The disruptors on the horizon

The minimum bar of CX has already been set in the industry. Businesses understand that if they don’t deliver this minimum bar, they will be out of business, says Naresh Khanduri, Vice President - Digital Customer Experience at Capgemini. Excerpts from the video interview...

Notable growth is coming from Tier 2 cities

Just in two years, the pace of digital adoption is anywhere between 3-4X. Something we were expecting consumers to do 4-5 years from now, they have started doing in the last year. Online shopping has grown in 2020-21 anywhere between 25-30%. Importantly, 57% or so of this growth is coming from Tier 2 cities. RBI’s digital payment adoption index says that there is a 40% growth in digital payments alone. Since the consumer has changed, the customer experience has changed. Since they are using more technology, they expect a CX which is convenient, easy for them to understand, and that which is fast. The minimum bar of CX has already been set in the industry. Businesses understand that if they don’t deliver this minimum bar, they will be out of business.

AR-VR, cloud, data & AI

There are three technology areas that are a mainstay. One is immersive technologies where AR-VR (Augmented Reality-Virtual Reality) plays a very critical role. The second is how do you scale it. You need equivalent cloud technology platforms. Third, how do you use data and AI (Artificial Intelligence) to anticipate and deliver an experience?

Building a new set of contextual experiences

If I want to understand my consumer better, I already have their enterprise data (with their consent). But how do I tap into their experience data? Can I merge this experience data with enterprise data and build a new set of contextual experiences? CX is probably the single largest factor that drives customer loyalty. CX technologies make every experience lasting. In our view, CX is more holistic. So CX offerings are focused on helping our customers solve a business problem. We have offerings for connected marketing, empowered sales, augmented service, etc.

The 3 disruptors on the horizon

If I take a 3-5 year period in the future, I personally feel there are three big disruptions that will dictate the CX world, both immediate and longer-term. The first is the disruption that will be caused by the metaverse, which is a parallel universe or virtual world. There are many companies that are working in this area and not just Facebook (Meta). With the pandemic, people have got very used to having a virtual experience and it will become even more immersive. The change will be a 3D kind of experience or maybe even evolve to 4D. We will require AR-VR. We will probably require a distributed ledger because you will pay using digital currency. We will need advanced AI. Your customers will go and experience your brand, experience your products, experience your new launches in the metaverse.

The second which is more immediate is what we call composable applications: Composable commerce, composable content, etc. That will become very focused in the next 2-3 years because clients and consumers expect a very rapid change. The third is what I am heavily invested in is what we call data-driven CX. This is more immediate. Our clients have spent a lot of money getting data together, consolidating it, and creating a single view of the customer. What is missing is how do you drive experience out of this data? How do you improve an experience?

Naresh Khanduri is Vice President, Digital Customer Experience, Capgemini

BySunil Rajguru

sunilr@cybermedia.co.in