Creating bespoke experiences for every customer with technology

As customer behaviour and expectations have been changing dramatically in recent times, organisations are rapidly adopting emerging technologies to deliver unique and personalized experiences. These technologies – AI, ML, data analytics, chatbots and others - have been shaping organizations’ interactions with customers and innovative use cases are visible across sectors.

Within this dynamically changing consumer experience (CX) arena, stalwarts from the diverse domains of automotive, electrical, mobility solutions and the enablement arena came together to share their experiences and insights on the theme – ‘Redefining CX with Emerging Technologies’.

The discussion, which was hosted under the banner of a larger initiative called ‘Adobe Experience Makers’, deep-dived into how emerging technologies are transforming CX landscapes across businesses. The panel comprised frontrunners of change, including Aditya Aggarwal, EVP Digital Enterprise, Maruti Suzuki India; Amit Sanyal, EVP & Chief Operating Officer, Comviva Technologies; Pramod Mundra, CIO, Havells India and Vyshak Venugopalan, Director-Solution Consulting, Adobe. Moderated by Gautham Srinivasan, they highlighted breakthroughs in CX in the hyper-competitive world of enterprise, alongside challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Coming from the automotive sector, Aditya Aggarwal shared his insights, particularly with respect to the connected ecosystem or CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electrified). He observed, “The way people interact with their vehicles is changing. They expect things to be done instantly, just like they would with a mobile phone or other smart devices.” He went on to explain that at Maruti, CX encompass not just the customer’s experience when using the car but while buying it or getting it serviced too. Accordingly, the company has been investing in technology in those areas as well. “Earlier, examining a car and doing a test drive required a trip to a showroom but now it can now be done on a VR headset,” he recounted. “Earlier our entire model was physical; now it is phygital. We have broken down the entire customer journey into 26 different steps and almost 24 of them are available in the digital or physical form. This allows our customers to choose the mode they are comfortable with.”

With experience of B2B and B2C and an e-store in the electrical space, Pramod Mundra explained how CX has been changing at Havells, with the use of new technology, particularly in the B2C space. “We collect a lot of data and use it to make our IoT products smarter, superior and more useful for our consumers. We also use virtual reality and mixed reality to give them unique and retail experiences. With AI, ML and insights from the data that we capture, we understand our consumers’ behaviour so that we can give them better experiences,” he said.

Currently, customers have vastly different needs compared to the past and are much more open to experimenting with brands to find out what really works for them. In that context, Amit Sanyal talked about how his company stays ahead of the curve by using emerging technologies, considering the diverse clientele that they serve. “It has become important for organisations to move from just personalization to personalization at scale as customers grow increasingly impatient and intolerant. Enterprises must make customer journeys contextual and intuitive to elevate CX. Secondly, companies need to move away from loyalty as a program to brand advocacy as an outcome. The third big upcoming opportunity is presented by creative programs with generative AI. These are the top three things we are working on currently,” he shared.

The panel discussed the tangible results of having happy customers that become evangelists of the brand, agreeing that retention is far more cost effective than acquisition. They shared use cases from their organisations that demonstrated the power of technology to deliver unique and personalized experiences for their customers and discussed how they overcame challenges in incorporating technology into operations to deliver better CX. They also touched on security and privacy issues.

Representing a facilitator of CX, Adobe’s Vyshak Venugopalan summed up how the technology landscape was making CX look very different. “As customer data is exploding, technology needs to step in to convert data, which is the voice of the customer, into insights. Then, with democratization of those insights, all stakeholders can take action to improve experiences,” he said, adding, “Content is also an important aspect of the journey as it represents an organisation’s response to customer signals. Technology enables organizations to produce a variety personalized content, with velocity and veracity.”

Adobe has been helping organisations to create real time content supply chains, customer data platforms and customer journey management solutions. It has not just been delivering great technology innovation but creating successful playbooks too, so that organisations can connect this technology with people and processes to deliver spectacular business results in years to come.

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