that we can embrace? Meet The Panelist Head Of Customer Experience at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Ankit GoenkaAnkit Goenka is Head Customer Experience at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company. Bajaj Allianz General Insurance has been twice awarded Digital Insurer of the Year across Asia, is ranked #8 amongst the global top 100 digital insurers & figures in IDC's 20 Best Insurers for 2020 in the Asia/Pacific. Mr. Ankit’s distinguished career spanning 17+ years with Bajaj Allianz, GE Capital & IndiaIdeas.com, his forte has been driving customer experience across the value chain by combining new age technologies with customer insights and exceeding customers’ expectations, profitably. Mr. Ankit is an eminent speaker and panelist at various industry forums, and he has been recognized for his contribution – in the recent time, he was amongst the TOP 40 BFSI Excellence Professionals & TOP 50 Most Influential Payments Professional (Globally). His specialities include: BFSI | Payments | Robotic Process Automation | Artificial Intelligence | Process Reengineering. Head of Marketing at Payhuddle Sabapathy Narayanan Sabapathy Narayanan (Saba) heads the marketing function at Payhuddle Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Payhuddle is a payments solutions organization offering certification, testing, and product development services across the payment ecosystem. The company serves several named accounts as customers. Saba has founded eight startups across various domains. He has led marketing, sales, and customer service teams at different points in his career. He believes every customer service function should have its ear to the ground and wear a listening hat at all times. Chief Executive Officer at Mahagram Ram ShriramA competent professional with sound experience in payments domain and financial services in areas of product management, consulting, marketing, Business development,planning, strategy and new initiatives. An innovative solution provider with excellent relationship building, interpersonal skills and good communication skills. An effective leader with participatory style of leadership always keeping team growth in mind. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Self-service is your priority. But, what do your customers think about it?   Companies place a great deal of emphasis on meeting customer expectations. According to Forrester, nearly 95% of leaders say that providing a good customer experience is a strategic priority, and 75% want to use customer service as a competitive advantage. That being said, organizations also look at customer service as a cost, as most things in customer service are free. To maintain the balance, they look at self-service options where the costs are low, with minimal intervention through live agents and other channels. Is this something that would make your customers happy, and would they stay loyal? We will discuss this with our panel and move towards identifying the best possible customer experience solution considering all the available channels. This panel would discuss the following topics: What do customers really want when it comes to customer service? Is self-service an intelligent option to address customer service queries? What should be the channel preferences, and how do you identify them? How do you make your self-service option intelligent enough to accommodate complex inquiries? What should be the split of self-service Vs. Live agents? Meet The Panelist Vice President at Kotak Mahindra Bank Avinash BanerjeeAvinash is a fitness enthusiast, motivational speaker, trendsetter, life coach, achiever, innovator, and an out-of-box thinker. He is currently the Vice President at Kotak Mahindra Bank. His strengths include setting up large-scale retail businesses and the related processes, people management, distribution setup, and core banking knowledge. His banking experiences are diverse, including retail banking, wealth management, insurance, hiring & training, new business launches, and operations. Avinash has had more than 15 years of experience in the banking industry, working with majors like Citi, ING Vysya, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Marketing Expert Sreejith NairWhen kids his age asked Sreejith for chocolate, he specified Cadbury’s. His love story with the connect and power that brands have was probably subconscious. He has spoken directly to over 2000 customers across 50 cities, walking with them through the customer journey – sometimes till their doorsteps. This is the tip of the iceberg on how he innovated branding and marketing. Over the years, he has helped launch some of the most customer-centric brands in the Indian banking space using traditional media, digital, social, and artificial intelligence without underestimating the power of a warm smile and a gentle touch. Currently, he functions as Marketing Expert with independent charge of the Consumer Finance Division (CFD). Deputy Vice President, API Banking, Digital Banking and Transformation at Axis Bank Ltd (India) Abhijit DeyExperienced Product Head with a demonstrated history of working in the BFSI. Skilled in API management and API monetisation. Have created an Open API framework for leading Banks to optimise api usage in the Banks and Partners ecosystem. Has been instrumental to productise Banking APIs for Deposits, Payments, Cards and Corporate banking with disruptive technologies. Has created Payments APIs for AI driven chatbots to nudge customers on usage optimisation. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### What performance tools are you using in your call center platform to enhance customer experience?   The purpose of a business is to acquire customers, provide services or products that solve a business problem for them, charge for it, make profits, and sustain the business. What keeps them loyal to your business? Customer experience is the new oil in every business, and enhancing that would ensure success. How do you enhance customer experience? It can be through the right processes, the right people, and the right tools. In this discussion, our focus is going to be on the tools. Some of the possible tools are – IVR, screen pop with customer information, integration with business tools, the ability to conference, monitor, and barge calls, call recording, screen recording, real-time and historical reporting – intelligence, analytics, and artificial intelligence. This panel would discuss the following on the type of tools: What is an integrated enterprise-level contact center, and its relevance to customer service. How do you choose the tools that you need for your customer service function? What would the cost implications of every productivity and performance tool in the call center mix? Use cases where different performance tools make sense. Examples of tools that are available in the market that enhances productivity. Meet The Panelist Senior Director - Head of Customer Experience at Ninjacart Nanda Gopal V Insightful Work experience of over 22 years Worked with well reputed and varied clientele across Globe (C2B & B2B) which include technical Support for one of the World’s largest provider of electronic commerce & payment solutions, Managed large Customer support team for a world-renowned travel ecommerce business, Lead Global operations for Customer and Partner experience for India’s biggest Cab aggregator, Lead Store technology and employee Help desk for 3rd largest retailer in the world and Now with India’s largest fresh produce supply chain. Planning and executing frictionless experience for internal and external customers and drive smoother operations, majorly through technology than manual or people intervention. Risk management processes, estimating risks affecting the business and determining the level of risk the organization is willing to accept. Skills in managing and driving experience metrics for Employee, Customer and partner satisfaction and Net promoter scores. Proven abilities in researching, adopting and introducing new training and operation techniques to keep abreast with global standards. Driving AI with empathy and personalization as a new CX mandate. Head of Marketing at Payhuddle Sabapathy Narayanan Sabapathy Narayanan (Saba) heads the marketing function at Payhuddle Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Payhuddle is a payments solutions organization offering certification, testing, and product development services across the payment ecosystem. The company serves several named accounts as customers. Saba has founded eight startups across various domains. He has led marketing, sales, and customer service teams at different points in his career. He believes every customer service function should have its ear to the ground and wear a listening hat at all times. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How important is the voice channel in your customer service mix?   We invite you to attend the panel discussion on " How important is the voice channel in your customer service mix?" 79% of customers seek direct contact with customer service by phone or through store visits.  Salesforce's Study shows that 76% of service professionals prefer customer service voice channels to handle complex cases. Even in the age of chatbots and AI, the voice channel is still the preferred choice for consumers and service professionals. How do you continue to accommodate voice as a part of your customer service mix, despite all the automation that is happening around us? This discussion will help you understand the importance of voice channel in providing exemplary customer service to your customers. The panel will discuss: How do you figure out which channels make sense for your business? Should you really adopt the multi-channel or omnichannel strategy? How do you optimally provide voice channel in the mix? How can you make your service professionals super productive while using the voice channel? What is the ROI of voice channels vis-à-vis other channels? Do join us and listen to the experts share their knowledge on the importance of voice channels and how to factor them as a part of your customer service mix. Meet The Panelist Vice President - Contact Centre Business at Fareportal Vinay Kanchi Accomplished senior executive from the ITES industry with over 15+ years’ experience in P&L oversight and leading multi-disciplinary teams in a global environment. Exposure to outsourcing firms and captive units. Effectively governed a team of over 2000 employees in multiple sites across 6 countries. Oversaw core operations, Sales & Account management, Process Quality, Training excellence and overall Site management. Developed intensive, ambitious business growth strategies, short-term goals, and long-term objectives. Spearheaded overhaul of various underperforming departments to reduce stagnation and increase growth and productivity by automating processes using Automation & CRM tools. Fostered change in company culture to be more open, transparent, and accountable. A persistent servant leader with high employee satisfaction scores with a prime focus on building trust and driving shared goals with diversity and inclusion across all operations. Head Program PMO at Standard Chartered GBS Balamurali K Balamurali – Programs Head, Lean Coach, and Public Speaker. Started my career as a banker and transitioned into technology and project management. Specialize in managing complex projects, having worked on large Core-banking programs at SCB and earlier. Currently involved in a complex SAP implementation for SCB. Though Program Management is my primary role, I’ve explored areas like Process Re-engineering, Lean, Robotics, and AI to build new skills. Over the last decade, I’ve engaged with the Indian startup ecosystem, experimenting with ideas around Mental Health and collaborating with a Robotics Startup developing an AI-based RPA product. These diverse experiences enriched my approach when I returned to Program Management, offering new perspectives and methods. My passion for Coaching and Public Speaking was ignited through my Toastmasters journey, which began in 2014. Co-Founder & CEO at MOBtexting Ajay GuptaBorn and brought up in a very humble lower-middle-class family where education was not a choice to have. 1st Gen Entrepreneur – Established a global CPaaS company "MOBtexting" and bootstrapped it to a million-dollar company. God/Universe has been with us all the way. At Deloitte Tech 50 2019, MOBtexting was ranked 9th among 50 top public & private technology, media, and telecommunications companies in India, and 86th in the Deloitte APAC Tech 500 2019. At MOBtexting, we care deeply about our team members, customers, and partners. We strive for excellence in everything we do and have fun along the way. Passionate about sales/marketing, growth hacking, product strategy, public speaking, learning, and helping others break out of a mediocre mindset. Believe in accountability, lifelong learning, and the power of good Karma. Also a bit of a health freak. Favourite Lines: No matter what your background is, with the right mindset, tools/skills, positive attitude, passion, and persistence towards your work, you can succeed. If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory. No bees, No Honey; No Work, No Money. Frequent speaker and panelist at leading events, companies, and colleges—discussing entrepreneurship, mindset, sales/marketing, communication, branding, and social media. On a mission to inspire millennials to think creatively and logically, giving their best to our country and the universe. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Two-thirds of the service providers will move their contact centers to the cloud – is this for real?   A recent survey showed 49% of people are reluctant to make online purchases. They don’t want to have to write a long email or wait for a reply if they have a question or an issue. Simply having a phone number for them to call increases the confidence of hundreds or thousands of​ potential buyers even if only a small fraction of them ever call. Your competition has a phone number customers can call, and you don’t, many customers will go to the competition instead. If your competitors have certain office hours, and you provide 24/7 call center coverage, it will make your company a more attractive option. Meet The Panelist EVP & Head Business Technology & Transformation at Ambit Finvest Pvt. Ltd. Smitesh ShahInnovative Career Technologist, CTO, CXO with over 30 years’ experience delivering creative, client-centric tools, with value-driven solutions. Proven leadership experience ranging from evaluating technology to discovered niche products for Banking and Financial Industry domain. He is hands on with transforming business, driven with technology to sustain profitable growth. Highly data-driven creationist, committed to designing coherent enterprise platforms with a wide range of technical domain expertise and business acumen. Business Generation: transform business driven with technology for sustain profitable growth. Operations Management: prepare organizations to scale and supporting business agility while mitigating risk by overseeing daily policy and procedure enforcement, employee teams, outsourcing, and analyzing key performance metrics. Entrepreneurship: identify viable opportunities for IT innovation and projects in the banking and financial Industry domain. Security: thwart cybercrime through rigorous on-site and offshore testing and schedule Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing. President & Head of Operations and Customer Service at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Dipu KVDipu currently functions as the Senior President and Head of Operations and Customer Experience at the world’s 8th largest digital insurer, Bajaj Allianz. In his current role, he drives digital transformation, innovation, and industry leadership. He has been instrumental in Bajaj Allianz, receiving numerous awards. Dipu’s passions include connecting with people, reading, speaking, writing, and traveling. He is a widely published author across magazines – mainstream and industry. VP IT at Apexon Health Badari PrasadBadari holds the position of Vice President of IT at Apexon Health. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Did customer service fail the covid test?   Customer service representatives help businesses develop strong relationships with their clients and customers. Representatives answer customer questions, help resolve problems, process refunds and make suggestions regarding the purchase of additional products and services. Meet The Panelist Head - Sales Commercial Cards & Regional Manager - West (Cash Management Services) at Axis Bank Tanmaya Mohan PandaAreas of expertise: Cash Management Services/Payments/Liquidity Management/Current Accounts Fx/Trade/Transaction Banking/Corporate Banking. Skill sets: Sales & Strategy/Business Development/Relationship Management/Client Servicing Training & Development/Team Management. Head Of Strategic Planning at Impact Communications Saloni AroraDrawing from over a decade in brand communications, I'm passionate about unraveling consumer behaviors. Whether in rural or urban settings, I specialize in decoding insights to craft compelling brand narratives. My expertise spans transmedia platforms, seamlessly blending consumer insights into meaningful and fresh brand propositions. Across diverse sectors, I leverage these insights to orchestrate resonant campaigns that foster deep connections between brands and consumers. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### How do you measure touchpoint effectiveness in your omnichannel strategy?   Today, customers have their preferred channels through which they want to reach your business. Depending on your business, you must be available on that channel. While adding a new channel is the easiest step, servicing your customers on the new channel can get to be a nightmare. How do you choose what channels that you want to be present in? And, how do you integrate all of the channels to have one view of your customers? This is something that we will discuss in this panel discussion. Besides, this panel would address: How do you listen and capture the data and behavior of your customers? How do you track and measure your customer journey across all channels? What does touchpoint effectiveness mean? What is the significance of measuring them? What metrics are appropriate for measuring customer satisfaction levels? How do you budget for CX initiatives? How do you tie them up with business outcomes? Meet The Panelist Vice President - Head of Analytics at Standard Chartered Bank Vidhya VeeraraghavanAnalytics leader with hands-on experience in building & nurturing high-energy team of analytics professionals, having 18 years of experience in Banking and Information Technology Operations, solving business challenges by providing data-driven solutions through Big Data technologies and analytics storytelling, demonstrating strong leadership and communication skills. Chief Information Officer at Orange Retail Finance India Private Limited Balaji TKDemonstrated Growth through technology . Expertise in the BFSI Domain, Retail Domain, Skilled in ERP, BI, RPA, Business Process, Business Planning, IT Cloud, Infrastructure Management, and Leadership. Tech Addict and Strong information technology professional. VP Internal Audit at Equitas Small Finance Bank Rukmani K NarayanI am a seasoned banker with leadership and innovative thinking with experience of 30 years. A leader who has demonstrated ability to adapt quickly to different roles and achieve desired objectives. I have demonstrated communication and interpersonal skills to manage large teams, forge relationships, across levels and geographies. I come across as business savvy, a thought leader, and assurance professional, who is client focussed, innovative, inspirational, bringing out new perspectives leading to better solutions and implementations. I started my career as a Banking Assistant, and grew to be a Vice President managing Credit Audit for a Bank, and now recently enrolled as M-IOD. Currently pursuing CIA, and aspire to take up a leadership role in the GRC function. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Do customers have a choice in their customer experience with brands?   Most often than not, we consider product and pricing to be the brand differentiators. Various studies have indicated that the key brand differentiator is the customer experience. Customer experience is the new product in today's world. Given this importance for customer experience, how are brands handling them? Do brands provide choices to customers in offering experiences? This is something that we will discuss in this panel discussion. Join us for this panel discussion to understand this better from the experts. This panel would discuss: What should be the objectives of customer experience initiatives? Do you really think that customer experience is the biggest brand differentiator? Is intelligent automation a sustainable strategy in the experience function? What should be the budget for the customer experience function? Omnichannel vs. Multi-channel – what is the right strategy to adopt? How do you avoid bad customer experiences? Meet The Panelist MD & CEO at FA Software Services Private Limited Lokesh Kumar25 Years of professional experience. More as technologist, having extensive understanding about Insurance & Banking Domain. Good observer about market and about industry in all 360 degree thought process. Vice President & Head - Selfpublishing at BUUKS.com Noorullah NawabLeader and a competent professional in the delivery of value-driven, high-performance Ecommerce, Insurance and Banking solutions. Rich experience in leading towards Market Leadership and Profitability. Deft at managing Profit & Loss Accountability, Sales & Marketing, Business Development, Client Relationship Management and Team Management. Adept at building shareholder value, driving vision and achieving critical strategic goals. Established abilities in relating to cross functional teams of professionals and partners across all hierarchical levels in the organization. Excels in optimizing team dynamics, uniting diverse agendas to a common goal, and harnessing strategic and operational drivers to deliver results. Chief Operating Officer at AbhiBus Rohit SharmaRohit believes in the adage, “Always Eager. Always Excited,” and swears by this quote from Mohammad Ali, Don't count the days, make the days count. Rohit is the Chief Operating Officer of Abhibus, India’s fastest growing OTA and a unique platform that has sold bus, Train tickets and hotels bookings to over 4.5 crore customers. He has worked across domains that include securities, media, Internet, technology, healthcare, and travel. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?   As a customer experience function, you always want to find out how satisfied your customers are and how likely they will be your brand ambassadors. How do you assess this? Through customer surveys and NPS scores, right. And how do you go about doing this? Join us for this panel discussion to understand this better from the experts. This panel would discuss: How to make sense of the customer survey data? How do you make it actionable? How to avoid biases in customer surveys? Good practices to close the feedback loop system in customer surveys. Some examples of vital customer touchpoints for the customer experience organizations. What are the tools and systems in place that you can leverage? Meet The Panelist Chief Information & Technology Officer at Sankara Nethralaya Chandra MouliInnovative Digital Solutions - Launch of Patient engagement & Tele medicine Solutions Driving newer business models. Establishment of Center for Ophthalmic Technology & Innovation at Sankara Nethralaya to foster Innovation and solve real life problems in Ophthalmology. Leveraging AI - For next gen EMR to enhance quality of care and improved decision making. Data Center - Modernization and Multi cloud strategies for scale, resilience & agility. Operational Excellence - Managed over $ 250 Million technology budget YoY & established over 30 % savings in Technology development & R & D costs. Director of Service Quality , QA and T & D function and Payor Call Centre Operations at Technosoft Corp. Ruban GW GeorgeAt this role, I drive performance and continuous improvement and lead our new venture into call centre operations. Director Of Quality Assurance, Business Excellence, Transformation Practice at Fusion BPO Services Suresh Sampath20 years of extensive experience in the areas of Quality Assurance, Business Excellence, Transformation Practice, Operations Delivery, Client Services & account Sales, Project Management and New Business transition. Proven leadership record directing both operations and client services organizations. Enthusiastic problem solver with keen ability to rapidly assess diverse situational challenges, develop action plans and lead team to meet or exceed targeted goals. Collaborative team management skills with experience in managing Virtual Teams spread across India. Proven bottom line contributor with solid record of achieving higher than budgeted revenue and operating profit targets. Experienced in managing, motivating and leading large complex teams, with ability of consistently surpassing Service Delivery/Financial targets. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### The customer service trends for 2021   A lot has changed in the last year in the way businesses run their customer service functions. Some of the trends that are doing the rounds are hyper-personalization, live video streaming, intelligent self-service, social, and mobile, besides the traditional customer service features. This panel would cover: What are the new trends in customer service? What are the emerging issues in customer service? What are the channels that you should look at, and how do you integrate them? How do you bring personalization to customer service? Case examples of successes across the world. Meet The Panelist VP Global IT & IS at CorroHealth Vijay AnandVijay is an innovator, evangelist, business & digital transformation leader with 21+ years of IT infrastructure and Information Security experience. He is an expert in IT operations, digital technologies, cloud infrastructure, customer service, customer support, project management, governance, risk management, and cybersecurity. Vijay is currently the Global Vice President, IT & IS at CoronaHealth. He has worked on verticals that include healthcare, IT/ITES, and manufacturing. Vijay has received various honors and accolades that include CIO of the year 2019, CIO200 change agent 2018, Eminent CIO 2018, CIO200 change agent 2017, IT Next 100 CIO 2017, Above and Beyond 2015, and Topgear happiness creator awards. He also functions as the secretary of CIO Klub, Chennai Chapter, and is the Vice President of SVCE Alumni Association. Head of Customer Experience Team at Cashfree Fasih AbbasFasih is an executive-level customer experience professional currently heading the CX team at Cashfree. He has managed businesses and people and has grown them exponentially in the last 19 years. He has 9+ years of CX leadership experience in the eCommerce and Fintech domains. He has helped set up a world-class customer service ecosystem for NiYO, set up a customer service team for PhonePe from scratch, grow Flipkart’s assisted buying team from 40 to 600, generating 7% of the organizations’ revenue. Fasih has worked on creating models to maximize capacity, increasing efficiency through process engineering and technology changes, thereby reducing costs. Sr. GM Operations and Head of RPA Practices at Sopra Steria Ankur BansalAnkur is a seasoned professional, with more than 20 years of experience with repetitive proven success in driving top- and bottom-line performances with demonstrated acumen to think, design and deliver success. He has successfully led large teams; performed continuous and step-change transformations both in customer experience and business performance. Adopting and leveraging transformation to deliver business excellence growth is his forte. He understands that no matter the domain, the objective is one- Customer Experience. He likes to stay in touch with new and upcoming market trends making him an early adopter. Ankur has a proven record of implementing strategies useful in improving customer relationship, dedication, and satisfaction. Ankur’s expertise spans across domains, he is adept at operations, and carries rich experience in setting up projects & centers of excellence from scratch across domains such as RPA, HR Operations, BPO, and more. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ### It takes a village to run and grow a call center   Does it make sense for the call center and customer service industry to look at. Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities for their operations? The panel will: Share their work-from-home experiences in the past few months and how it benefitted them. Discuss the advantages of moving operations to Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. Talk about what can go wrong with such a move? This will be an excellent opportunity for you to evaluate your options as well by listening to this elite panel. Meet The Panelist CEO at iMarque Solution Pvt. Ltd. Suresh V SExperienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. A strong business development professional skilled in Operations Management, Customer Lifecycle Management, Requirements Analysis, Medical Billing, and Contact Centers. Sr. Global Manager - Network Operation Sunil Kollody ShivaramAs a technology expert, Considered the "go-to" resource for complex, mission-critical challenges. I'm able to strategize, anticipate roadblocks with innovative solutions. I have a clear understanding of what is the end goal and where we'll go after the delivery of key initiatives. I believe in a collaborative approach and bring managers, executives, and staff out of silos to work together. Working as an effective communication conduit information is shared organically and everyone takes responsibility for the whole. I create and have built a strong reputation for thought leadership across a number of disciplines. I have consulted as SME in different projects-domains and often recognized and rewarded. I always believe in keeping a calm head in even the most stressful situations—which ensures that any situations we make encounter are resolved fast, and with little to no business impact. As a team builder and leader, I regularly seek out a diversity of opinions and ideas among teammates to build strategies and solve problems. As a result, employees are more engaged, feel trusted, and are more likely to take ownership of their work. I share my vision—and the vision of where the enterprise can go—to ensure that every member of my team wants to get the job done—rather than feeling that they have to get things done. Vice President in the Banking & Financial Services Industry Sikander AhmedCareer spanning 19+ years experience in Banking Financial Services and Business Process Outsourcing space with the Best-In-Class Corporates getting a balanced exposure to both Front-end Voice Operations & Back Office handling service & complaints management. Strong domain expertise in Contact Centre, Customer Experience & Complaints Handling. A hands-on management professional in leading large teams to deliver on Customer, Client & Organizational commitments. A Certified Registered COPC Coordinator (Customer Operations Performance Centre), Lean Coach & Green Belt. Executive Vice President at ClearTouch Uthaman BakthikrishnanI believe in the power of creation - it gives me a real high to grow something from scratch and make it sustainable. Identifying market opportunities, market gaps, and identifying the right talent for execution are some of my key strengths. ## Quizzes & Surveys ### TBC Polls Welcome to your TBC Polls What contact channels do you prefer? I am comfortable interacting with a chatbot. I am comfortable interacting with the IVR. I am comfortable with emails. I’d much rather speak to an agent to resolve my queries. None Time's upCancel