Think Flat

I have been discussing the topic of innovation with different executives in Infosys this week.  And one thing that comes across strongly in these discussions is that companies need to focus more on improving customer experience.  Many are improving call center service levels, others are enhancing product attributes, but very few are actually looking at what customers want and designing their offerings with that as the primary objective.

For example in telecom, how can service providers transform my experience as a customer with their service?  How can they add personalized service so that I no longer think of them as dial-tone providers but service providers?  When I travel from Bangalore to San Francisco, my service provider already knows that I am in SF based on my cell signal.  Why not automatically turn off the ringer at night for all calls except for emergency calls from family, so that I am not woken up by people who didn’t know that I am in a different time zone?  Or, why not have a recorded message saying that it is 3am my time and ask whether the caller really wants to wake me up for the call?  Or, from a corporate perspective, why not use location information for corporate asset tracking (leaving aside privacy issues for the moment), since most devices have wireless chips these days? 

Services such as these would dramatically enhance my experience with the service provider, making me a more loyal customer, well, at least until other companies start offering the same.  At that point, my service provider would need to think of even better ways of improving my experience.

Same applies in the financial services space – companies that see beyond current models and innovate the entire customer experience are gaining traction.  According to Balaji Yellavalli, AVP in our Banking and Capital Markets business unit, the consumer lending industry is seeing new players that are going beyond the previous generation of innovation which digitized some parts of the lending experience (e.g. Lending Tree).  Now we are seeing more sophisticated new models – ones that allow simple peer-to-peer lending, among other things.

I’ve asked him to share his thoughts on this topic.  Balaji has 15 years of experience spanning business consulting, IT strategy and strategic sourcing.  He has been with Infosys for 6 years, prior to which he was with KPMG-AFF India and Feedback Ventures.  At Infosys, he leads the solutions consulting group for our financial services unit. 

Stay tuned for his blog…