Interviewer:
You pointed out empathy is very important to the for a marketing person. How does that you know, for example play out in how you would build a website for the Taj?
Interviewee:
Right. So you go in with certain assumptions, right? And everyone has their implicit biases and understandings of how the world works,
Interviewer:
Right.
Interviewee:
But ultimately, you're designing a product for a person who is completely different, right? So if you look at Taj, for in sense it's a luxury customer, by which I mean there are certain parameters right and there are certain Let's say for in sense the majority of your leash a customers are in the age group of 45 to 65 plus and if I'm a 30-year-old making the decision on how to make that website, my cultural context and my experiences are very different from
what they as are right. So for me what is obvious on in terms of website design, like I know that I have to put the cursor here and search may not necessarily be obvious for someone from a different cultural context. Therefore it is very important that you try to put yourself in their shoes. And the good thing about digital is that you have great tools to back you up you have your logical engineering training your own assumptions, and a completely or not
necessarily completely different but an allied set of information straight for a customer, right which helps you define and I creatively fine tune the product.
Interviewer:
So many service brands work so hard to build loyalty For their brands and give out heavy discounts or benefits to the customers to ensure that there is some kind of loyalty that was built. Firstly, from a business perspective, I want to understand why is loyalty so important for a brand like Taj?
Interviewee:
Okay, across the board, I think loyalty is very important. And there are several studies that shows this, for instance, to acquire a customer is five times as hard as it is to retain an existing customer. And therefore, it makes business sense to sort of give a sense of belonging to your customer who is any way loyal to you because they are some great experiences, but also an additional reward of what does this mean, right? For instance, when we designed or
redesigned our loyalty program in 2015, one of the things that we realized was that a lot of our business actually comes from corporate customers, right? And corporate customers are at the end of the day staying in number of days away from the family. They need something to give back. So one of the campaigns have you done was called promises kept, which is to say that a point under promise skipped. So for all the days that you've spent away from your family, you know, now take them to this spectacular experience that let's say Taj Falaknuma Palace with all the points that you want, right? Come into the building of loyalty, but it is extremely important because repeat business forms a lion's share of your actual revenue.