Introducing User Segmentation — Deliver surveys and feedback forms with precise targeting using powerful User Segments. Learn more ➝

Get it For Free
×
Request a Demo

Book a Demo with Zonka Feedback

close-icon

Get Started for Free

Enter primary contact's full name
Enter primary contact's email address
Choose a password (at least 6 characters, no spaces, case-sensitive)
  • Your account is being created in the
By proceeding, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Or, sign up with email

user-picsrating-star crowd-logo captera-logo Rated 4.8/5 stars

close-icon

Get Started for Free

Enter primary contact's full name
Enter primary contact's email address
Choose a password (at least 6 characters, no spaces, case-sensitive)
  • Your account is being created in the
By proceeding, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Or, sign up with email

user-picsrating-star crowd-logo captera-logo Rated 4.8/5 stars

The CX Broadcast

Increasing Customer Retention in Economic Uncertainty

In this episode, we will uncover how customer expectations have transformed amidst the current economic climate, highlighting new priorities and preferences. We will examine the importance of customer retention, particularly in times of uncertainty, and unravel its impact on overall business performance.

Anubhav Mehrotra
Anubhav Mehrotra VP Customer Experience at Tata 1 MG

 

TranscriptIncreasing Customer Retention in Economic Uncertainty

Changing Customer Expectations

Niharika Sharma

Hi everyone. Today we are talking with the Vice President of Customer Experience at Tata 1 mg, a healthcare platform that offers e-pharmacy, e-consultation and other healthcare facilities to its customers. Hi Anubhav, thanks a lot for joining us today. I'm super excited to talk to you about ins and out of everything customer experience. So before we jump into it, let me ask you a bit about yourself.

We know that you started your career in 2000 after doing your bachelors in hotel management, but after that you've worked with customer experience industry for about two decades. Tell us something that we won't be able to find about you on Google or LinkedIn.

Anubhav Mehrotra

Hey, first of all let me thank you for this opportunity and thank you for having me here in this conversation. Something which you will not find on Google or LinkedIn about me is that I love cooking.

I've continued to, you know, play with this passion that I have for cooking and creating stuff for my family. I love pets. If you don't find me active on work life or active on social media, you will find me in jungles or mountains by the Riverside, you will not find me yeah that you. You will. I love wildlife and I'm always there in the jungle.

So these are the few things that you will not find mentioned anywhere else. That's about it.

Niharika Sharma

Quite interesting to hear the other side of you and of course we are glad to have you on board today and we'd love to discuss a topic that has been your professional expertise for quite some time. That's the take on increasing customer retention in the economic uncertainty.

So it's already 2023 and it seems like yesterday when we were talking about cloud storage or maybe chat bots as big deals. But now with ChatGPT and other smart technologies into play, the bar is higher than ever for businesses. And I want to keep up with the evolved expectations of customers with this whole idea of, you know, customer experience coming into play. What I would like to know from you is this.

What do you think about this shift in customer experience? What are the new expectations or priorities of the customer and how does a business should adapt? or adapt to those expectations in our out of time?

Anubhav Mehrotra

Okay, so it is for sure that the current economic climate has changed the customer expectations in a number of ways.

The new priorities and preferences that customers have today and the ways businesses can adopt to those changes would be by providing value for money. Customers today are really super concerned about their safety and health. 

Businesses can adapt to these changes by implementing safety and health protocols such as providing, Hand sanitizer stations enforcing social distancing and requiring face masks etc to be for every consumer to kind of pick and walk out. The other thing that customers today are looking for is convenience. Businesses can adopt by making their presence felt in an Omni channel way offering online ordering and delivering options so that consumers can make those decisions.

At the time of their convenience, customers today are increasingly aware of the environmental impact of a product or a business. So sustainability becomes really huge and businesses should provide, you know, kind of prioritize sustainability in a big way. 

So these are the few points that the current environment is forcing businesses to think towards these elections.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. And I think as you just mentioned that the customer here is also super aware about their powers, what they hold with respect to the Business.

Anubhav Mehrotra

Absolutely, Absolutely. Today’s customer is really vocal and demanding. We are dealing with the entire different generations today and the businesses should be really proactive and aware of these changing scenarios and adapt to these changes.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. I completely agree with that. And Leading to that, leading to another question, how does customer retention play out in this? I mean what kind of strategies do you think won't work now that have worked prior to this current time or maybe pre COVID? And also in all of it, would it be true to say that every customer today wants a personalized experience or else they would look out for it somewhere else?

So how can somebody create that experience for their set of customers?

Anubhav Mehrotra

Absolutely. I'm glad that you asked that. Businesses can improve the customer experience by focusing on providing exceptional customer service. We must understand the difference between customer service and customer experience. Service kicks in when there's something broken in the journey and you want to fix it.

But customer experience encompasses the entire journey of the customer lifecycle today, right? 

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely

Anubhav Mehrotra

From how you make your product available, how you make the customer understand what your product is, how does the customer make that bank decision And therefore after the sales journey, all of that is customer experience. In order to provide exceptional customer service or experience, you need to understand the customer. You need to train your employees in that direction. You need to use technology.

And you need to continue to change and adopt the changing technology today. You need to provide a seamless experience no matter what channel of communication the customer has chosen. You know that's the beauty of a brand or a product today where it is available at the time of the chosen time by the customer and also available at the medium or channel that the customer chooses to opt for right.

So that is how the businesses can improve the customer experience and therefore impact the customer retention on their platforms 

Niharika Sharma

Of Course, and I'm pretty sure that you would also agree that this better customer experience or better curated personalized customer experience would actually result into higher revenues for the organization. and of course, at the same time will also help building customer loyalty for us. So

Anubhav Mehrotra 

Absolutely, absolutely, undoubtedly, customer loyalty in today's climate is utmost importance for any business. No business would like to see their customers churning and repeatability is one of the key metrics for customer user behavior studies that we conduct.

Cost of Customer Loyalty

Niharika Sharma

Right. so in this case, the next thing that I would like to understand from your professional encounters would be what would be the cost of customer loyalty in this current climate where we see so much uncertainty. I mean, do you think the regular approach of rewards or discounts is enough to retain customers for longer or it is just a threat to hand?

Anubhav Mehrotra

The cost of customer loyalty can vary depending on the industry competition, the customer expectations. However, in the current climate of economic uncertainty, customer loyalty can be especially valuable as it can provide a stable source of revenue for the companies and help business weather the economic turbulence, so to say. The regular approach of offering somehow in retaining customers, but in the long run, it may not be enough to keep them loyal.

Customers may be more inclined to switch to a competition if they receive a better value for money there, better experience elsewhere. Therefore, one way to build customer loyalty may be focus on creating a superior customer experience journey. This can involve providing service, kind of a concierge service, if you can call, so offering convenience and being responsive to the customer needs proactively.

Businesses can invest in building a strong brand that customers can identify with and then comes the trust. So we have seen there are multiple instances of businesses and products creating a community so that there is a sense of belonging between the customers.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely.

Anubhav Mehrotra

That is where the customer loyalty is driven from to create a sense of community around the brand. You can involve your customers and engage with your customers on social media by hosting events, webinars, inviting participation from them, providing educational content around the customer's lives and that adds value to the customer.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely and I think when the customer also feels that they are being hurt by the organization there is two-way participation as you just mentioned. The whole idea of taking customer experience to another level becomes more impactful because it feels like a proper association that the company is giving us their time, the company is open to feedback and suggestions and constantly their products and offerings. So I think that's a great point that I just mentioned.

Role of Technology in Enhancing Customer experience

Niharika Sharma

That was very insightful, Anubhav. Thank you so much. Let's talk a bit more about the technology part, the role of technology in customer experience and the part that it's been playing in somewhat streamlining and evolving the customer experience over the years. How can we leverage that technology to a point where we can take over the customer experience as well as work on the retention part of it?

Anubhav Mehrotra

Fantastic question. Look, we'll have to understand technology is everywhere. How soon and how promptly you adapt to that changing technology world today is one of your key success metrics. You can do or or utilize technology to make your presence felt in Omni channel engagement forums. You can use technology for automation, for personalization.

For loyalty programs, cultivation and customer feedback, how you collect the feedback smartly in all of that other areas where technology can be used as a lever to enhance your customer experience. For example by leveraging data analytics, machine learning algorithms,

We can analyze customer data to create personalized experiences. we can collect customer feedback for improving the customer experience and identifying the areas of improvement. How you, how you work with the voice of the customer, how you break that information into synthesized, chewable, consumable format. That is what technology brings to you. That is the power that you can use then to create platforms or enhance your delivery and to get customers to kind of stick around with your business.

That is how technology helps in retention of a customer because you're creating experiences which are phenomenal in nature.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. We just mentioned AI and machine learning and data analytics. So another question that I'd like to bring up to you is what role do you think artificial intelligence play in Transforming the e-commerce environments of tomorrow, since Tata 1MG is an ecommerce platform, I'm pretty sure you'd be able to give us a very deep insightful, You'll be able to give us a a deep insightful.

So Anubhav, we just happened to touch upon machine learning, AI, data analytics, which now brings me to another question for you. What role do you think artificial intelligence play in transforming the ecommerce environment of tomorrow? And how can companies leverage them to understand the customer sentiment better during the service journey?

Anubhav Mehrotra

So AI is not a technology of tomorrow anymore. it is here with us today and what brands can really do to kind of use this liver is multifold opportunity that it opens up for us. One  is to listen to the customer better, understand the customer needs better, understand the customer usage behavior, the journey better and then to be able to respond to it, react to it, provide those avenues for customers which they may not even even have asked in the 1st place. 

You know AI is bringing us the opportunities to serve customers better, to preempt the needs that the customer may have not even asked for. It helps businesses in making their footprints available in Omni channel way.

When I use this word omnichannel, I mean that today's customer wants to have experiences irrespective of medium, irrespective of channel, irrespective of whether you are in offline market or you are in online market. They have a need to associate with the brand which ensures that the journey is seamless. AI helps you everywhere create these seamless experiences.

And I think I'm sorry that in the e-commerce world there is nothing more important than to give customers this experience.

Niharika Sharma

And I believe AI also plays an important part when we talk about curating personalized customer experience for the customer.

Anubhav Mehrotra

Absolutely, absolutely. You get the power of creating personalized content only when you know the customer better. Only when have you analyze what the customer was saying in this true spirit.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. And I think this frequency of interactions between customer and the AI platform that the company has to offer again helps us with a lot of things, not just personalized customer experience for them. Again, this will also result in 2 factor metrics, like higher satisfaction scores. Maybe. 

Anubhav Mehrotra

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

Ecommerce and CX

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. So another question on the line, how do you think ecommerce companies need to find the balance between providing excellent customer experience with as well as maintaining profitability and keeping the costs under control?

Anubhav Mehrotra

You know, Profitability will definitely come to the companies who maintain Ground Zero with excellent customer experiences. Profitability is not an aspect that you will need to worry about if you have kept your core at, if you have kept customers at the core of all the journeys that you have planned or designed for the customer. So today's technology is enabling.

All the companies or brands or products to think about customer first approach in a better manner. So all the journeys are curated for the customer as business evolve and take put technology to the better use.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. And as I just mentioned that  worrying about the cost should not be the main focus when a company is just starting off with their customer experience strategies. It's the customer who has to be focused in the beginning. And I couldn’t Agree more.

Anubhav Mehrotra

Absolutely, because the power is with the customer today, the choices are with the customer, so companies should not worry about cost at this juncture. If they have created a journey which resonates with the customer, the cost will come down, revenues will go up.

Ultimately, you will see great customer experiences will definitely reel into better revenues to the company.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. So now let's just take a step back. If you've spoken enough about customer experience and customer engagement, but do you think employee engagement is something that also helps in resulting into a better customer experience? And if yes.

Anubhav Mehrotra

Ohh, you have touched upon a very, very good topic which is close to my heart and I have always said so, that employee first approach will lead to customer first approach. There is no other way for companies to reach the pinnacle of customer experience unless they keep their employees satisfied. That's the mantra to reach that point.

Employee Engagement and Performance Tracking

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. So in this way what I'd like to understand more is how does employee engagement with respect to customer retention, how does these both impact 11 another on this day and is there any way to quantify all of this?

Anubhav Mehrotra

I I think the HR of the organization, who is the custodian of employee relation and employee well-being or or take it to the to companies should take it to the next level that leader leadership of the organization to should take it upon themselves that they they should like. Like companies have invested in tools which are continuously listening to the voice of customer. 

I think companies would rather be very benefited if they invest in tools who listen to their employees, first you should make metrics and leaders responsible to answer to your employees question, underlying needs in a time bound first time resolution kind of a concept that you have for your customers. You should adopt those metrics and start measuring your internal numbers with those lenses. If you do so, you will definitely have a fleet of satisfied soldiers who will be battling and win many battles for you and your consumers.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely, and just to put it into a smaller sentence, satisfied employees would lead to satisfied customers is what we should highlight, and the company should take away from this conversation. Great, so this, again, | have another question for you on above, and this brings us to the challenge of measuring customer retention and tracking their progress over time. So what would you say will be the key performance Indicators in this scenario that a business can relay on? And how can the metrics be used for making data-driven decisions?

Anubhav Mehrotra

I think the repeat usage behavior, repeat buying decisions that the customer make on your platform, how soon are they coming? What is the lifetime value? If the abbreviation for it would be LTV of a customer. If you start to calculate that, | think businesses tend to gain more from it. What have you done specifically to attract a repeat usage journey on your platform? that itself should be rewarding for any business to measure.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. What would be the benchmark metrics that one should take care of while coming up with a strategy for curating better customer experience? What are those metrics that you measure on a maybe day-to-day week-to-week or month-to-month basis?

Anubhav Mehrotra

when they were there So I look at it in two ways. A, if the customer has approached me for a problem that he or she has faced in his journey or her journey, how soon can I resolve it? How many times I compelled the customer to come and repeat the same problem with me? Have I resolved it in the first go or second attempt or third attempt? How have I been effective enough to resolve that customer's problem if the journey is broken? I measure that at one angle.

And another lens is once the customer has approached me, has he or she made a buying decision post the resolution of the service metric? That is very important to analyze and keep an close eye on because if you see breakdown between service, recovery, and then the buying decision is not happening, that means you are not satisfying the customer. So you should look at how many times the customer comes onto your platform says that you know what something is not right how you react to it how soon you recover and what kind of experiences you are creating during that breakdown of service. Customers are very vocal Very vocal they say this all the time. There are signs They are telltale signs that you can measure from I think businesses should be very closely looking at What the customer is saying and also importantly what the customer is not mentioning? Missing

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely and as we just mentioned the today's customer is super aware about their rights when it comes to making purchase decisions. With more of these customers turning to social media to voice their opinions about brands, how can e-commerce companies use social listening tools to improve their CX and reputation management?

Anubhav Mehrotra

Ohh Yes, Social listening is a process of monitoring social media platforms for mentions of a brand product or services E-commerce companies can use social listening tools to monitor what Customers are saying about their brand on social media and use this information to improve their customer experience Some of the ways that I Adopt to our we we monitor the mentions of our brand we use tools to monitor various social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram handle. We respond to customer feedback very promptly. We take this as an opportunity of learning what my customer is telling me. We respond to it in a very positive way. We try and put data together to identify if there are any trends emerging out of what one person is saying vis-a-vis what others are saying to monitor what competition is doing on social media and try to engage with my customers proactively. I am using various tools in this area.

Niharika Sharma

Lovely. Thank you for answering that Anubhav. I think this would be a great insight for all the listeners that we have who are just about to dip their feet into the this ocean of CX. Another question that I would like to ask and understand from you is that collecting and analyzing customer feedback and reviews can provide valuable insights into into how well our CX or customer experience strategy is working.

Businesses today can monitor online reviews and feedback surveys to see what their customers are saying about their experiences with the brand. What would you say would be the key touch points where a business can make the most out of their surveys or any feedback management tool or channel that they might have deployed. Also making sure that it works on both the business as well as the customers ends.

Anubhav Mehrotra

It is never enough to continue to listen and gather as much as information, as much as valuable data you can gather for your customer. So know your customer. These three words are the most powerful words that I have ever put to use in any organization that I've worked for. 

The areas how it benefits us, how it benefits the business, is you go back to your product, improve the product journey, you go back to your business, making strategic decisions based on what your customer is saying. If you are able to hear, collate, analyze the data the way customer is presenting it to you, I think you would have made the best choices in the world to to become enhancing your revenues, enhancing your customer satisfaction scores, enhancing your.

Enhancing your retention rates. I think this data is so powerful and useful that you know, there's immense potential for it to transform the business.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. And in your opinion, how often should one business reach out to their customers in terms of gathering feedback? As you know, customer needs are evolving, evolving constantly and you know there's so much of trends that are coming into picture. There's every, every single minute or every single day there's a new trend, there's new options, new offerings in the market. So how soon, how soon do you think it is right for the business to reach out to the customer in terms of gathering feedback post a service or a purchase has been made?

Anubhav Mehrotra

After every buying decision, after every journey, you must collect feedback. You are existing because of your customers. There is no right number. There is no wrong number. You must gather as much as feedback you can gather from a subscriber. It is upon them. Ultimately, the subscriber is the king. Because of whom you exist, you must Walk together in this journey with your customer, hand in hand and understand, hey, you know what? What can I change? What did you like the most? What did you not like this time? What can I evolve now? What can I improve now? All of this, as much as you can talk to them as much as you can engage with them, that is what community building is. That is what relationship building is, that is what is going to result into business for you.

Niharika Sharma

And do you think calling customers instead of that we can call them business partners maybe because that?

Anubhav Mehrotra

They are business partners. They are the one through whom you earn your livelihood, absolutely so. So they are the key shareholder in any boardroom I think. I think they are the kings ultimately.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. And I think that also brings us to another interesting topic. I would just like to take one minute of yours here. So, we just spoke about how powerful customers are in, you know, decision making abilities with respect to what they want from the businesses. And we have also seen that there's a trend of introducing customer advisory boards into organizations.

So what is your take on that? Have you ever participated in a customer Advisory Board for any other business that you might have partnered with?

Anubhav Mehrotra

I personally feel it's a great initiative. All must subscribe to it. If you have A and I, you are calling it the Customer Advisory Board. I think that the name should be customer activist. Somebody in the company should become customer activists and stand around to fight for their customers and who better than Customer experience Officer or Customer Experience Leader to take that role? So I'm currently doing that for my company.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely, and I'm pretty sure you're doing a great job there. I'm actually disappointed that we are almost about on the last question of ours, our last topic, but before we end this podcast, I would love to know one thing from you which is in your opinion, what are some of the most exciting trends or innovations you see coming up in the e-commerce customer experience and that out you know on the words of just rising up the horizon and how do you think they can impact the future of the e-commerce industry?

Anubhav Mehrotra

Personalization number one, Voice Commerce Social Commerce or Live Commerce number 2 Augmented Reality number 3, Chat bot, Voice bot and ChatGPT Now four these are the few most exciting trends and innovations that are going to change the future of customer experience in the ecommerce world or any other world in any industry which is customer facing. 

Personalization is becoming more important in ecommerce as customers demand a more personalized shopping experience. By leveraging customer data, AI and machine learning, we ecommerce companies can provide personalized product recommendations, tailored content.

And customize experiences that meet the unique need of an individual customer. This can help improve customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty. Voice commerce, live commerce, social media commerce is rapidly growing and with the rise of virtual assistants, smart speakers, social media platforms and the use of social media platform as a marketplace now going to change the way we do our business. 

Augmented reality is becoming more popular in e-commerce as it allows customers to visualize the product before making their buying decision. By integrating AR technology into their e-commerce platforms, companies can provide an immersive and interactive experience that can boost engagement and conversion rates.

I think these that can we should look forward and I'm pretty excited to see the changing horizon of customer experience world altogether.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. And would you like to highlight any of the example or any experience that you recently had with respect to augmented reality in e-commerce or shopping space?

Anubhav Mehrotra

I have been experimenting with many tools right now. I'm exploring various journeys which are powered by Chat GPT. I'm experiencing many products in that direction. Nothing is specific to mention on this platform because we are in very initial stage of exploration journey that we have taken up, but they are very powerful. They totally change, transform and take you to a different world altogether.

Niharika Sharma

Okay

Anubhav Mehrotra

So, Yes.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely, and I think with this rapid change and evolvement of technology on such a rapid pace, nobody knows what the future has to offer with respect to any industry, not just e-commerce. So, yeah.

Anubhav Mehrotra

There was a time, Niharika, that the businesses used to ask technology to change. They used to be the guiding force of pushing technology to evolve, improve and give better results. But today is a time of technology running at unprecedented speed and changing the landscape that businesses are striving hard to keep up with. The technology has come where the business decisions, strategies, revenue numbers will be on the side of the business which is adopting to these fast changing landscapes the fastest. So it is about, you know, it is not about survival of the fittest, it is survival of the fastest again.

Niharika Sharma

Absolutely. Great. I think, Anubhav, thank you so much. This has been a lovely, lovely conversation. And I'm pretty sure that this podcast episode is going to be very insightful for our audience and listeners as well. Again, amazing conversation, amazing insights that I could draw out of this discussion, and really appreciative towards you that you actually found time and gave us this opportunity to collaborate with you and Tata 1 mg for a podcast session.

Anubhav Mehrotra

Thank you very much Niharika. Thank you for having me here once again. Thank you. Have a Great day.