What Does Customer Centric Really Mean?

Customer Centric means “thinking about the customer while designing your product and overall experience”. There are various facets to the customer: Tasks – as in jobs to be done Preference – as in taste Interest – as in vested interest Welfare – as in happiness All of the above Which facet should customer-centric credo think … Read more

Decoding The Tenuous Link Between GDP And TPV (Total Payments Value)

Many people conflate the amount of payments processed in a country with the country’s GDP. This is wrong: GDP drives, but does not cap, TPV. Take the COO of a leading mobile payment fintech: April loss of business is $80bn approx vs cost of vaccinating India $8bn:RTGS – 🔻33%NEFT – 🔻34%UPI – 🔻3%IMPS – 🔻9%Credit Card … Read more

AI In UX

I’ve written before on Artificial Intelligence in User Interface of websites and apps. This post is about a related topic: Artificial Intelligence in User Experience. For the unintiated, User Interface, User Experience and Customer Experience are not the same. UI: Nice-looking form.UX: Do we need the form?CX: Enhance customer journey in and out of the … Read more

Can Fraternities Be Inherited?

Everyone is a member of some group or the other e.g. school, college, neighborhood, company, etc. Different groups have different level of affinity aka fraternity strengths. Intuitively, we know that some fraternities are strong whereas others are not. In my blog post entitled How To Measure Fraternity Strength, I proferred a formula for measuring fraternity … Read more

Calling BS Of The “Indian Market Is Big Enough For Indian Companies” Myth

Every now and then, somebody points to the challenges of cracking the overseas markets and claims that the Indian market is big enough for Indian companies. Take the example of this founder of an Indian IT company, who commented as follows on LinkedIn: We (INDIA) can beat anyone in the world with Quality First, Customer … Read more

Mark Of A Great Salesman In Today’s Strange And Unprecedented Times

There are countless theories on what it takes to be a great salesperson. When I began my career in sales back in the day, Harvard Business Review called out Empathy and Ego Drive as the most important qualities of a great salesperson. A few years later, it changed its mantra to “A good salesperson does … Read more

Interoperability – The Sole Loser In UPI

We ended Banks Have Not Lost The UPI Plot on a sobering note: Sadly, interoperability has been given the short shrift in the way UPI has evolved. In this post, we’ll see how interoperability has lost the UPI plot. One of the founding principles of UPI is “interoperability”, which stipulates that anyone with any UPI app … Read more

Health Insurance, Not Price Control, Is The Solution

Amidst the din of free versus paid vaccine and blackmarketing of essential drugs like Remdesivir, I thought it’s a good time for me to repost my letter to the editor of Times of India on the topic of price control. From: Ketharaman Swaminathan [s.ketharaman@gtm360.com] Sent: Sunday, 27 September 2020 7:33 PM To: ‘sunday.times@timesgroup.com’ Subject: Sunday … Read more

Corporate Gift Supplier Pivots To Technology Company

Here’s our latest success story: Corporate Gift Supplier Pivots To Technology Company Digital Transformation Accelerates Sales Cycle And Boosts Ticket Size The customer began its journey as the supplier of corporate gifts to midsize and large companies, who used them to reward their wholesalers, distributors, dealers, retailers, and agents aka “trade” for achieving their quota … Read more