The Twenty-Minute Moat - A Verloop.io Podcast

Dinesh Pai, in his 8+ years career, has honed many roles and comes with expertise in Business Development and Operations, primarily in the Fintech space. From his role at Founder’s Office at Zerodha to other senior positions at companies like Rainmatter and EY, he is committed to driving change with a bias to action. 

In this episode of The Twenty Minute Moat, we cover: 

• What does customer support at Zerodha look like
• How to optimise support with a customer-centric feedback loop
• How to create a CX strategy that’s built on trust and strong bonds
• How do support teams deal with users reaching out on multiple platforms 
• What is the future of customer support and automation in the next few years

Nikhil Shanker is the VP of customer experience and partner experience at Urban Company, a services platform. Nikhil’s role focuses on building processes and systems that assist customers as well as service partners who deliver the services to the customers. With 9+ years of experience, Nikhil has previously worked with HCL Technologies and Infosys. 

We cover:

• Evolution of support at Urban Company during the pandemic
• Managing customer expectations when demand spikes
• One process implementation that enabled delightful CX
• Future of customer support and customer experience

Akshat Saxena is the Co-founder of ePayLater, the platform that has scaled to become one of India's largest in the SME credit space. ePayLater has partnered with retail majors such as Wal-Mart and Metro AG, and was awarded as "Most Innovative FinTech" by Govt of India in 2019. Akshat Saxena has been recognised as the "Achiever of the Year 2017" by BusinessWorld, and is a part of the FinTech advisory committee of FICCI - an apex body for providing policy inputs to the Govt.

We cover: 

• How customer support works at ePayLater?
• How to build trust with customers in Fintech?
• Why customer support needs to be omnichannel?

Nitin Somalaraju is a Conversational AI, Product Manager at Tech Mahindra and comes with over ​​9 years of IT and Management experience in Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), business product management, and data-driven decisions. At Tech Mahindra Nitin works as a Product Manager for the Conversational Intelligence & Automation platform (Sayint), and his role requires him to work closely with the Product Design, Development, Marketing & Sales team to create a Product strategy & Implementation plan.

We cover:

• How conversational AI has helped Customer Support? 
• What metrics should you keep in mind to effectively track customer sentiment?
• Where is the Conversational AI space heading in the next 2 years?
• What to keep in mind while investing in a AI chatbot?

Mahendra Mane leads the Customer Solutions team for South East Asia at Vonage. Over the course of his career, he has been a cloud communications consultant and evangelist with extensive experience in communication and collaboration solutions in SAS, CPAAS and On-premises offerings. During his 17 years of industry experience, he has gained expertise in solution design, pre-sales, delivery, and implementation that have helped customers solve critical business problems and drive efficiency. 

We cover:

• How to manage customer expectations?
• What goes into stellar customer service?
• What are the best practices when choosing an AI chatbot?
• What does the future of customer support look like?

Bhisham Bhateja is the co-founder of The Man Company, a premium men’s grooming product company. A Business leader with expertise in start-ups, operations, strategy consulting, and India entry consulting across e-commerce, retail, automobile and industrial space, at The Man Company he currently focuses on operational efficiency without compromising on the complete experience. He has also created a strong distribution network of over 20 marquee distributors for the mass market brand of perfumes and deodorants.

We cover:

• What customer support is like at The Man Company?
• Are customers keen on interacting with chatbots?
• What are the magic ingredients that go into making delightful customer experiences?
• Are personalisation and scalability still at odds with each other?

Arman Sood is the Co-founder of Sleepy Owl Coffee and has been a pioneer in the new coffee movement in India. Arman has also been featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and started Sleepy Owl Coffee with the aim to make incredible coffee accessible to consumers. Prior to founding Sleepy Owl, Arman was part of a leading ed-tech start-up and worked as a Marketing and Communications Evangelist.

We cover: 

• How has customer support evolved at Sleepy Owl?
• What metrics are best to gauge customer sentiment?
• What to look for when building your support team?
• How key is automation in support today?

Vittorio Barraja is the Senior Director for Digital & E-commerce at PHD Media and has a track record for driving business success through delivering high-level marketing (digital and offline) solutions while leading corporate marketing strategy. In addition, Vittorio Barrja as an industry expert has worked to attain growth and long-term market sustainability through delivering significant revenue growth and quantifiable Marketing ROI, producing successful commercial strategies, building high-performing marketing teams, and improving brand positioning.

We cover:

• How does customer support fit the bill when talking about digital transformation?
• How to create a sense of community with your username?
• Understanding and dealing with customer expectations
• How have customers responded to greater automated processes in support?

Shweta Srivastava is a visionary leader with over 21 years of experience in performing diverse & cross-functional roles in the field of Customer Experience.  As the Head of CS & Customer Experience at Tata Cliq, she plays a key strategic and operational leadership role that is responsible for designing and implementing strategies, to bring the customer to the centre of everything that the organisation does.

We cover:

• How do users/customers view automated processes in customer support?
• What to look for when building your customer support team?
• What metrics are best to gauge customer sentiment?
• What to look for when investing in a conversational AI platform?

Dipu K V is the President - Head Operations & Customer Service at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance. He is a global award-winning digital transformation and innovation leader and drives digital transformation, innovation & industry leadership at Bajaj Allianz leading a team of over 1600 people in 170 locations, leveraging fintech / insurtech start-ups globally. Prior to insurance, he worked at GE Capital for 20 years, fusing digital transformation & 6 sigma to redesign business models.

We cover:

• What are the biggest customer support challenges you’ve faced?
• What is the organisation structure for customer support?
• How do you track the effectiveness of customer support?
• How have your support teams grown and evolved in the last few years?
• How has conversational AI helped enhance the quality of customer support?