The Rise of Digital Consumer & Digital Business Services

An IIM Calcutta alumnus, Anish is a highly accomplished professional with 25+ years of experience in handling extensive leadership roles across  the globe. As Teleperformance India’s CEO, he helps drive high-growth revenue strategies to further deepen the company’s digitally integrated business services and transformation solutions. Siliconindia recently got a chance to interact with Anish, wherein he shared his insights about digital business services, new technology innovations and their implementations. Below are the excerpts from the exclusive interview                                               

India is emerging as the largest technology hub and is at the cutting-edge of the transformation – be it related to new technologies like AI or existing & evolving automation technologies. We are the center of excellence for new tech innovations that are being deployed globally, but are also investing in technologies & tech development that are upholding the future for us. Many companies across almost all industries are setting-up their own R&D centers and making huge investments on advanced, cutting-edge technologies.

What are your thoughts on the current digital business services landscape in India?

The digital business services market in India is expected to touch $20 billion in the next few years. India is reshaping itself in the age of digital globalization and is the most promising global technology and digital services hub for all technologies in the next 10-15 years. Global corporates are increasingly looking to India for the most advanced digital transformation offerings that surpass other countries, with the technology poised to alter businesses rapidly and dramatically for desired outcomes. A huge pool of highly skilled, adaptive, and scalable talent for digitized services continues to be the primary source of competitive advantage, often difficult to find in other regions.

Tell us about some of the latest technologies that are disrupting the business outsourcing space.

A lot is being spoken about ChatGPT in recent times. Also, RPA and Cloud Computing have been gaining a lot of traction in the last few years. Now, all these three technologies are merging and accelerating the innovation process in our industry, with immense benefits being driven with the implementation of these technologies. For example – in healthcare, AI-powered diagnostic tools are improving the disease detection process. Similarly in financial services, the efficiency of fraud detection processes has increased manifold and our ability to determine the next best action has improved significantly, thus easing the decision-making process.  

Technologies are also having a massive impact on business outsourcing, because clients are now realizing that they have the ability to get far more labor arbitrage by digitizing the customer value chain, in turn optimizing & standardizing internal processes to streamline business operations in meaningful and sustainable ways. Organizations are increasingly embracing cloud, where the computing power is not being concentrated at the desk of an individual, but the distributed cloud computing ability is now being rolled-up and harnessed very productively across the spectrum of services that you provide.

What are some of the key factors that a brand must keep in mind while selecting a Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution?

There are many factors that determine the suitable CEM solution. Digital Transformation is now the most important growth driver. Global Digital Business Services Organizations in the outsourcing industry have been supporting digital transformation strategies for businesses for years with CEM shaping into the overall digital experience. Thus, you need to partner with companies who can provide these capabilities, work with you in alignment with your values, and proactively invest in achieving those customer outcomes. Additionally, you need to partner with an organization that is as nimble as you have charted down the path in partnership with. It is thus paramount to have a partner who is able to showcase execution excellence to successfully achieve the set goals and outcomes.

How can brands combine technology and human interaction for efficient customer experience management?

Although AI has massive use cases, the risk factors still linger on. Technology today is still augmenting employee experience. So, the way tech and human intervention can be combined is via a balanced high-tech and high-touch approach blended with deep industry and geographic expertise, essentially combining new technologies with humans’ emotional quotient and hands-on experience. Since customer behavior varies significantly in different regions, this will enable businesses to bring that human angle to offer hassle-free and unique customer experiences.

Another aspect is that each customer big brands onboard, you need to be able to service those customers post the sale being finalized in the way those customers prefer. For example, an aged customer might prefer easy to understand services that rank high on human interaction versus technology, with millennial customers being exactly the opposite. Also, for all queries where customers are emotionally involved, the human touch is critical to understand and resolve these queries in the best possible way. Thus, harnessing an integrated High Tech, High Touch Business Strategy focused on the critical pairing of digital & human elements in services is crucial for desired business outcomes.

In your opinion, how will the Customer Experience Management market evolve in the days to come?

The future of customer service will increasingly be driven by technology innovations that will improve customer and agent experiences. Another important aspect will be inculcating an agile approach for all customer interactions, including on social media platforms, that will ultimately determine the brand value and perception for customers.

Going forward, we will see an increased application of Generative AI within our industry, thus driving a massive level of automation. As a result, more use cases will open-up and create a perfect opportunity for brands to offer highly personalized services to each customer. Thus, in the next decade, I see an unprecedented increase in the adoption of technology in everything that we do in India, thus making it a force to reckon with on the global tech map.

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