The often shifting sales tax rules and regulations in over 14,000 state and local tax jurisdictions in the USA make sales tax compliance management a daunting task. Supporting ongoing manual changes to 3rd party on-premise business applications increases the burden on IT teams already juggling multiple priorities. Sovos claims its technology solution eliminates this burden on IT and grants the tax and finance departments complete autonomy to handle indirect tax processes, timely and valid sales and use tax self-assessments, accurate reporting, and exemption certification across jurisdictions. Is this claim too good to be true? Can the Sovos solution hold up to scrutiny and deliver on the sales taxation agility promise?
Contributors

• • John Landy, Chief Technology Officer, Sovos
  • Terry Melnik, General Manager, Sales and Use Tax, Sovos

Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to CTN. To learn more about the show, please visit ciotalknetwork.com and the topic for today is Re Architecting Your Business Operating Model For Superior Customer Experience. So in today’s business landscape, providing a superior customer experience is no longer an option but you know, it is necessary for growth, which is sustained growth and also success. So when we are trying to do all of this, you need to be able to work on your existing processes, tweak them. You have to do it, but not in a minor way. It is more supposed to be like an overhaul, a complete re architecture of the business operating model and whether you’re talking about organizational culture or you’re talking about employee training, technology, infrastructure, process design, frankly there is a reimagination needed to be able to offer a superior customer experience and frankly customer experience is also a living organism.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:12]:
So as the things change, it could be a continual tweaking and or ongoing reimagination. So how do you pull that off? How have organization attempted to do so? So to discuss that we have Nitin Sethi, he’s the Chief Digital Officer for Consumer Businesses with Adani Group. Hey Nitin, how are you?

Nitin Sethi [00:01:32]:
Hi all, thanks for having me.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:35]:
Absolutely. So when you have since you’re part of the consumer business. So what is the type of reimagination that you have thought about in terms of your organization’s operating model and with an with the focus that okay, I want to be able to, to turn around or take customer experience to the next level and doing so in the midst of all these challenges that we have been facing over the years. So how did you pull out this magic?

Nitin Sethi [00:02:10]:
So all, first of all, whatever I’ll say it will be, this is the personal experience which I’ve gone through and learned in last 23 years. Now when I try and answer this so smart and intelligent question, let me at least try. So Adani Group, if you look at the scenario is being established as a B2B company. A big congregate into B2B categories, very infrastructure led businesses. So when you’re handling close to 2000 to 5000 B2B customer is not so much on the customer experience, it’s about the monopolistic value propositions you are having. So for example ports or mining or coal, these are absolutely need based. So you don’t have many choices. But when you look at from the customer lens and you say that okay, we have close to 400 to 450 million consumers in six consumer facing businesses which we are now into. We are the largest airport operator. We operate seven airports in India

Nitin Sethi [00:03:15]:
85 million consumers fly from our airports. We are the largest FMCG brand with Adani Billmar. We supply electricity to close to half of Mumbai. We are into PNG and CNG gas under Adani Total Gas and then we are in a mixed real estate and capital. So these are my captive consumers and three of my services are absolutely monopolistic in nature. Now when we establish Adani Digital labs close to 25 months and nine days back, there was no unified platform, right. And most of these businesses have a very disjointed digital assets and not a seamless centralized offering to a customer.

Nitin Sethi [00:04:00]:
So what we are trying to establish, we are trying to establish Adani One as a one stop shop for all our customer offerings and to enable it and achieve it. The core programs which needs to get done for this digital twin are common data lakes, single sign on and common loyalty program which would be cross category end to end. So what I’m highlighting that even a B2B consumer right now is one of the strongest and biggest in B2C which was not being seen as an opportunity and that is what we are trying to establish and change. So we are trying to create a value over the B2B layer also from a customer standpoint because in the current era customer experience requires a very different thought process because you need to think futuristic because what you will do today will get obsolete maybe in thousand days. Thousand days of technology life cycle. So that we are establishing and also the customer empathy, centricity and the self service model we are establishing. So let’s say these are the three core values which we are establishing digital twin on.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:19]:
So you’ve picked up the digital twin mechanism to essentially imagine, play around, do some sandboxing and then bring it to life. But truly can you do all of that in a virtual setting before the real customer sees it.

Nitin Sethi [00:05:38]:
So absolutely, it’s a trillion dollar perspective what you are asking me to touch upon. So yes and no. So of course you need to create a digital foundation before you create a digital twin and to create a digital foundation all the system needs to go digitized because before the transformation you need to digitize the core systems. Let me take an example of airports. Our airports then had a integrated EPOS systems every system was in a silo and independent. Now it’s all EPOS is all connected.

Nitin Sethi [00:06:13]:
All the data comes and get reside on a common data lake. So we get a lot of customer cohorts understanding. Segmentation so if I don’t digitize the independent use case basis I need state, I won’t be able to have an integrated and a seamless user journey end to end. So yes, customer will see and experience. Okay, now there is a better payment mechanism, there is a better EPOS mechanism, but it’s still not happening on the digital twin over a customer layer but once they start having a digital offering with a digital service enhancement, then the whole thing will get knitted.

Sanjog Aul [00:07:00]:
People say that if I build it, or at least they hope that if I build it they will come, but that really doesn’t always happen and customers are fickle.

Nitin Sethi [00:07:10]:
Absolutely. So you actually don’t need to create a fancy solution and say okay, I’ve created something fancier for that customer will come. You need to solve a problem statement, you need to get addressed a need state and then say okay, what is the problem I’m solving whether I’m able to solve it with a convenience, I’m able to solve it with a value addition or I’m solving with a deal hunter mindset. Now let me give you an example of a duty free business. Duty free traditionally at least Indian airports has been done on ground physical only, right? Nobody has ever tried to create a duty free marketplace that before coming to the airport can I tap into the customer? So what are you trying to solve? You’re trying to solve it with a variety. You’re trying to solve the retail space which is a very expensive on the airport. You also try to solve it with the giving a better value through a loyalty or even the personalization.

Nitin Sethi [00:08:12]:
Now when you mix all of this, somebody who was buying a black label is now going to buy a blue label. Somebody who was buying only a perfume is not also buying a chocolate along with it. So what we are trying to do is actually reaping fruits right now because the ATVs of 6,500 is now 9,000 rupees even with our the alpha launch which we have done of Adani month. I’m very proud and happy to state here all that close to 6 million consumers in last 120 days have trusted us in terms of a digital twin which is not even been marketed as of today. The whole thought of validating the thought and the strategy before we scale is actually a game changing. It allows you to experiment without spending too much and co creating with a customer.

Nitin Sethi [00:09:11]:
So you are getting a feedback, you are iterating and then again testing it with the customer and because of the digital twin we are able to do Lot of these things frequently in parallel for different cohorts and different locations very seamlessly.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:33]:
If you were to define your Holy Grail or Adani Group’s holy grail of how it wants to create the customer experience, would you say is it incrementally improving how they related to or across all touch points with Adani Group, or was it primarily a series of wow moments that you create for them or I would say, I know your answer could be yes, both. But is that what customer is wanting? Sometimes you can play Steve Jobs that okay, I will wow you. You did not even know you needed it. Now I showed you this and that created an instant of wow moment. But customer experience is also a living organism, as I mentioned in my introduction.

Nitin Sethi [00:10:19]:
Yeah.So sorry, go ahead.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:23]:
Yeah, so I mean, the reason I was even bringing this up is there must be something that you’re pursuing in terms of, okay, if I reach a certain level, which is, yes, it is excellent, but you can’t maintain the excellence at all times. Every time there will be ups and downs, but if you reach that good enough, that will also keep you focused on where the value lies. Just wow, you’re spending extra money. Did it really justify the time, effort and extra money? Or are we better off giving them just good enough so that they stay? What’s Adani Group’s position on saying, okay, I want to deliver X customer experience? What does that X mean? Is that the wow always wow or somewhere in between or okay, just about enough?

Nitin Sethi [00:11:15]:
So I’m very happy that you asked this and let me put it bluntly and upfront that as a group philosophy, we believe in growth with goodness. This is our brand ethos, this is our philosophy of existence. Now we are very customer obsessed but at the same time, we believe to walk the journey with the consumer with the iterative design thinking process. We believe that tiny steps forward every day makes you cover the longer roads without any pain. So there are few wow shots in between for example, a cross category loyalty program is a wow shot but is it an innovation? No.

Nitin Sethi [00:12:09]:
But is it a something which is incremental across the concrete or a global level? Yes. So for example, we are the first airport operator to offer integrated flights and now even a cabs on our platform. Was this a requirement from a consumer? From an airport standpoint? No. Right. But is it adding a value? Absolutely. Is it being liked and loved by the customer? Absolutely. Do you see any platform solving all the 20 use cases, touch points, end to end in the world? No, there is not Even a single travel based super app. There are OTAs, there are airline websites, there are meta searches.

Nitin Sethi [00:12:57]:
But Kensington, Anybody come and digitize my airport ecosystem without me? No. Can I become an OTA along with everybody else? Yes. Now if I combine together and knit it with a common loyalty program, imagine the wow I create for the customer. On top of it if I offer a co branded loyalty card which will create a small vows throughout the customer journey. Now that adds delight to a different level because no other program will be able to match it. Are we there yet? No. Are we on the right path and we’ll reach there? Absolutely, yes. So we believe that validation is very important rather than only a thought.

Nitin Sethi [00:13:41]:
Getting the customer to use and co create and participate actively is also very important. I don’t want to create something which will fail after two years. I rather fail fast. I rather fail absolutely soon at a nascent stage. But I take the learnings along. So for example, last 10 programs, seven programs have now seen a decent scale, right? Fortune Online being 1Adani Total Gas Independent application throwing all the digitize without it being a touchless experience. Absolutely. Electricity, we are doing it.

Nitin Sethi [00:14:23]:
Smart vehicle projects, we are doing it ev. We are doing many things but there are some programs where we have not done well. Right. And that’s part of the journey. If we don’t have that experimental nature in our DNA we will never grow, we will never be able to claim that we are the India’s. We are one of the India’s biggest startup. So Adani Group we aim that and ADL has been the incubation of the biggest startup ecosystem. So that’s the mindset.

Nitin Sethi [00:14:48]:
We’re walking the talk in terms of trying many things and failing fast and scaling basis what is being accepted by and enjoyed by the customers.

Sanjog Aul [00:15:01]:
So let me come back to your airport example. So what you said was phenomenal that you could do online duty fee. I did not even know that even existed. So that’s awesome that you mentioned it. Now a person’s journey towards thinking about airport starts from when they start packing their bags and when they come using the interesting traffic patterns. In most metros you get to the airport and then there is a line to get in and then there is a line at the airlines and then there’s a line in security and then finally you sit down and you finally take off. Right? During that time is when a customer truly experiences the airport and to that person, while they may ideally want the airport services to be invisible, but what they care about is if I have my elderly parents who are walking through, I want them to walk into the airport and all the way through security, get to the gate and fly out.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:10]:
I mean, essentially that’s what a person is thinking about. So their definition, or somebody who’s late for the plane, how do they get through it? What we as consumers, and I’ll put myself in it, if I have to go three and a half to four hours prior to taking an international flight, that’s a lot of time away, which otherwise I could have spent at home and once I get in, if those individual processes, whether with an airline or with security or with customer immigration or dealing with things as you’re getting close to the concourse, that’s where I touch. So that’s where I come close to my experience with the airport. Can there be a digital twin and can there be innovation keeping ourselves in the minds of a consumer who could be an elderly lady or a child who has an elderly parent going through that journey? And where would customer experience be taken to the next level or could be taken to the next level. So the pains that the horror stories we all hear, what happens can be handled better. That’s what I would.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:29]:
I would rather have the airport be invisible, but invisibly helping me through that journey. That’s the role of an airport. So how do you. The reason I kind of painted this picture is how do you strive to become invisible?

Nitin Sethi [00:17:44]:
Yeah, so, great, amazing question and I would rather thank you for asking this because we establish ADL and Adani 1 for that reason. You rightly said all that. Whether it’s a elderly couple or a woman with a toddler or an executive or a bad packer, a family, old friends and colleagues going. There are 10, close to 10, 12 odd user segments and persona types and there are different need states and consumer journeys for these guys. A Woman Traveler at 11:30pm Would need a guaranteed gap. Right now, being an ecosystem enabler, being a travel companion, our job is to give the lady guaranteed gap.

Nitin Sethi [00:18:41]:
Is it happening right now? No. Whether you look at the taxi ride hailing apps or aggregators, the biggest issue is that I’m not going. They cancel, you keep waiting. So we are trying to solve it with Adani 1. Is it solving 100% needs? No. Now, with guaranteed cab booking, we have solved one thing. But right now, when you go from airport, you are able to book a cab. That is airport to city.

Nitin Sethi [00:19:10]:
What about city to airport? Anybody who’s going from airport to city will also come from city to air. Now we’ve shook Hand with one of the OTA aggregators. And we are saying that okay now even as an Adani airport we will solve it for airport to city and city to airport both okay. It solves for another customer segment. Somebody who’s a first time traveler who doesn’t know which boarding gate, which baggage belt, what remote map, where, where is it time to gain? All that is getting solved for elderly parents. We are seeing meet and greet services are pranam services where somebody will escort you, somebody will help you with a wheelchair, all that is getting done core and executive like yourself. Time is money. A fast forward service where you will cross the security as well as reach the boarding gate in 10 minutes

Nitin Sethi [00:20:14]:
and you say 50 minutes is priceless. You getting your favorite brand of coffee next time you come you getting a lounge access after struggling that okay, which card will work otherwise and online you’ll get to know. Okay. Now this works and I book a slot. Can I take a hot meal in plane rather than having a cold sandwich. I can tell you so many things or duty free we talked about but at the same time FNB or a retail. Can I pre book? Can I get a loyalty points on it? Can I gift a voucher to somebody? All of these journeys, four different Personas, right? Which gives you a smile like you are smiling right now or gives you assurance if your parents are traveling that time is money and time is limited. You are sitting here but your parents are traveling from to Amritsar for Darshan. Now that assurance that my parents are safe, somebody is escorting them and receiving them and taking care of them

Nitin Sethi [00:21:16]:
and you can even track their movement. You can track a cab. Why can’t you track your parents on the airport? All of this is part of our digital twin, Again I’m saying we have done 1% of what 100% vision is there but Adani 1 is 1% of our effort. Live on Alpha, okay? With four use cases and the idea is to enable 20 all 20 use cases. We’ll give you forex, we’ll give you visa, we’ll give you transit hotel. We’ll give you the last minute hotel deal or a holiday deal. We’ll give you the souvenir, we’ll give you the suite

Nitin Sethi [00:21:48]:
so end to end. So you don’t need to go anywhere else. Imagine you are boarding a taxi which is booked through Adani1 and missing a flight. And your flight is covered, insured, covered. Now those are unimaginable, unthinkable a three years back scenario but today is very much possible in two years time this will further evolve because somebody will come and further innovate and we will do a catch up game and some areas we will take a lead and we will penetrate and somebody else will. But ultimately all of this ecosystem coming together, benefiting the customer, that is what the end goal is and when we see for every city airport are gateways. So when I say growth with goodness, it’s also the gateway to goodness.

Nitin Sethi [00:22:46]:
So that’s how you match because airport are actually going to create the brand perception of the cities. People judge the city based on the how good the experience on the airport is in general at least whatever little I know.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:07]:
Let’s take a quick break Listers, we’ll be right back. And while this was a great outside in view of what customer experience is expected and what Adani 1 and other initiatives that the Adani Group is initiating to to make that seemingly impossible things happen now does that mean that we just slap technology to make it work? Could we just keep churning data and lately all the AI related uproar that we have to make it happen or there is more. Please stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:43]:
Welcome back. So the bigger question here is since we say customer experience is about customer, that is a human at the other end and yes we can see a whole lot more slice and data a whole lot more and be able to do things faster. But the fact that you have higher visibility and the fact that you can do things faster, a person, yes they will be a customer will be touched by the technology side, but they’re also touched by humans at some point during this whole experience and if an individual who is working, say within your group or maybe a partners group who are all together as an ecosystem serving that customer, that person is not in the right state of mind or it was a person who doesn’t have the right emotional intelligence or they just typically had a bad day. They are the ones touching that customer and at that moment, what that individual does, is that a knee jerk reaction? Is it a reaction or a response? That is what’s going to determine the perception of the brand and the perception of the experience delivered by that brand. Which brings us to two different questions.

Sanjog Aul [00:26:05]:
To what degree can you use technology and the digital twins to minimize the risk of a human going haywire who had a bad day and to what extent do you need to work on the analog problems? We’re talking about digital. There are analog problems, which is organizational design and the cultural DNA of an organization and how you take care of your people who in turn take care of your customers. Let’s talk one at a time. How much promise does technology by itself hold to deliver that end experience to that individual who you’re trying to serve? And then the second part of the question is while we work on those things which seem to be more controllable, but most of the times people are the most fuzzy element of the bigger picture. What are you guys trying to do to make sure you minimize the fuzziness or reduce the fuzziness in the way humans would work and or react and or respond in a given situation which will impact the customer experience.

Nitin Sethi [00:27:12]:
Is a question which can actually scare many brands and many leaders and also gives an opportunity to narrate that how well brands are taken care of the employees and the partner and the whole value chain. So let me take back to you, take you back to the Adani philosophy. We say Adani Parivar. We are an Indian, very proud Indian brand and it’s family and then extended partners ecosystem. So every individual is part of Adani Parivar. We believe that happy employees and partners create happy consumers.

Nitin Sethi [00:27:50]:
Most of the brands believe in it. Most of the brands think is the right thing to do But we live by it. And we are in a very digital ecosystem, omnichannel ecosystem. Most of our services, we are not a product company. We are a services company. Most of us services are physical services. So we’ve designed the customer experience on a service design philosophy that is people driven, is human touch

Nitin Sethi [00:28:25]:
and you can never be 100% right. Goof ups will happen, a bad day will be there and there will be uncontrollables. So the analogy is only an enabler for us. Ultimately we are into people’s business and we are crafting and selling experiences now on a when something bad happens that how fast you can recover and and address the customer need or the situation is the topmost priority. So there be what is how you design for average good, bad, great, ugly and worse situations, what is your SOPs around it, what is your escalation metrics around it and how much empowerment you have given to your front line because those are the guys who are doing it now. In my previous lives I was also the Vice president Digital for Indigo before the Indigo plane landed at Adani airport, I’ve established 6C digital and spent thousand days there

Nitin Sethi [00:29:35]:
and prior to that I’ve only worked for startups and digital brands in India starting from B to B to QK to Yatra to Common Floor, many successful brands. Now one thing which I’ve learned is that on a bad day if a goof up happens and you just go ahead, apologize and say sorry, accept the goof up and hear the pain point of the consumer and say that hey, this has been done and most of it can’t be only done by technology. You need to reach out and address the need. At times it is in your control. But let’s say because of the weather, if 100 flights gets canceled, the airline will get impacted and airport will get impacted. No airport has been designed to cater 50x consumer at a single standpoint and same happened with Covid. When Covid hit, the millions and millions of tickets got canceled without a policy or a framework.

Nitin Sethi [00:30:47]:
It was unseen. There was no government policy, no framework. People was clueless, airline was clueless. Airline couldn’t give you refund back, people expected money back. So you solve for it through technology but you take time. But at least assure people that we as a brand are very much committed to address the problem statement. So you are there in that journey. You just. There are many brands, I will not name it, who just run away from the feel when the bad, when shit hit the fan.

Nitin Sethi [00:31:25]:
But ultimately it’s a business thing. On every nine good days, one bad day will be there. So how you empower your leadership. A food is getting served which is not right quality. How can you give that money back to the customer? How you actually give him the voucher? One technology needs to enable it, but also people needs to be empowered, use the power to do it. Okay, so it has to be both ways. So brands need to design for these things. In general, 9 out of 10 D2C or customer facing brands do poor job on these on the customer experience layer because they believe the customer experience is only a call center

Nitin Sethi [00:32:14]:
which is not the case. Boss, the guy is going to smash, bash you on Twitter. The guy is going to tag your CEO on LinkedIn and screw his happiness. The guy is going to put the comment on every Instagram influencer post till the time you don’t solve the issue because for him 50,000 stuck on a one journey is the thing. It doesn’t care how many you served well, he is not happy and his needs are not addressed. He don’t know the resolution time of the problem.

Nitin Sethi [00:32:47]:
So all that needs to happen. So at least go ahead and tell him that we don’t know the solution. We are working on it. We assure you your money is safe. Even this message adds assurance and gives you time but I have seen many stages neither technology nor people are designed to solve this faster or better. People don’t even learn from the mistakes. The last goof up, the last SS situation.

Nitin Sethi [00:33:23]:
People don’t learn from it and continue to make it and that shows that in your brand image or brand score or NPS and everywhere else. I don’t know whether I’ve given you a clean black and white answer, but there is no right or wrong at least on this. It was a tough question from where I see.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:47]:
No, absolutely it was not an easy question. And I will give you two specific areas in which things are happening today in corporations in the B2C and or B2B world. A person and I’ll use the airport analogy because that’s what we were talking about. There’s a person who’s in a physical setting meeting that individual and in a private setting in the sense nobody else is watching, this person becomes rude or shows a biased behavior and that could have been part of the unconscious bias we develop over time because of the societal fabric or I just had a bad day you mentioned about something goes wrong and then how to bounce back. That is resilience which is good construct for us to use how the company continues to operate well but if a person who was shown a biased behavior and or person in a private setting was spoken rudely to and that person is not the ones who makes a lot of noise, there was a dent on customer experience. And there are a bunch of those things happen in an isolated setting when no one is watching, which erodes the otherwise development of customer experience. This cause this happens far too many times.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:25]:
And if we talk about While you’re the Chief Digital Officer, yes, you have a responsibility to make sure that tech side works and I’m sure you collaborate and contribute towards how your human side of things work but this happens and I’m not saying it may be happening within your crew but this happens across all possible constructs you can imagine. So when you’re looking at customer experience from a human, remove digital for a second as human, does that mean we did not hire?. We did not empower them. We did not have a way to figure out what was the emotional intelligence of a person. We do not have a way to figure out how is this person, as they’re coming in, are they ready mentally to be able to tackle a customer? Are there ways to figure out if there is some sort of a bias that they are carrying which will surface at the time where they may not even realize that they are being biased? Are we looking at things which are truly latent but could have a far bigger impact on a person’s psyche to say, well, this person represents ABC brand, this person showed a biased behavior, this person showed rudeness when nobody was around, I have no way to complain to anyone. I am not going to make noise because it’s not going to help. I’m going to just walk away. Well, that’s a loss for a company which was otherwise striving to give an ultimate customer experience.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:50]:
How does an organization work towards chipping away at these fundamental issues which have been there forever and they have not gone away?

Nitin Sethi [00:37:02]:
So fantastic question. I think being a senior leader of the group, I would definitely share what we have as a process and mechanism and even the governance model.

Nitin Sethi [00:37:17]:
So,when you hire for a skill, a task or a responsibility. And we all know that humans, you, there are controllable areas. There are areas as an employer, you don’t control. Okay, what we control as a training module, whether it’s a, you need to have humility, you need to have gratitude, you need to be soft, at least on the customer facing things. That’s how it is and you also need to make sure that people don’t get burned out. At many times, long shifts, long hours on the customer facing issues, people get burnout. Now when somebody treats a customer badly or speak to them in a way, the first thing is that the customer should have a way to report it. Reach out to whom? So who should the customer reach out to? So the whole feedback mechanism across the touch points, you are using a washroom, it’s not hygienic one. You are dealing with a concessionary buying something

Nitin Sethi [00:38:39]:
if you are not getting a bill, what is the mechanism, how to report it and you incentivize, okay? If you don’t receive a bill, give a call on this number or SMS on this number and get the value of the bill back. So what you are doing, you are controlling the leakager. You’re also making sure that there is a way to reach out to the customer. So you keep shipping this smart information and all touch points that if something goes wrong there is a mechanism and there’s a very strong customer experience layer which is 24×7 which always have eyes and ears in the place. Also where people go and blast the brands, whether it’s Twitter, your social listening because where you go sometimes you go to digital channel and write your experience that okay, this is something on the taxi, this is something on the food, this is something on my electricity bill, this is something on my gas connection SOS . So you make mechanisms on SOS separately and complain separately and your employees human touch experiences separately. And for every line of business and every user journeys has been designed in a very with a very different mindset. For a gas, if there is a gas Leakage it’s a SOS. You can’t have a turnaround time which is 10 minutes, it’s a SOS right. Similarly something on lost and found over a medical situation at a airport there are very different mechanism now at times and I’ll give you an example where wheelchair is a perfect example and again from my OTAS and airline days there is only set number of wheelchairs allotted to a aircraft by an airline

Nitin Sethi [00:40:41]:
and it’s always short. You generally get 5, 6 if the need is 12 how you get it, people will not get it. So being in responsible airport operator you fill that mechanism and say okay, there is a now airport provider, there is a gap which we will fill in by this service. Now for that you need to also understand the user segment. You also need to understand the pain point and you need to have these design experiences by humility. Even if you are saying no to somebody, you need to say no to somebody in a particular way so you don’t hurt the feelings and at times if something is there then you need to have a mechanism that do you pacify that experience by hearing what has gone wrong and people don’t invest in either processes or technology and even nobody looks into the mail.

Nitin Sethi [00:41:41]:
So most of the times feedback mails, people don’t look into where the gold really is. They say okay, it’s some crib, it’s not. That’s where these are. So your most unhappy I have a philosophy where most unhappy consumers are your biggest assets. If you just go as a leader and sit with your call center team for 45 minutes to an hour every week you will get the best insights. What exactly is wrong in your ecosystem you’ll know and you’ll be able to fix it. Whether it’s FNB or whether it’s a retail, whether it’s a taxi or whether it’s a commerce, you get to fix it and that is true for all of our line of businesses.

Nitin Sethi [00:42:25]:
As easy as electricity bill payment and as easy as settling a 2 crore of real estate unit. On the payment issue.

Sanjog Aul [00:42:39]:
You mentioned that you hire for skills. Some talent, some ability to do a task. I mean there is another philosophy. They say you hire for attitude and you can teach the skills. What have you seen on the ground working where a person actually leads with empathy. Leads with understanding that the other person. Yes, you might have had a bad day but there’s a customer who is coming to you with a request or they have made a genuine mistake because they did not read something properly etc. But the first step is taking a situation

Sanjog Aul [00:43:21]:
and dealing with empathy would make you say things and do things differently than first. How do I save myself? How do I stick to my process which was taught to me and drilled into me so that I don’t get reprimanded by my boss.

Nitin Sethi [00:43:38]:
So see once one service which is coming on top of my mind is our Pranam service which is meet and greet services. You hire and you build a service on gratitude and humility and that the whole Taj like or a five star, seven star Shahrukh Khan experience. So but even in general and mind you, the airport is a very regulated business. There are stuff which we can’t do it’s regulated but at the same time when you see somebody in need, in general, if you only hire for skill and you don’t have people with the right attitude you won’t be able to run that large an ecosystem

Nitin Sethi [00:44:21]:
especially in a country like India which is culturally very demanding. Indian consumers demands way more than anybody else and 85 million consumers fly from our airports and we manage Mumbai and Mumbai being a high celebrity and the financial hub, the ask is always more to take the experience two notch, three notch upwards and whatever we do, we can never ever fulfill all the desires and satisfy each and every single customer. The intent is there. That’s what we thrive for but at the same time the leaders with the right attitude

Nitin Sethi [00:45:03]:
because when you hire for the attitude and attain for the skill or you and you need both actually. You will need people who are hardcore skill driven. For example, Support staff, baggage loaders and stuff but there are customer facing people which you need to be very soft and high on understanding and human psychology, if I can say so.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:31]:
Now, when we are looking at the next set of technology innovations, the fundamental societal changes, next generation of customers coming through, there are a lot of changes that are happening on the company side, on the customer side. As my last question to you, what should be our ethos individually and collectively as Adani Group and or the partner ecosystem and maybe other companies who do not partner with you today, but they are somehow touching that customer? What would be your appeal to that ecosystem, including your own organization, so that the real customer experience that we are looking for is realized to the degree you and I want and it is sustained as we go through the disruption. And it is sustained even though if you were to at any time move on from this organization or any other leader were to move on from this organization. So it’s not one or few people who are taking the responsibility on their whole shoulder. Each individual who works in the organization does that so that the customer continues to go about living their life and doing business with you, your organization and other partners who are supporting that customer’s journey. They become invisible and they keep humming and they deliver what a customer deserves.

Nitin Sethi [00:47:13]:
See, Covid has proven that things can change and things can change very fast. With technology nothing gets settled and nothing is stagnant. Everything is changing very fast. The consumer needs are changing, technology is changing and the expectations is all time high. Now when we look at the Ecosystem doesn’t own one customer in a silo. The customer is common for the whole ecosystem. The same customer which is coming to the airport is flying from an airline. So airline owns the customer.

Nitin Sethi [00:47:55]:
I own the customer. The taxi guy also provide experience to the customer. The FNB or a lounge guy will also provide experience to the customer but one thing goes wrong. The whole customer experience, the journey is disjointed and improve the customer journey and pass on that information to your partners so they can also improve the journey. That’s the common responsibility of all the brands in the ecosystem. Right now the way we are acting, we say that no, the customer is of airline or the customer is of that taxi or taxi operator or the customers of airport.

Nitin Sethi [00:48:35]:
It’s a common customer and we need to put the customer first. Okay. When the consumer is ordering from a food tech platform, the customer is ordering a food from a restaurant, but also a food tech platform is delivering it through a logistic partner and also the payment provider is also a party So at every journey you see four, five players, different players coming and knitting a one common experience in some shape and form. Now all respect blocking the PI data, the intelligence about the customer to improve the customer experience should be coned and shared with all the brands. So next time we can do a better job. This is not happening in a collaborative way.

Nitin Sethi [00:49:31]:
One appeal is that we need to work together to enhance the customer experience as an ecosystem, not as an individual player. That is one appeal. Second, we all need to be very responsible with the data we have about the customer. Okay. There is very thin line between an intrusive experience and a responsible experience or a delightful experience. Now how we as leaders, we as brand and we as ecosystem do that properly. With topmost ki so far you see any segment you don’t see. If I just rate it, you don’t see 8 or 9 out of 10 of many brands you’ll see only 5, 10% brand scoring more than 6 or 7 there I see huge scope of improvement.

Nitin Sethi [00:50:32]:
How we communicate, what we communicate. If we want to build a global brands and organization from India to the world then we need to also invest in technology people and process with that aspiration. We also need to make sure that we don’t compromise on the quality and don’t treat consumers like a transactions which is a very common use case because ultimately they care. Okay.

Nitin Sethi [00:51:02]:
No, it’s a short lived, let’s make so it’s not only about gmv, it’s not only about revenue, it’s not only about profit. It’s also about the lifetime value what you generate for your business, for the consumer and for the ecosystem also. Right now for every happy customer, there is a one happy, one unhappy customer in the online space and that percentage is going up because the difference between India and Bharat is shrinking and most tier 2, tier 3 cities aspirants are getting exposed and frauds are happening. So the the whole responsible design thinking framework needs to get implemented and it can’t be implemented by one leader or a one brand or one category. So cross category learning needs to be there. Just like how we build a national level UPI, how we are building ONDC, how we build done such a awesome payments ecosystem. We need to make sure that we have some model on the customer experience framework. Many brands don’t even have net promoter score.

Nitin Sethi [00:52:14]:
Many brands they don’t even act on their social complaints. They don’t even get back to customer and close the thread. So if I just summarize what I’m saying responsible service with great ethics. I’m also saying value data with privacy, respect for the privacy. I’m also saying the cross knowledge sharing and succession planning for people successful. I think if as a brand we invest in people, process and technology at the same time and don’t do priority order in this then we will create a very robust ecosystem and the golden era of Indian economy and Indian digital economy is now.

Nitin Sethi [00:53:20]:
Covid was the Chief Digital Officer for many brands and we have seen the rocket ship growth and this will continue.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:29]:
Once again thank you so much Nitin for sharing your insights about how organizations can re architect their business operating model and deliver a very good customer experience. Thank you so much.

Nitin Sethi [00:53:42]:
Thanks all. Thanks for having me.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:44]:
And listeners PPease connect with us on social media. Subscribe to our podcast once again for thank you for listening to CTN. This is your host Sanjog Aul signing off. Till next week take care and god bless.

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