‘Chalta hai’ no more: Why customer experience strategies in India need overhauling

Gone are the days when being a consumer in India would mean living by the ‘chalta hai’ or anything goes principle. The changing scenario is a mere culmination of rising customer awareness – may it be via exposure to media (social media being the frontrunner here), or India being more connected to the world or in the influx of global mega-brands into local markets. The rise of the digital tide has also engulfed India customer and led them to wanting more bang for the buck, expecting good quality service and prompt handling of any misdemeanors.

Forrester Research extensively investigated this phenomenon using its Customer Experience (CX) Index to benchmark consumers’ interactions with brands across India. While it is a no-brainer that businesses have to keep their customers happy in order to keep the show going, Forrester finds that Indian firms struggle to deliver even mediocre CX. This has serious implication on bottom lines. As Oracle finds in its research, brands recognize the significant financial impact of poor customer experiences, yet struggle to develop and execute successful strategies. Oracle finds that businesses can lose up to 20 percent of revenue from poor CX yet many are stuck in an execution chasm. The research also finds that executives cite limitations from inflexible technology, siloed organizations and systems and insufficient investment as biggest obstacles to delivering the best possible customer experience. That’s right, blame it on the tech guys.

Coming back to Forrester’s findings about how CX in India is barely mediocre, the experiences of 17,497 metro Indian online adults revealed that out of 102 brands surveyed, 9 percent qualified as ‘good’, 28 percent received poor scores and 60 percent of them were labelled as just about ‘OK’. Splitting the brands vertically, credit card providers seemed to lead the way and banking and insurance followed with average scores. Mobile device and PC manufacturers, however, showed signs of hope and came in second and fourth place respectively. Telecom providers need to pull up their socks when it comes to meeting customer expectations. Looking at three sectors — TV, wireless and Internet brands in all three categories struggled to deliver significantly positive experiences.

Customer Experience

Forrester delves deeper into what the successful brands did differently when it comes to CX and charts out some key pointers to succeed in India:

Retail banks must respond faster to digital disruption: While acquiring customers is a strong focal point for Indian banks, going the extra mile to deliver a superior CX doesn’t seem to be that high up on the agenda. Forrester says that banks such as HDFC that are embracing the mobile mind shift by making cross-channel value propositions that are easier to navigate and digest and which accommodate more sophisticated digital users will win the loyalty of increasingly savvy customers.

Traditional and digital-only retailers must reduce, simplify and control their offerings: Several brands in Forrester’s survey stood out in the CX Index for the ease with which customers derive value from them. “The webs of intermediaries and distributors in the industry negatively affect the CX scores of firms, rendering them unable to control the experience throughout the customer life cycle. The degradation of CX quality between manufacturer and third-party or small retailer is more pronounced in India, where varying standards of quality muddy the supply chain,” finds Forrester.

When in India, brands should target emotion: When it comes to CX, effectiveness and ease are necessary but not sufficient to emerge as winners. The emotions that an experience elicits, reveals Forrester, also influences loyalty. In its survey Forrester noted that huge revenue, customer acquisition, and customer retention opportunities await Indian companies that not only get the basics right but can also understand and respond to the emotional drivers of their customers.

There’s much room for improvement for brands that are CX leaders too. Meeting basic needs before moving on to loyalty programs is one such piece of advice. Forrester advises companies to map the customer journey to understand where friction occurs before moving on to structuring loyalty programs. Forrester also advises searching across industries for CX improvement inspiration. Taking note of experiences outside the current industry — banking taking notes from hospitality or insurance taking pointers from the aviation industry can go a long way in differentiating a company from its industry peers.