At yellowslice, we understand how users become customers and the importance of customer experience in UX Design. This is why this episode of Yellow Insight is very unique. We have focused solely on design for a while now but are not just honing designers. We are building problem solvers across all facets so you get the best out of your collaboration and partnership with us.
It was an interactive session from the beginning to the end. The speaker allowed us to go with the flow, just like the creativity we slice out to help people. He could talk on and on if there was no time restraint; that’s how knowledgeable he is.
Who is he?
Pavan Chandra Boggarapu is a business and product leader who has over two decades of experience shaping the tech landscape. He’s not just a leader; he’s a visionary who has witnessed the evolution of products from mere concepts to global figures.
Starting out as a software engineer and analyst, one would expect a code geek and wizard. While he still has his juice as an engineer, he has chosen to spread that across other fields in the tech space. He is a man with potential and vision; staying as a software engineer might not do justice to what he has to offer.
And that is how we have a product leader and a business manager with experience in the full development cycle of a product. He has experience in various industries, including traditional and SaaS, such as Telecom, Retail, E-commerce, EdTech, Sales, Telematics, and ERP. So you can call him an all-rounder.
Currently, he is with Icertis as the Vice President of Product management. Just before his engagement with Icertis, he was working with upGrad. Most interestingly, he was able to work on Acquisition, Growth, Payments, and Immersive Learning Experiences within upGrad, a brand with about 10+ Million Users.
As we all know, because of how fast the digital space is evolving, he has always taken it upon himself to upskill, so we have him as an AI/ML expert. He uses artificial intelligence and machine language to streamline his workload and make sure his team members are on board with him.
Prepare to be inspired as Pavan Chandra unravels the secrets of building products that meet expectations and redefine them for the best customer experience.
Customer Experience: How is it Valuable to your business?
As we all know, customer experience is the overall perception a user gets from using a product or service. Pavan explained the 360-degree touchpoint of CX. It explains how and where the customer gets their experience, and it cuts across all the teams in an organization.
- Sales
- Marketing,
- Support
- Legal
- Tech etc.
This already debunks the fact that a successful customer experience is solely based on the UI and UX. In fact, they are one of the touchpoints, but they are very important.
In order to get the loyalty, advocacy, retention, and engagement we seek out of CX, we need to understand the peculiarities of each industry and organization. The strategies for Medtech might not be suitable for EdTech.
“So every company and every domain have different kind of strategies in order to find a balance, how to improve the customer experience as a whole” — Pavan Chandra.
How to build the perfect experience for your customers
As said earlier, the UX team is important. Pavan started by talking about the three main teams:
- Product Design
- Product Engineering
- Product Management
As an individual in any of these three teams, you should be very conversant with other teams like support, business, and legal teams. He buttressed the fact that whenever something goes wrong in a design, the designers or engineering guys won’t relate directly to the users. So, if they are not in tune with the customer support team, the CS team becomes clueless, which means there are no solutions to the problems the customers are facing.
He suggested a “design critic” session, which he has used over the years and has worked for him. In this session, the product managers bring on everyone working on a project—UX, UI, Business, Support, Finance, etc. It is an opportunity for the non-tech team to look at the product and tell the designers what is lacking and what is not in a healthy way. It will bring the team together and put them on the same page.
Another thing is knowing and differentiating B2B from B2C customers. Pavan described it as a “big elephant” we are missing. He explained that as designers or product managers, we should be able to switch our hats when working with B2C and B2B projects. He highlighted some key differences to take note of:
B2B |
B2C |
| Designers have access to the stakeholders, but it is not at their will or freedom. | Designers have the luxury of direct access to the customers(Stakeholders). |
| There is no flexibility in terms of changes and updates because there is a lot at stake when it comes to changes in the process. | There is flexibility for changes and updates since the data needed are easily gotten from the customer. |
| There are many stakeholders in B2B, so there is no specific mechanism to relate to them. | There is control over the mechanism for customer relations. |
| They have advisory boards for customer experience, such as account managers, customer success, etc., which guarantees meeting the KPIs. | The customers are the advisory board and advocates, so the designers have much to do to meet the design’s KPI. |
The Interactive session
Pawan’s message for the evening was short but insightful. It opened the ground for many question-and-answer sessions, which added glamour to the discussion.
Kishor’s first question was about knowing what it takes to be the VP of Product at UpGrad. One thing that stood out in his answer was that he noticed three things in a company:
- Product led growth (PLG)
- Sales led growth (SLG)
- Marketing led growth (MLG)
He said that over time, most companies have focused on just one side of led growth, but things have changed in the past three to four years. Many companies are now focusing on three areas, which means dividing their team of designers, engineers and product managers so they can have all sides running to ensure that the quality of their services remains intact.
This explanation was like a bullet: short and hit the target!
Kishor: What are the strategies for rolling out a product or launching a feature?
Pavan: I will answer this question from the B2C aspect of Upgrad. Each product has a dedicated part, including an acquisition part, billing part, and learning experience part. So, there is an experimentation phase for some customers before releasing it to all users. From the experiment, we have expectations based on impact, value, benefit, and cost. These expectations are for all dedicated parts before launching.
The business team and the product managers do certain calculations to determine the benefits we’ll receive. They have goals. For example, today, I have a hundred visitors coming to this respective page, and I want this page to have 150 visitors coming tomorrow. So, they develop strategies for meeting their goals, which can include improving SEO and meeting with the performance marketing team to obtain data.
As I said earlier, A/B Testing is a must. Based on data facts, A/B experimentation will clearly tell you what you should do before the feature development. Then, these inputs are given to the design team to ensure the design is also understandable and how the experience should look. We launch and wait for feedback to validate the metrics and expectations, so if it fails, we do not roll out 100% of the feature.
Kishor: There are two questions. The first one is how you conduct user research for the untapped market and research for improvement. The second one is, from the UX testing point of view, what tools, methods, and processes do you use?
Pavan: Great question! So, in untapped markets, we do not take big risks. In my previous experiences, UX research for improvements, we tend to go with the things that are working well in the majority of the market. So, we ask our UX designers to research that market and try to understand the patterns.
Then, we cross-examine whether the patterns the UX research has given us match the existing product. If they don’t match, we tend to take a call to change some of the product guidelines, such as how it will look and work, and then launch it over there.
In my experience, only the Middle East market will need some kind of customization in terms of the font, looking from right to left and left to right. Other than that, most of the products would look the same when you tap across the markets.
To answer your second question, I will use my experience at UG World. There was no design language(system), so I had to develop a language for the team to ensure uniformity across all experiences. It had to be there to ensure discipline, and I made it so that the designers did not have to learn a totally new concept; it was based on what they knew as designers.
The second step was to build a pattern for all projects. The UX research is the first step, followed by recommendations from the UX designers. The UI team will then contribute their creativity in terms of font, colours, etc.
The third step is design criticism—a healthy conversation between the design and product teams to ensure alignment. Then, we have design Validation from the developers to ensure that the design and the developed work are in sync. This step also addresses any gap between the developers and the designers.
Finally, there is a group validation process where the product manager and the product designer sit together and validate everything to determine whether everyone is satisfied and whether the product should be rolled out as part of an experimentation plan.
That brings us to the end of a truly enriching moment with Pavan Chandra. You can access it here to get the full content. So, we will leave you with this:
“You cannot run in style because I know there’s a lot of pressure in the market to keep your numbers up. You cannot compromise on quality. And that’s where you have to take the measure of creating the parts, the dedicated structures for your design.” — Pavan Chandra.
