The pandemic has brought about a number of big changes, so perhaps it’s no surprise that one of these is a significant shift in consumer behaviour. As with much of the modern world, predictability (and carefully curated customer profiles) has been thrown out the window, and organisations face the constant uncertainty of new demands and expectations, which shift daily.

The movement towards online channels is one of the biggest influences on the way customers interact with brands, and McKinsey reports that digital customer interactions have been accelerated by four years in APAC.

In response, digital offerings have progressed even faster, racing ahead more than a decade. To ensure customer experience (CX) is front and centre despite all this change, businesses must look to meet customers where they are, to deliver what they need. 

To gain a better understanding of what this means for organisations in Singapore, Zendesk partnered with research analyst firm Ecosystm to dive into CX challenges and initiatives for 2021. Our findings lined up perfectly with our global research about businesses’ CX investments and the message is clear: organisations investing in CX will reap business benefits, during and beyond the pandemic.

Consumer expectations are constantly shifting

In this “new normal” we keep talking about, digital strategies and data capabilities drive the customer experience. Increasingly, customers expect quick, simple and accessible support that can instantly provide the answers they need.

Whether this comes in the form of a self-help knowledge base, a reliable AI chatbot, or a quick message to a support agent, the key is being wherever your customers are, whenever they start asking a question. 

Also Read: A closer look at Zendesk: fostering better customer relationships for startups everywhere

A great way to identify these platforms is to think about how to accommodate customer preferences. In APAC, customers value speed, convenience and ease of use, which has resulted in a 66 per cent increase in average weekly social commerce tickets since the beginning of the year.

To respond to digital demands, more than half of businesses (57 per cent) in Singapore are placing a stronger emphasis on digital and omnichannel experiences, with these capabilities rising as a top CX priority. Identifying and adopting these emerging trends help businesses adapt to new touchpoints and bridge and maintain customer relationships no matter what this ongoing pandemic throws at us next.

Examining the role of CX beyond COVID-19

The main thing to remember here is this: good CX doesn’t stand still. It’s constantly moving alongside its customers’ expectations, expanding offerings and growing together. What is bleeding-edge today can be mass market next year, and in between these changes, CX allows businesses to remain grounded in customer-centricity, empowering them to constantly put the customer at the heart of everything they do. 

Ultimately, this drives great business outcomes, with 88 per cent of local businesses increasing CX spend expecting early recovery by mid-2021 (58 per cent), while others were unaffected (20 per cent) or have even improved their business (10 per cent) during the pandemic.

On the flip side, 88 per cent of others that stagnate and decrease CX spend are seeing much later recovery timelines. If you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of the coin, start exploring the investments you need to create exceptional experiences today.

One business that knows this well is our customer Carousell. The e-commerce marketplace invests heavily in both internal and external knowledge bases and AI, which dramatically increases agent efficiency. When COVID-19 hit, Carousell was able to quickly develop self-service content to address their customers’ key questions and concerns. 

Superior CX adds real value to your customers. Importantly, these interactions enhance customer trust and loyalty, propelling business recovery and growth out of the pandemic.

Also Read: Undeterred by losing its largest customer, DRVR secures funding to grow its fleet analytics platform

Best practices to leverage CX for business growth

By leveraging CX, businesses can move quickly to set themselves up for fast growth in 2021. It starts with making the most of current conditions to distinguish your organisation’s superior support and services. Here are some best practices that can guide your investments and plans:

View CX agility as a key competitive advantage

Organisations with customer-centric agility work off a dynamic feedback loop, constantly listening to customers and responding by adjusting to meet their needs. As a result, they experience better outcomes, such as the continuous business improvement seen by two-thirds of Singapore organisations.

This trend is echoed across the region – our earlier research in partnership with ESG indicated that companies with the most mature CX capabilities saw were 10.8 times more likely than their less mature counterparts to have significantly grown customer spend, even during the pandemic. 

Tap into tools to power your digital strategy

A successful digital strategy requires a three-pronged approach: technology, people and processes. These work together to create the best digital experiences. Training support agents is important, but businesses must pair this with the right technology investments to be able to provide personalised and optimised CX.

Close to half of Singapore businesses (46 per cent) are already prioritising staff training, but only 30 per cent focus on improving CX technologies, which may hinder them from reaching maximum CX potential. 

Automation and AI to stay ahead

AI tools boost support performance by delivering personalised customer experiences. Across APAC, 43 per cent of those with the most mature CX capabilities are making use of automated methods, such as chatbots, to build and update cross-channel customer profiles.

To meet evolving customer demands, businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve must be the early adopters of these advanced solutions.

Also Read: Humanising customer experience is the best way to build loyalty in a post-COVID-19 world

Regardless of your industry, company size, or business model, your customers should always sit at the heart of what you do. Customers form the foundation of your business, and long-term relationships based on genuine value and strong loyalty will always bring benefit. So look to creating the best experiences that put your customers first – and quickly, you’ll see the outcomes.

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Image credit: Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash

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If social media juggernauts like Facebook are known for anything, it is for building communities, bridging people, and amplifying voices that can impact the world meaningfully. In order to fortify this mission and help uplift more communities, Facebook recently launched a six-month Community Accelerator programme that aims to equip community leaders with the training, membership, and funding necessary for their respective community’s growth.

The goal of the programme is to help enable community leaders to understand and address their needs in sustaining and strengthening their communities, while establishing and managing strategic relationships with key partners — all to bolster and embolden their efforts.

“Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. We started the Community Accelerator programme to help community leaders on Facebook grow and sustain meaningful communities that have a positive impact on the world,” said Grace Clapham, Facebook’s Head of Community Partnerships APAC.

Also read: Bolstering healthtech: Thailand’s bid to become Asia’s medical hub

As such, last December 18, thirteen communities from the first cohort have graduated from the programme. The communities from Asia Pacific — particularly from countries like Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines — who finished the programme marked their virtual graduation ceremony with presentations at the inaugural Community Accelerator Demo Day. Ranging from food security projects for rural children to education initiatives for people living with disabilities, the communities that have completed the programme show dynamic range and have proven to provide positive impact to different communities all over the world.

“Undaunted by the challenges COVID-19 has presented to them, we are proud to see how participant community leaders have taken learnings from the programme, built connections with other leaders to help them achieve and even surpassed their initial goals. Our heartiest congratulations to all the participants and we look forward to seeing their continued success,” Clapham added.

13 communities who finished the six-month programme

1. #MentalHealthPH was created in 2016 to promote and protect mental health in the Philippines through the use of social media and digital technology. The community focuses on creating a safer digital space for every Filipino with the vision of creating a mentally healthy community for all. #MentalHealthPH’s programs and advocacy reach 40,000+ followers, connecting volunteers, partners, influencers and supporters through virtual and on-ground activities.

2. In 2009, Ayesha started Advancement for Rural Kids (ARK) to partner with farmers and fisherfolk to solve hunger, get kids back to school and create a self-sustaining future. Starting with ARK’s 5-cent School Lunch, farmers and changemakers co-create and co-invest in a path for communities in need to stand on their own. With 16 partner communities and one million 5-cent lunches, ARK zeroed out malnutrition, brought 5,000+ kids to school, and created new economies for a hopeful future.

3. In 2017, BEAGIVER was founded to provide individuals and organizations opportunities to make social impact in their communities. It has since become a movement that champions education for impoverished children by providing school bags, supplies and scholarships, and supporting other education-related projects. The movement has reached 67,000+ school children in 200 communities in the Philippines and has launched other projects to empower communities.

4. In 2017, Maria Korina started Filipina Homebased Moms (FHMoms) to help mothers obtain financial security and personal growth by helping women find home-based livelihood opportunities. Starting as a Facebook community, it has grown into a platform offering e-learning, ecommerce and job matching opportunities. FHMoms support its 209,000 members with free webinars, computer rent-to-own, job opportunities and giveaways.

5. Yohana Habsari started Indonesian Babywearers after finding relief from her postpartum depression through babywearing. It is now a community that empowers parents by promoting positive learning habits and ethics in everyday life. Its 108,000+ members have learned about babywearing and connect through events on parenting topics through local chapters in multiple cities around the country.

Also read: Tunas Farm raises pre-seed funding from Gayo Capital to launch its urban farming technology

6. Lack of education is one of the leading causes of unemployment for people with disabilities in Thailand. To help solve the problem, Chatchai Aphibanpoonpon started LearnNaiDee, a program to improve education for people with disabilities to unleash their full potential in life. Since its launch, 600+ students with disabilities have found their path to higher education through their Facebook page, Group, and annual offline-events.

7. Local Alike was established in 2011 to develop, empower and connect Thai tourism communities to the world. 300 villages across Thailand successfully and sustainably run their community-based tourism business. The community works with 150 villages, generating more than 2M USD in tourism income for them.

8. Nur Yana Yirah founded MotherHope Indonesia (MHI) after being frustrated with the lack of family support when experiencing postpartum depression. It is now a safe place for moms and promotes perinatal mental health literacy to support mothers and families affected by perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. Through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, 33,000+ members have been educated and supported by MHI and some members have become mental health professionals.

9. Kanpassorn Surivasangpetch started Ooca in 2016 to help people through the stigma of mental health by connecting people to a psychologist and psychiatrist anonymously through an online video call platform. Ooca has become the leading platform to help people through stigma and inaccessibility, while also helping mental health professionals better connect with their clients. 72,000 people are registered on the Ooca platform and 6000+ people have received online help.

10. Ripple GI started in 2016 to connect young Australians with purpose-driven career development opportunities and increase their civic participation. It now supports purpose-driven young people to harness their agency and create impact in every sphere of their lives. Ripple helps 10,000+ members create impact by matching them with thousands of purposeful career opportunities, training them to build communities and lead youth voter drives.

11. In 2019, Sepri Andi started Social Connect in Indonesia to build affordable access to mental health knowledge, resources, and consultation for less than 5 USD per month. Social Connect has become a friendly place where mental health survivors share their stories, sign up for a class, get consultation, and receive help. Its 5000+ members have given back through a variety of projects, such as writing articles, hosting online seminars, offering consultations, and creating a support group to help mental health survivors get better and recover.

12. Young Pride Club was established by Best Chitsanupong in 2018 and supported by WSC CMU to provide a safe learning space for young people interested in gender equality and the LGBT+ community. The community provides on the ground and online activism activities to develop leadership, participation, and cooperation for gender equality and diversity advocacy. It has 20,000 followers and has developed 50+ young LGBT+ leaders across 4 regions of Thailand, collaborating with 50+ NGOs and organized Chiang Mai Pride with 1,000 participants.

13. Seniors make up 20% of the Thai population. Within this demographic, 80% are active seniors, but are often excluded, leading to boredom, depression, and health issues. YOUNGHAPPY helps seniors maintain an active lifestyle that promotes their self-esteem, keeps them engaged with their peers, and supports their wellbeing. 60,000 members of the community and 5,000+ elderly participate in their activities, helping to increase WHO’s active ageing index by 15% higher than Thailand’s average.

Having received growth-related training, hands-on mentorship, and funds to grow their community and create impact, we can only expect great things to emerge from these communities.

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As shared in the 2020 e-Conomy SEA report, although the regional digital economy is set to hit US$300 billion by 2025, tech talent remains a key suppressor to growth in the region.

Amidst the competition for tech professionals among firms in the region, foodpanda CTO Benjamin Mann remarked the delivery giant does not face issues when hiring for tech positions.

Dishing out advice on how to hire and retain the best talent, the former CTO of Traveloka’s financial arm also emphasised the importance of team diversity and why micro-improvements represent the future of tech in the delivery industry.

In this second part of our interview with him, you will learn:

• How to cultivate an agile mindset and build a culture
• Using A/B testing effectively
• Working with customers’ feedback
• Notable trends in food delivery

Below are the edited excerpts from the interview.

How do you cultivate an agile mindset and build the culture of an engineering team that is so diverse?

I had a discussion around this topic previously with one of my bosses, who is the group CTO of Delivery Hero. We agreed that two key things need to occur to build a great tech team.

Firstly, you need to create an environment where engineering and product teams can work autonomously while achieving meaningful impact. Secondly, you should bring in people that thrive in a chaotic environment.

Also Read: foodpanda CTO: Why autonomy is important for developing agile tech teams

When I interview a candidate, I would tell them they need to be in love with chaos because that is how we operate. We work with many factors that are out of our control and no two days are ever the same. Every morning when I wake up, I am thinking about what unexpected things will happen today and how will we need to react!

Hence, what we’re trying to do – and I think we’re doing a pretty good job at – is giving our teams a relatively huge amount of autonomy to experiment.

An example of the emphasis on experimenting is through the A/B tests that we constantly do. What this helps is drive home the culture that we are not married entirely to results.

Were there instances when these A/B tests proved useful in identifying problems?

There was an instance where an engineering team created a feature that we thought was amazing. Everyone was so passionate about it and it was literally the best invention since sliced bread!

However, when we rolled it out in a controlled A/B test, it absolutely tanked. It obliterated all the major KPIs we had set out.

For large organisations, you usually go into damage control mode to salvage the situation. There would be lots of finger-pointing and blaming going on. However, this was not what we did. Instead, we gathered the entire engineering team and told them they had built a great product that we still strongly believe in.

However, our mistake was that we overlooked or discovered something about our user behaviour that we were not aware of before. Hence, we should not treat this as a failure and take the new learning points and go back to the drawing board to create an even better product.

If you can create a culture like this and make sure that it is practised rather than only written in documents, you would have great tech teams creating great products. Of course, there will always be areas where you can be better.

What other qualities do you empower your tech teams to have?

We want our engineers and product managers not only to obsess about the entire journey but also to understand how it works as a business and how their work impacts users.

One of my greatest pleasures that I get out of my role is when I am having a conversation with someone and he opens the foodpanda app and go, “Hey, you’re foodpanda right?” And he browses through the app and says, “I really love this feature. This is so smart and amazing!”

On the contrary, if you are getting negative feedback, it doesn’t feel good but I want my engineers to be part of this experience and understand the impact of their work.

Also Read: Top contributions this week: Views from Foodpanda APAC CEO, productivity tips and more

Through this, we will have a group of engineers that knows they’re working on something more impactful than normal. This cultivates a sense of responsibility for their work too.

Your tech teams will also understand how their customers are using their features. If you can combine these things, great things will happen in engineering.

Do you face any challenges when hiring for tech talent?

To be honest, we do not. I think what I realise when hiring is the importance of describing the culture that we have and the journey we are on.

We need to be transparent of where we are in the journey, what worked well and what didn’t and share this philosophy with the candidates.

My personal view is that every person that you meet in an interview is amazing at something. Our job is not to vet out the candidates and reject them. The base assumption as interviewers should be that an amazing person is about to come through the door and our job is to find the right place for that person in our organisation.

I explain to them that we want you in this organisation because we value certain aspects of your skills and at foodpanda, we have a real need for these talents to be applied for real-world problems.

With this approach, very few people would not be interested.

And the second part that I think we do really well in our hiring is that we believe we need to have diversity within our organisation.

I’m very keen to get people with little to no actual work experience to be part of our core engineering team. What we don’t do is pick a group of fresh grads and assign admin work for them. In engineering terms, this would mean writing documentation.

Also Read: Can Foodpanda really return to Vietnam?

That’s not going to work. We take someone that has the talent we desire in that aspect of engineering and embed them into the actual product engineering team. Although this represents a tough learning curve, the vast majority of our candidates want to put themselves out of the comfort zone and work on hard things.

To summarise, provide a good culture and work environment and have your teams work on hard and novel problems that require them to learn new things.

So far in my career, I have found that is a very good way to attract talent and more importantly, keep them.

What are some technological trends you could see happen in the next three to five years in the food delivery industry?

Three to five years is a very long time with regards to technology innovation. If you look at the food delivery industry, technologies within it were invented less than eight years ago. There’s literally no delivery platform worldwide operating on systems that existed 15 years ago.

In the foreseeable future, I do not expect something to completely revolutionise the industry. However, what I do predict is that certain technologies and advancements happening in various domains will have an impact on the micro-scale in many different stages of the user journey.

Certain technologies like machine learning, data science and even drones will slowly start changing how parts of the delivery system work. These changes will happen when such technologies have pervaded deep enough into the everyday usage that they can have a significant impact on how we deliver our goods.

Also Read: On-demand food delivery startup foodpanda Singapore now includes groceries, household items delivery, broadening lifestyle products category

These changes could result in small drops in delivery time. Hence, it will not be a sole revolutionary technology but rather micro improvements. For example, harnessing technologies like machine learning in certain inflexion points in the user journey could shave 10 seconds off our delivery time.

When accumulated, that is where we will see a more pronounced impact on the reduction of delivery times and an increase in customer satisfaction.

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Image Credit: foodpanda

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Navisteps, a Singapore-based expense and travel management startup, announced today it has raised US$1 million in pre-seed funding from angel investors that included Yasuhide Fujii, Partner at KPMG Advisory (Myanmar), and Takuya Aiba, CEO and Founder of SpringLiner.

As per a press release, the fresh funds will be utilised to bankroll market expansion in Asia and further develop its platform.

Navisteps was founded in 2019 by Ken Tan and Charmaine Lim after experiencing first-hand the issues of legacy expense reporting and business travel solutions. The duo brings in previous experience from Nomura Securities, Citicorp Investment Bank, Seedly, and Shopback to the startup.

The platform hopes to solve this challenge by helping businesses manage their spending by streamlining aspects of expense and travel management into an “easy-to-use and affordable platform”.

Companies can set up their travel and expense policies as well as criteria based approval on Navisteps, reducing time managers spend on reviewing business expenses and travel.

Also Read: Here are the 5 predictions for Southeast Asia’s travel industry trends post-COVID-19

Other core features include expense report automation, integrated online travel booking tool as well as an analytics dashboard to offer actionable insights.

“While expense and travel management solutions are not new, they traditionally target large enterprises. We hope to bring the benefits of expense and travel management solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through a subscription-based pricing model,” said Navisteps Co-founder Ken Tan.

In the upcoming year, the startup plans to roll out features that include new partner integrations, enhanced expense analytics for its clients, while expanding its team.

To help businesses tackle the uncertainties brought about by post-pandemic business travel, Navisteps is also looking to launch a flexible travel option that covers last minute trip cancellation.

The local startup is also partnering with Traveloka, allowing Navistep’s enterprise users access to Traveloka’s inventory of flights and accommodation.

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Image Credit: Navisteps

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Gift-giving can be quite complicated. In addition to the challenge of finding the right presents for our loved ones, there is always that possibility that they may not like what they have received –a situation that is equally confusing for the recipient. What to do with the gifts that they (secretly) do not enjoy?

Then things are getting more serious when we consider the environmental impact of gift-giving. In the US, in Christmas 2019 alone, US$15.2 billion was spent on unwanted gifts. Among surveyed respondents, only 31 per cent eventually decided to keep these unwanted gifts. A great number of them –31 per cent and 20 per cent– would prefer to forward the gifts to someone else or exchange them for something different.

Much closer to home in Singapore, the situation is quite similar: Half of Singapore customers admitted that they are not happy with the gifts they have received.

“To prevent such loss in economic value and environmental damage, cash is theoretically the most efficient solution. However, giving cash as a gift is crude, and could be seen as derogatory. Hence, many people have resorted to getting gift cards, which is a convenient way to gift while reducing economic waste. This explains the rapid growth trends in the gift card market,” Gratify CEO & CFO Dao Xiong Teng explains in an email to e27.

But even gift cards are not ideal.

“If we think about it, most people would remove the price tags and the receipts from their gifts before giving them out, so that the dollar value is not so glaringly in-your-face. Yet, ironically, for gift cards, the dollar value is practically the gift itself,” Teng continues. “What we need is a gift that is as flexible as a gift card, but without having the gift value blatantly apparent and crude.”

This is the opportunity that local startup Gratify aims to seize.

Also Read: Sembrani Nusantara Fund leads Series A round for Indonesia’s D2C shoe brand Brodo

Launched earlier this month, the startup builds a platform to enable customers to purchase and send gifts to their loved ones. But what sets them apart from other e-commerce platform is that they provide options for gift recipients to receive, swap the gifts, or donate it to a charity.

The platform works by enabling the customer to choose from a wide array of products on their platform. Once they have checked out and given the recipient’s details, the recipient will be notified and be given the options.

If they choose to not accept the gift, for whatever reason, they can opt to swap it with a more suitable one as available on the Gratify platform. They can also choose to donate the value of the gift to a charity organisation that the startup is partnering with.

Straight out of the campus

Gratify is another example of tech startups that came out of a class project in university. According to Teng, the platform was developed in a graduate entrepreneurship class taught by Prof. Francis Yeoh at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

“Our class project was rated as the top of the entrepreneurship class with commendable reviews from the professor and from fellow coursemates alike. After the semester break, we continued working on the project and improving upon it. Seeing our dedication and after a very competitive selection process, the NUS School of Computing awarded Gratify with the Innovation and Enterprise Practicum Grant 2021,” he elaborates.

The idea for the platform itself was conceived during the Circuit Breaker period in Singapore when gift-giving continued to become “physical symbol of social bonds” between people.

In promoting the platform, the Gratify team focusses its marketing efforts on social media, targeting last-minute gift purchases by tech-savvy users aged 20 to 45.

“We are initially targeting to have a fan base of at least 100 users who will be strong advocates of our idea, and tap on their feedbacks to perfect the gift experience for users,” Teng says.

“It is vitally important that we are able to deliver the highest quality of gift experience such that the gifters will repeat their purchase and that the recipients will become gifters, thereby increasing our customer lifetime value. We must be remarkable enough such that we will be the first that comes to mind when our customers need to buy gifts,” he continues.

Also Read: Sembrani Nusantara Fund debuts with a US$2M investment into Indonesia’s made-to-order drinks brand Haus!

A gift that keeps on giving

Gratify was founded by a team of four co-founders: In addition to Teng, there is also Harish Venkatesan (CTO), Joy Chia (CPO), and Sudarshan Srivatsan (COO).

The startup has not raised any seed funding yet, but it has recently received an entrepreneurship grant from NUS School of Computing.

For 2021, Gratify wants to focus on improving the user experience of its platform. It plans to add more variety to its gifts offerings by including restaurants, spas, hotels and other experiences.

“We believe gifting experiences can be as fulfilling as gifting physical items. We will also be providing these merchants with digital tools to sell gift cards and track them easily,” Teng closes.

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Image Credit: Gratify

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