Improving Customer Interactions through Conversational Continuity with Mithila Mahajan

Foreigns of cx, a podcast powered by Ozonetel. We share the latest insights and customer experience from industry experts to help you humanize your approach, placing empathy at the center of the customer experience. I'm your host Garima. Thank you so much Mithila. Excited to have you on the Humans of CX podcast today. So pleased to have you here with me. Thank you Garima. It's my pleasure Mitla. To begin with, let's understand your story. I would love to know where do you come from, where your roots are and what really inspired you to join the world of cx. And you have seen that we call the podcast Humans of cx, right? So what does it mean to you being a human in the CX community? That's actually a very good question to start with because somebody interested in knowing your background makes me talk more about what I have done and how CF community as a whole is evolving. So I come from. I'm a postgrad in human resource so I come from a human resource background. I have done people management and HR generalist roles in various corporates at the beginning of my career for about five, six years after that in one of the job posting when I had seen that how CX managers were working because I was recruiting them as well, I was onboarding them, I was recruiting them, I was seeing how their day to day work life is and that was quite fascinating. So there was an IJP internal job posting and I applied for it out of the blue and everybody was wondering that why I'm doing so good in hr. I only had one answer that even in HR my employees are my customers. So even then and there I'm managing my customers as I'm managing my employees. So it's always my forte or my hard calling that I want to build relations, I want to solve others problem, get in their shoe and understand how it feels. And that's how I got into CX and I joined community as CX Manager and then grown from there to Director, avp VP and Head of Customer Experience Global till today in the data center industry. So in overall span, telecom, academics, data center it that's the span and that's how cxionary was for me. Awesome. I think this is beautiful Mithla. And since you mentioned you have been dealing with people at multiple levels in your role within the HR department. Right. So I would like to understand from that perspective how do you view the modern customer today? Because you did mention that you could understand that there is a customer centric angle to that Right. And we are dealing with customers, are you and me? Right. They're not something different. So according to you, who is the modern customer today? What is he or she looking for? Okay, so if you ask me 10, 15, 20 years back, as a customer I was looking for is I pay X amount of money and what I get in return as a tangible product or service for that matter, I have paid X amount of money and I've got this. That is it. But now what happens is what are you getting out of the money that you're paying is equally important to what you have been treated or what you're being treated. After sales, I go to BMW and Mercedes and I buy a car. I have crores of rupees. But why would I want to buy BMW and not other cars? Is because after buying a car as equally important as performance, even the post sales service, how I'm going to be treated with the brand is also important how me as a customer would be recognized in the brand that matters and that is equally important for the modern customer. So it's not only paying money, but it's also what do I get in return on and about the product and service that I'm buying in. So modern customer is always in this era particularly is more of what is the engagement and what is the experience that they're getting which is on and about the product that they're buying? Right. And just in this context, when we are talking about the overall experience holistically, what do you think are the channels that are making a lot of sense to the customers today? What is it that they are preferring the most? We have moved on from website boards to chatbots to WhatsApp today. Right. So how do you look at this journey and talk about Omnichannel, but what does truly Omnichannel experience looks like according to you? Absolutely. So 10, 20 years back, I'll give you an example of a bank. People would go to a bank, talk to the CRM if CRM is there, or talk to some employer clerk in the bank to understand their services or to resolve their queries. Now what happens? Now it's just a phone call away, or rather a click away. Right. I have an application of the bank. I am on net banking, I have a mobile application. I'm on chat, I'm on Messages, I'm on WhatsApp with my bank. So it's something that I feel connected to, that I'm always connected to my provider. He's there to listen to me, he's there to provide me solutions 24 by 7. That is what the objective of Omnichannel was when omnichannel got into the picture, come into the picture. So we have moved from email and telephones to chatbots, video conferencing, voice bots, and these are extremely enabling and assisting human efforts. A lot of times I'm asked if I feel that AI and this, you know, chatbots and self service is going to eliminate humans. Definitely not. But by this your people get chance to focus on more niche and more human centric areas. Those are sentiment management, relationship building. Your chatbots cannot build relation, they can solve queries, they can give answers to the questions that customer is asking. But relationship building requires human efforts, human touch. And that's where your manpower can focus. While your Omnichannel, your different channels and your AI ML is focusing on resolving the firsthand queries of the customer. Right. And I remember that two of our guests have mentioned this. Exactly something along the similar lines that it is also critical to identify. At what point do you bring in a human agent? At what point does a human agent begins to intervene even when we are automating everything else? So how do you look at this part of the story? As you said, the bot or any channel that we're using, they can't be emotional, right? They can't bring in that sort of empathy in the experience. So what would you say about this? Like, how are you looking at this part of the story? See, if I'm calling an Amazon, they'll ask me, if you want to know about your order, press one. Then you want to know about exchanges, press two. I'm okay with it. But if and then I hit on exchange and the exchange is done, I'm okay. Because it's not where my money is at stake, right? Or my sentiments are at stake, it's just a simple exchange or simple return that is happening where I'm assured that it is happening. But what happens when my money is at stake or when my sentiments are at stake? I want to be heard of. I want somebody to look at this on priority, somebody to listen me, somebody to give me advice, somebody to say, okay, I'm there. And machines don't do that. Even if AI is there and I get lot of knowledge base, I get a lot of answers. But at the end of the day, what happens is if I'm panicked, I would want to talk to a human and not a chatbot. If I need urgent solution for an example, somebody has got heart attack and I call hospital, I want to talk to an agent and tell him send me an ambulance. I wouldn't want to press 1 for English, press 2 for Marathi when somebody's dying at my doorstep. So it's very important to mark where and what exactly you would want to bring in your human agents. Because at the initial stage when the question answers are relative, it is absolutely fine to have omnichannel experience, chatbots or service, but when it gets more specialized and niche, I feel human connect is more important. Right? Absolutely, Mithla. And I think you highlighted something very important when you mentioned that when somebody is dying, somebody is having a heart attack. I would not care whether I have to press one or two because that is not on my mind. Right. I am panicking. I want something instantly. And in this context, when we say that empathy in customer experience is very important, do you think it's still a very high level and fluff, sort of an umbrella term that is going around in the industry? But these are the moments where you're not exactly thinking about how empathetically the agent is talking. But all you want is that I am in deep trouble and I want someone to resolve this. I don't care how fast you're talking at that point of time or even if you're slightly irritated, I wouldn't care about that. I would want the agent to help me instantly. So this is another angle that I have been trying to understand from like you. Because empathy in customer experience, easier said than done. People are trying to break it down at multiple levels. So when you say that, you know, these are the situations where exactly everything else takes a back seat, you are not thinking about that perspective, like how empathetic, how polite, how good you are. All you want is how instant my problem has been taken care of. So I would just understand from you, is this something that you are also dealing with and trying to understand in which direction this narrative is moving? I'll give you an example of a data center industry. Similar example as getting heart attack. Trust me, what happens is in a data center industry, every customer wants 100% uptime, which means there should not be any failure, there cannot be any downtime. Now in a data center, which is tier 3 data center we call where the uptime is 99.98%, which means in an entire year you're allowed to have 27 minutes of downtime, only 27 minutes of failure. Now what happens whenever there is any failure within 27 minutes or above 27 minutes, your customer would call you and say, hey, you know what, I'm not able to Reach to my website. Now, she doesn't care how nicely you greet him because for him there are 10,000 other people who are trying to reach out to his website and they're not able to. Especially when it's a trading platform or it's a weather forecast channel. Right. So what happens in that scenario? The objective is to resolve it immediately and assure them you're on top of it. If that time you try to say, oh, you know, that's okay, I'm here and you try to be extra polite, extra slow, it's not going to help you that particular time. It's important how quickly you act and you understand and resolve the query. So empathy, yes, it's important. But I'll also tell you after the problem is resolved and customer is at peace, he disconnects the call. He reassess how he was treated. So like you said, when we are taking example of somebody getting heart attack, I call the person, I say I need ambulance. And somebody said, okay, I'm sending it, I'm sending it. And he sends the ambulance. I'm okay, I'm fine that I got the ambulance in five minutes. I send my patient to the hospital, patient is recovered, comes back home. Now I think in ABC Hospital when I called, I got ambulance in five minutes. But how was I treated? The person shouted at me, I don't want to talk to him again. Given a choice, I will not talk to him. I got one experience which is nice that I got ambulance, but I was not treated well. And this post call or post solution analysis is always done by customers. So we cannot neglect empathy. Empathy is must. But at the same time there are situations where how fast you act is more important than how well behaved you are. Absolutely. I think this is a brilliant point. And I'm also reminded of an incident I just try and it briefly. So it was the pandemic situation I'm talking about. And I had just ordered some something from the food delivery app and I kept on waiting for the order. It took almost 50 minutes were over and I was still waiting and I was very hungry. It was 11:30 or 12 in the midnight and there was nothing at home because we were traveling and we had just reached this other place and we didn't have anything at home, like not even a packet of Maggi was there. So I kept on waiting. I was super hungry, there was no other way out. So what happens is I kept on chatting with the customer service representative and he kept on assuring me that you know, he's going to arrive, don't worry, your food will be there. Then what happens when 60 or 70 minutes get over? I get a call from Swiggy and he tells me that somebody just snatched the food packets from the guy. He was trying to come to your place, but this is what happened. So what can I do to help you? I said, I am hungry. Can you give me food? Can you do that? And he started laughing. He very politely said, sorry, ma', am, I cannot do anything. And I said, you kept me waiting for 70 minutes just to tell me that this is happening. The delivery agent would have been more prompt. You could have had a communication with the delivery agent and tried to understand if he's in a situation, but you did not do that. So what do I do with this? I'm sorry, ma', am, I really don't know what to do with this. And I was so famished, I could not understand what else to say. And he kept on apologizing. He said, please ma', am, I assure you we'll give you discount coupons. I said, no, I don't want that. I want food. And that's exactly what I'm saying at that moment. You need to be treated on priority. Doesn't matter you're getting discount or you're getting some extra perks, you need to be treated on priority. So empathy is of course important, but prioritizing the situation is equally important, I personally believe. Yeah, exactly. Mithla and moving on. Mithla, since you come from a background in data centers, I would like to understand what does customer experience or a good customer experience within this space looks like. If you could help the listeners understand how. Because this might be a different space for a lot of people. Right. We have been talking about CX within fintech, CX within education. This is also a new and exciting space to talk about. So if you could just break it down, what does it look like? Basically, CX within data centers. So I'll tell you, CX came in picture in other industries much before it came in data center and I'll tell you why. In a data center, we are the facility provider. Companies would bring in their servers, their racks and place them in my data center and I'll charge them for that. Now bringing servers in the rack and placing them in my data center is big cost and it's one time. So generally these contracts are long term contracts because you don't want to move your IT equipments every year to different locations and different data centers. So the contracts are generally for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and likewise. So the data center providers were at ease that I have 10 years contract where my customer is going to go, it's okay, I can so later with the competition. What we have understood is customers now are willing to take out their equipments and place somewhere else. If the experience is Joe paradise, if they're not treated well, if your uptime is not in accordance to customer expectations, they're okay moving out, they're okay spending more for the better experience. And that's when and that's where the customer experience came. In data center industry it's barely six, seven, eight years, not more than that for sure. Now what is happening is now every data center is trying to make sure that customer feels prioritize, customers are heard, customers are treated well. In BTX also we have certain core values and principles that we follow. I'll name a few. One is integrity like be honest and be transparent to your customer. If something goes wrong in the data center, if something fails, you gave Swiggy example, right? If somebody calls you and tells you okay, we have failed and this is the problem, you're in a position to understand. But if you try to hide and pass time then your customer won't bear that spare you for that. So if something fails in a data center, it's always advisable to communicate that transparently to your customer. They will definitely understand. So integrity, transparency is very important when it comes to core values of customer experience in data center industry. Equally important is customer centricity. Like I said that in data center it was more of profit centricity before that. My customer is there for five years, 10 years, where are they going to go? That was the attitude. But now the shift has happened to customer centricity. Customer first, that is what we always call it as put your foot in their shoe and understand how the downtime feels like, how the business impact looks like. You will understand why are they panicking and then you will act on priority on those particular problems. Then also comes accountability. In BDX and all departments, not just for us, everyone is accountable for customers. Everybody. If customer is in problem, no matter which department you are, CX is customer facing. But at the same time operations, finance it. Everybody is working to resolve the problem. So everyone is accountable to the customer customer. So accountability becomes one of the major core value that we have. And this is not just bvx I'm talking about in general CX in the data center industry, integrity, accountability, customer centricity and empathy is equally important. Last but not the least is consistency. I am Giving certain experience today and then tomorrow. Experience is completely different day after tomorrow. Again, my mood is good, so I'm treating my customer very nicely. That doesn't work. Your experience has to be consistent. The way you treat your customers, the way you talk to them, the way you interact and engage with them, and the way you provide your services to them. Now, engagement is one piece, but your product, your services, even the performance. Consistency is also important. If I'm talking to my customer very nicely, but there is downtime every second day, then there is no consistency. Customer is not going to wait in my data center because I talk to them with empathy. So what matters is consistency in both in the performance as well as in the engagement. So these are basically four or five top core values or principles those data center CX are generally following. Right? And since you mentioned consistency, Mitla, which is the key to getting to the heart of everything, how are you looking at conversational continuity in that sense? And also ensuring that the context of the conversation does not keep on shifting? Because what happens as a customer, we are often feeling lost. Because when I'm picking up the thread with another agent, with another member of the team, I might feel that I have to repeat myself. I have to explain the problem again. So what is your take on this? Like conversational continuity, contextual, how important is all of that? For conversational continuity and contextual continuity, what matters is personalization. If there is a customer, why that customer is reaching out to you? See, your agents are generally on shift, so one would replace another in different shift and your customer would call in different shift and if he has to repeat what is the problem? Then there is a problem with you. So personalization to the extent that all the notes are well noted and passed to the different agent, the second agent who is in the shift are more important and the most important when you are dealing with customers. I'll give you an example. I called one of the major clothing brand in Iot and it's a shopping site basically and I told him that I ordered Levi's but I've got something else, it doesn't have Levi's tag, it looks locally made, cheap quality and I need an exchange. So he said okay, we will arrange a call back and blah blah blah after that. I got a call after half an hour and the agent is asking me may I know what is the problem? I was like, I've spent 2,000 rupees or 3,000 rupees to buy a jeans which was supposed to be Levice but is not. It's Some cheap quality jeans. And now you're asking what is the problem? You don't even know your person doesn't inform you what is the problem? And that is about 2,3000. But that's about my sentiment. Same with the business. It could be about $1 million deal. But it's more about the sentiment that I am not treated well. How can they not treat me well? How can they not prioritize it? How can they not pass my information? Why do I have to repeat it? And all these factors impact experience majorly. I'll give you an example. In a data center industry, we have done personalization to the extent that in bdx, you call, your number is registered with us, you will be answered with your name like hi, Garima, how can I help you? You are from XYZ company. How are you doing today? So we know are you calling from. We know which company you are in, we know where and which data center you're located in and what are your assets. With us, you just name it and we have everything on click. And if I change and some other agent comes, all the notes are taken on the system on our CRM. So the next agent would pick up the communication or the conversation from where I have left. It's not starting all over again. And that makes difference. I have personally experienced it a lot. Absolutely. And you mentioned analyzing the sentiment of the customer also. Right. Do you think in all of this, and especially in this effort to maintain, preserve conversational continuity, context, consistency in the communication, how important it is to analyze very carefully what kind of contact center software. Software or platform you are deploying for your business, what potential it holds in terms of analyzing customer sentiments, their frustrations, like how well it is documenting that. Because I think we know for a fact that most businesses today are not looking at contact centers as cost centers anymore. They're looking at contact centers as treasure trove of information about the customer. Right. Yeah. What exactly the customer wants, what is it that is troubling him or her? Where is he or she stuck? So in that sense, what is your message for businesses in terms of analyzing what platform to go for and how and why it matters? Okay. See, when we talk about contact centers, there are broadly two types of contact center. One is on premise, which is a traditional contact center. And now everybody's moving to the cloud, which is a cloud as a solution contact center. So what happens is when you're going to cloud contact center, which we call ccaas, in that contact center as a service, in that platform, you get lot of enablements and lot of plugins like AI and ML. When we are talking about AI, it comes with lot of additional features like workforce management, change management, sentiment analysis, language analysis, then natural language processing. Right? So when this all comes, you or your agents are enabled to treat customer better because they know how customers is reacting, how the modulation is working with customer, if he's frustrated, if he's happy, he's sad, he's angry. The modulation is also tagged. The automation or the AIML has reached to the extent where my voice is also analyzed. If I'm talking in panic, if I'm talking in sense angrily, if I'm sad, the voice modulations are also traced. Again we will come to personalization. When we are talking about sentiment analysis, what do you do after you analyze the sentiment? You tailored the solution, you tailored the experience for the customer. That's why sentiment analysis and all of the factors that I explained, the voice modulation analysis or the competitive analysis, the workforce management, all of this plays very pivotal role when it comes to AI, ML in contact center as a service on cloud. But in On Prem, these factors were not there. Plus it's all on the premises. So it was taking a lot of space and efforts. That's the reason people are moving from On Prem to cloud. Not only because it doesn't take space, but majorly because it comes with a lot of value added services like sentiment analysis. Right. And Mithla, since you mentioned that customer experience as a concept came much later in the data center space, right? So now when we're talking about innovations and technologies, new technologies like I wouldn't say AI is new or generative AI is new, but there's a lot more emphasis on these concepts now, these technologies now. So how are you looking at these technologies coming into the picture when it comes to your industry and how well are people adjusting to the idea? What are they trying to do? How are you as a senior member of the team, as part of the leadership team, trying to introduce CX innovations to the board members and how are you trying to bridge that gap? Because a new technology coming in does not mean that it will be easily understood by the team itself, by the people who are driving these changes and will be implemented successfully, where do you see the gaps and how are you trying to address it at the moment? Right. So first let's talk about if there is a technology in data center industry, what are the technology we are looking for? What are the features of technology we are looking for? So if I want to implement any new technology, right? I'll check three, four major features. One is, is it scalable? The technology that I'm bringing in, is it scalable? As my need scales up, as my want scales up, as my business scales up, is it giving me value for money? Is it worth investing in that particular technology? Before pitching it to my management, I have to ask these questions to myself then what it brings, how it reduces efforts and time that we are investing and we channelize those efforts and time for better works. How this automation or this technology will reduce my efforts and my customers efforts to reach to me, that is more important now when I want to pitch these innovations or these technologies to management, it's never easy. Be it any sector, be it any industry, it's never easy to pitch anything and ask for new investment. But if I have to think about it, when I plan to pitch something, I would definitely first think what are the goals and objectives for this year? When it comes to management, what do they want in this year? There is a goal of a client company or mission, vision and goal of a company and then there is goals and objective for this financial year. So what my boss or my management want to achieve in this year accordingly, what is the problem? Does this problem fit into their priority? What would be the solution? If say for example the problem is customer is calling me but there are less number of agents so they're not customers are not able to reach me in time. They're on hold for quite a lot of time. Now I go to my management and I say that they're on hold for long term. So I have to have a solution. I just can't go with the problem. And what could be the solution? The solution could be the chatbot. When I say okay, the solution is chatbot, now I also have to explain them what is the roi. They'll say why should I invest in Chatbot? Because it's always investors mind. So why do I invest in Chatbot? Even that question was asked to me in BDX and my answer was if a contact center the customers are on hold, that is impacting the experience that we want to offer. I bring in the chatbot agent. Efforts are reduced, the waiting time is reduced. Plus the queries are answered very quickly and filtered in a way that agents will only be brought in where human touch and human interaction is must. And the idea was welcomed. Then I explained everything. I explained ROI now comes what is the risk? If we implement this particular technology, what would be the risk? How am I planning to address that risk? When I make a plan of Any innovation implementation considering risk also becomes very, very important. And at the end of the plan, I personally would consider what questions my management can ask me and I would be ready for that. So pitching new ideas to management starts right from introspecting myself that why and what I want to do, to forecasting what questions I could be asked. It's the overall, the whole journey, it's not going to be easy. Absolutely, Mithila. And in this context itself, I want to understand, like going forward, I wouldn't want to discuss the future of customer experience with you because I think a lot of things are happening. Everyone is trying to understand and navigate through it. But what are some of the trends you're closely looking at and you feel that they're going to make a huge difference in the next five years. The technology that we're talking about, it's always evolving past five years to now and to the next five years. Things are changing rapidly. So technology is assistive to human efforts. It's not replaceable to humans. And then what happens is basically what I am personally seeing what's happening and what is going to happen in five years. Automation is going to take a space. Lot of things would be automated so customers calling us and writing emails would be automated to accessing the chatbot or accessing the customer portal and raising the query there and getting ticket number immediately so that I could track my progress, I don't have to write and wait for the ticket number. So then automation is happening and that is going to go a leg further. Then the personalization. Today personalization is well done. And if it's going to be done in a hybrid manner and micromanor, the agents or the contact center where I call in know my name, know where I'm calling from, they know what I have purchased, all the data is with them and further to that with aiml. Right. The trend analysis is also going to be done in next five years and they would come up with predictive analysis. Like what could be my problem? What are the trains that I have been calling for? What would be the dissatisfaction I'm facing? So the predictive analysis is something that is also very important. Then comes natural language processing that is definitely going to take its place in next five years. It will understand multi languages, it will understand what human or the customer is trying to communicate and act accordingly. And it will also be in a position to converse in different languages, not just English and Hindi or English and French or English and German. In India, the progress is so, so well that the AIs and chatbots are now I have seen in Tamil, in Telugu, in Marathi, in Hindi, in Gujarati. That's what I'm talking about. In five years this is all is going to be ready which we are already seeing it coming. Right? It's going to be there in next five years. And the icing on the top is sentiment analysis. Today the sentiment analysis is done on the call, on the fly, on the emails. But it is going to be deep dived in future and the solutions or the engagement will be tailor made as per the sentiment analysis. The agents and your bots will be trained and equipped to adjust and adapt the agility and flexibility adapt as per the situation and provide tailor made solution to all the customers and their requirements. So I see after five years technology is definitely going to enable and put lot of sense in evolving cx. Absolutely. Mitla, these are excellent points and especially I love the fact that you highlighted that in a country as diverse as India, language must never be a barrier when it comes to helping customers. Right? I am feeling in Hindi but I have to talk in English. It's very frustrating. It could be very frustrating for people in Hindi and translate them into English. That's frustrating. Exactly. So Mithila, we were talking about customer experience within the data center space, right? But help me understand how do you look at customer experience within VDX and what is it that you're doing differently to improve customer experiences day in and day out. Right. So what you want to improve needs to be measurable. If it's not measurable then there is no point. So to measure how my customer experience is in how we are delivering in BDX we have three pillars. One is customer feedback which is like everyone is using CSAT and nps. That's nothing new about it. We will use CSAT on a quarterly basis. We reach out to customers with CSAT data and try and understand what went wrong and then come back, decide collectively what better we should be doing then go to management for the approval that you know these are the strategies we are trying to change. CSAT generally is followed by everybody. We have something like Health Dashboard. This is a unique feature that we have in Customer experience and bdx. What does that mean? Is in this particular quarter how many incidents happened on this particular customer? Like customer abc, how many incidents happened? How many times the minimum time to resolve was breached? How many times the SLA was breached? How many times the customer called or customer reached out to me but I delayed the information or customer had to repetitively remind me of his query. All of this is captured in customer dashboard and basis that we give color to customers like green, amber and red. And where red is danger, like customer may churn or customer is extremely unhappy with you. So amber and red are something where service managers or customer success managers are deployed to work with customer and try and understand what could be done better. While greens are where you just need to little more push and keep them happy because they are satisfied with you. But taking care of amber and red customer health dashboard helps me a lot. And third and most important is churn analysis. Like after customer dashboard, I know who probably would churn and then if they churn, analyzing the reasons behind their churn, seeking that feedback and implementing that and making sure that doesn't happen or repeat in other customers also matters a lot. So I think these three I personally would take care of. I think this is a brilliant initiative, Mithila. And also in a way, you are simplifying it for the entire team, right? You're keeping it very simple that, okay, this person needs just a nudge. Maybe we need to attend more to another person. So I think this is a great idea and people should pay attention to this. How do you prioritize what to do first? And I think in that sense it's a great initiative also. Mithila, we have been talking about customer experience from that perspective that every single customer understands. What are we talking about and are we addressing them in this conversation? Right. Are we actually addressing their frustrations and pain points in that sense? There are people outside the industry who would want to be a part of the industry, but don't know where to begin from. Maybe like how you transitioned from a different role to this particular role. And the other side of the story is there are freshers, beginners who just want to try out any industry that gives them the space to do that. So newcomers in that sense, like not just people who are freshers, who are just starting out the career, but also people who are transitioning from one industry to customer experience. What is your message from them? Let's look at newcomers in that sense, in that holistic sense. Because you are new to the industry. What is it going to look like for you? What should you look forward to, why you should try this? That's what I want to understand from you. That's very interesting because generally when I go out and I talk about customer experience pressures, particularly would think, okay, it's about contact center, it's about call center. Customer experience is not just call center, first of all, it's much more and way beyond that. It's about how you deal with your customers, how you address their pain points, how you interact and engage, how you make them feel home. That is customer experience, not just calling and saying good morning and how may I help you? Right? So any newcomer, be it fresher or be it experienced person from different industry, wants to enter in CX community in any industry. I personally feel if you have eyes and ears for customers and if you feel their pain, if you can step in their shoe, then you're welcome. But if you're rigid, you are an introvert person, you don't want to understand how it feels, you're not somebody who's open for ideas and open for help. Then I think this is not the space for you. You will suffocate in this space because here you need to open up. Here you need lot of honesty, transparency to be able to talk to a lot of times to be able to make somebody talk and tell you what's wrong, right? And trust you. So that trust building is very important. If you think you are the person who can listen to customer patiently and problem solution is easy, listening to them and understanding problem is difficult. I personally believe and I have experienced. So if you can listen to them your home, you definitely should come to CX then second is understand the entire customer journey and touch point. Like right from signing the service order to the termination to the exit where all customer you think will reach out to you. Like giving you an example of ordering on Amazon. Why would I reach out to Amazon order, delivery, delay, return and exchange. If there is any complaint in my product or if I'm so happy then rating them. So these are the touch points in my journey of an ordering process. So somebody who's need to be open to understand what is the journey of a customer and what are the touch point where customer would reach out to you. I think there is one more which is. There are the two more which are very important. One is empathy. Now we are talking about empathy again. But if you, if you can be empathetic towards your customer, if you can hold the integrity which is honesty and transparency, then I think you're the right fit for CX community. Then the next and the probably the last is one is of course you need to work on feedbacks. What your customer is giving as a feedback or what your cross functions are giving you as a feedback. It could be positive or negative criticism, it could be plain feedback. You need to take that positively and you need to work upon it. I think these are some key address points that I would definitely tell Somebody to work upon when they decide to enter in cx. And CX is a vast community and it's always welcoming community. You just come and we will welcome you. We are not somebody different, wearing different hats and different heads. So anybody is welcome in cx. And I would say that anybody who's thinking about joining this space must connect with you and understand more from you about the industry. So I think these are great points, great insights, Amitila and it will definitely everyone who is listening to it and is curious about this space might find it very, very relevant and useful. So I think these are brilliant points and I'm sure our listeners would love to even understand more from you. They can connect with you on LinkedIn. I would urge them to connect with you and LinkedIn to have more conversations around this Mithla. And also to conclude with since you're part of so many discussions, you're meeting so many people, is there someone in particular you look up to and would love to spend more time with and understand from them about their journey and what is it that they're doing differently or someone who has influenced you and made an impact towards your way of thinking about cx? So for cx, right, if you ask me, I look for a company called Cisco Employee Engagement and cx. Nobody I have seen doing better than Cisco. So there is a person called John Terrell who's head of customer experience at Cisco. Given a chance, I would definitely like to spend some time with him, understand how he spends his day, what he thinks about his customers. I don't want to understand the bookish knowledge. I can read 10 books. But I would love to understand how he spent his day in working and in implementing his CX strategies in day to day life. And if I have to spend my time with another person, like if I have time remaining with me and I am asked, okay, spend some more time with somebody else, then that is definitely going to be my customer because nobody else can teach me and tell me the perspective that my customer can. So after I meet John Turrell, I'll definitely meet my customers and try to engage with them. This is lovely Mithla and I hope John listens to this conversation and maybe he reaches out to you. So thank you so much Mithla for joining me today. It's been amazing listening to you, learning from you and I'm sure people will find a lot of value in this episode. And thank you so much once again. Thanks a lot. You gave me chance to talk about something which is very close to my heart. So thanks to you for inviting me. Thank you for listening to Humans of cx, a podcast brought to you by Ozonetel. 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