The Twenty-Minute Moat - A Verloop.io Podcast: Recent Episodes
Verloop.io
The Twenty-Minute Moat - A Verloop.io Podcast talks about everything customer, support, and automation. The show interviews decision-makers at some of the most influential companies in the world to understand how they're changing the world - one ticket at a time.
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?
Darshan Bathija is the co-founder and CEO of Vauld (previously Bank of Hodlers), with a mission to transition the world to decentralised money. Vauld works to build a banking system that is more swift, secure, and decentralized than traditional banks and is built on permissionless blockchains. Prior to his current role, he was the Head of Partnerships at TapChief (acquired by Unacademy).
We cover
- What have been the biggest customer support challenges for Vauld
- How to measure customer support effectiveness
- How has customer support at Vauld grown
- Best practices to follow in customer support
Manisha Seewal was the Chief Marketing Officer of Southeast Asia’s first Unicorn car marketplace - CARRO. Currently, she is the CMO of Gumtree Australia and leads efforts in building the brand as a leading destination for buyers and sellers in the automotive market in Australia through CarsGuide and Autotrader.
Manisha is a leader in the Digital Transformation space and has led several “Singapore’s first” digital transformation initiatives, which includes Singapore’s first “Netflix for Cars”- a car subscription-based service, Singapore’s first ChatBot from a life insurer and Singapore's first Pay-as-you-drive insurance. Manisha is listed amongst one of the world’s 100 Most Influential Chief Marketing Officers and Top 50 Women leaders in Asia.
We cover:
- How has the customer support space evolved over the years
- Understanding customer support at Carro
- How to measure effectiveness in customer support
- What channels do customers prefer when interacting with brands
- Where the customer support industry is headed in the next 3 years
Fasih Abbas heads the Customer Success team of Cashfree and has an overall experience of 19 years managing businesses, people and growing them exponentially. He has over 10 years of CS leadership experience working with many of India’s largest e-commerce and Fintech brands.
We cover:
- Understanding support at Cashfree
- The Fin-tech boom and how has customer support scaled
- Impact of the pandemic on the Fin-tech space
- How has Cashfree’s customer support infrastructure adapted to these changes
Fasih Abbas heads the Customer Success team of Cashfree and has an overall experience of 19 years managing businesses, people and growing them exponentially. He has over 10 years of CS leadership experience working with many of India’s largest e-commerce and Fintech brands.
We cover:
- Tracking the effectiveness of customer support
- How the customer support space evolved in the past year
- Best practices for delightful customer experiences
- Is there a need to reimagine customer support
Sunil Wakhade heads Customer Service at Evergreen Community & Seniority and has had over 16 years of Service Delivery, Operations Management, and Contact Center Management experience. During the course of his career, he has shown remarkable proficiency in transitioning and managing Customer Experience / Customer Service operations for start-up’s as well as well-established organizations.
We cover:
- How was customer support at Seniority evolved
- Metrics that need to be tracked to gauge customer support quality
- How are customer’s support needs evolving
- Is there still a bias against automation in customer support
Arun Jagannathan, over the past decade, has worn multiple hats as a tutor, an entrepreneur, and a technology manager. He started his career as a techie moving into a project management role before plunging full-time into entrepreneurship in 2011 when he co-founded CrackVerbal - currently India's leading GMAT test prep and MBA Applications Consulting company. "English for India" is his second entrepreneurial venture, in which he helps companies meet their business outcomes through better employee communication. Arun likes to read online on digital marketing and productivity. He also mentored some startups on a pro bono basis.
We cover:
- How crucial is customer support at CrackVerbal?
- What impact did the pandemic have on customer support?
- How has customer support as a space evolved?
- What channels do customers prefer interacting with brands?
- Impact of conversational AI on customer support
Danish Muti has been in the HR-tech and Ed-tech space and has worked on setting up teams and defining more efficient processes. Being in the start-up space, he has experience in 0 to 10x and 10x to 100x journeys. Currently, he works at Scaler as Head of Customer Success and delivery. He has built the Customer success team from scratch and implemented more efficient processes to keep up with that 10x pace and go past some of the key metrics.
We cover:
- Understanding Scaler Academy’s customer support operations
- How to measure customer support effectiveness
- What channels do customers prefer when it comes to support
- Was the pandemic the catalyst that led to more innovation in support
- How has AI enhanced the quality of customer support
Sameer Nagpal is a strategy and operations leader in the servicing industry with over 13 years of experience in building high performing servicing teams with different organizations. He leads Customer Service at WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange focused on simplifying the crypto experience for the people of India.
We cover:
- What does customer support at WazirX look like?
- How do measure customer support effectiveness?
- How has customer support evolved in the past few years?
- What channels do your users prefer?
- What impact has AI and automation had on the support space?
Ajith Singh heads the Product team at Caratlane - A Tanishq Partnership. With over 12 years of experience across building consumer products, scalable business platforms and solution selling of IT services, he has been part of Caratlane since it was a startup to becoming India's largest omnichannel jewellery retail brand. Prior to his role at Caratlane, Ajith worked with companies like Microland, CSC and IBM in providing B2B solutions to large clients.
We cover:
- How do you build delightful customer support
- Has the buying behaviour of consumers changed
- Is there a need to reimagine customer support
- What impact did the pandemic have on customer support operations
- What are the best practices in customer support?
Sreejit Nair leads product building for Customer Experience at Licious. and is focused on building meatier experiences for their customers by stepping up online and offline capabilities for the organisation. In this episode, we talk to Sreejit about the components of delivering stellar experiences at scale and what it means to be customer-centric in a post-pandemic world.
In this episode of the Twenty Minute Moat podcast by Verloop.io Siddharth Sharma is in conversation with Athira S M, Head of Customer Experience at Milaap. The conversation deep dives into how conversational AI and automation is helping the customer support space, the major challenges faced in the industry and what the future looks like for customer support.
We cover:
- What customer support looks like at Milaap
- How customer support will evolve in the coming years
- Is there a need to reimagine customer support
- Adoption of technologies like automation and Conversational AI
For more conversations on all things customer support, do check the previous episodes of the Twenty Minute Moat
https://verloop.io/podcasts/
In this episode of the Twenty Minute Moat podcast by Verloop.io Siddharth Sharma is in conversation with Sumitra Patnaik, Head of Customer Support at OLX India. The conversation deep dives into how the traditional customer support space is evolving, the challenges faced in the past few years and how the pandemic uncovered opportunities to innovate when it comes to delivering a delightful support experience.
We cover:
- What customer support looks like at OLX India
- How customer support will evolve in the coming years
- The impact of the pandemic on customer support
- The role automation and Conversational AI play in customer support industry
For more conversations on all things customer support, do check the previous episodes of the Twenty Minute Moat
https://verloop.io/podcasts/
Shourya Saha is a customer support savant. He is currently the Head of Customer Support for Flock, a real-time messaging and collaboration platform that boasts over 30,000 companies as its clients. With nearly 20 years of experience, Shourya drops some knowledge bombs in today's episode as we ask him about Slack, COVID-19, and his go-to hiring tips that he's learned.
Siraj Uddin has built and led customer support teams at some of India’s most valuable companies - like Flipkart, PayTM and Blackbuck. He's now the Head of Customer Experience at Transak, an early stage crypto payment gateway based out of London.
We talk to Siraj about the importance of customer support in early-stage startups, how he built support for Indian masses and the challenges of providing excellent support at scale.
Part 2 of our episode with Tejas Vyas is here! Tejas Vyas is the Head of Product and Design for BigBasket, India's leading online grocery store. After the lockdown in March, BigBasket lost almost 80% of its workforce as their delivery personnel rushed back home - while their daily active user base increased almost 10x overnight. Tejas talks to us about the advice he has for non-technical Product Managers, who his favourite people in the industry are, what metrics he tracks for a billion-dollar company and the role that support plays in BigBasket.
Tejas Vyas is the Head of Product and Design for BigBasket, India's leading online grocery store. After the lockdown in March, BigBasket lost almost 80% of its workforce as their delivery personnel rushed back home - while their daily active user base increased almost 10x overnight. In the first of this two-part episode, we speak to the man at the helm, literal-computer-scientist, Tejas Vyas about his life, learnings, and how he hires excellence through his personal model of Product Leadership.
Sandeep Jindal heads Customer Support for an category-creating company valued at $120 million. Furlenco now has 40,000+ active subscribers across the country and serves lakhs for customers with a product that didn't really exist before they came along. This brings a range of new and exciting customer support challenges, that Sandeep faced, both personally and professionally.
Joy Ghose is one of our favorite guests. The always-cheerful, VP of Partnerships, Headout is about as well-travelled as they come. Today, he joins us to talk about the challenges of working at a hyper-growth startup, who he looks up to, and the elephant in the room - COVID-19. The pandemic battered travel and companies in the space, Headout included. Joy tells us about how the Headout team maneuvered through the roadblocks and stayed afloat - from launching new products to innovating customer support.
Pratyush Prasanna is the Head of Merchant Payments at GoJek - the Indonesian startup valued at nearly $10 billion. He joins us to talk about his life, work and how he's made a mark in the tech world. Pratyush was born in the small Indian town of Bhubaneswar, Odisha. After graduating from IIT Kharagpur and IIM Calcutta, Pratyush kicked off a professional career that saw him found several startups, take up leadership roles in companies like PayTM and Poynt and eventually work at GoJek, where he takes care of, amongst other things, GoJek's 300,000 merchants and an annualised gross transaction value of over $6 billion.
Join us on November 16th, 2020 as we launch The Twenty Minute Moat - A Verloop.io Podcast. Enjoy this quick trailer - and be sure to come back for more!