Interview
Customer experience expert Nav Thethi says customer focus is the only constant for businesses, and they have to keep up with the ongoing digital transformation taking place. In his recent column "Struggling Through Your Digital Transformation? Prioritize Employees," Nav emphasizes that employees make companies' digital transformations succeed and bring about positive customer experiences. Nav reminds his readers that "Although rooted in technology, digital transformation thrives in a culture that supports it, in the hands of people who execute it, and in the mind of business leaders who envision it."
Central to digital transformation is understanding the company culture and communicating the vision for the transformation. With soaring customer expectations, the transformation is no longer just about how your website looks, but starts internally to render external results, Nav explains. The people who define the company culture have to be at the center of the transformation efforts, he says.
Nav brings an accomplished marketing acumen for large enterprises to engage with technology and business leaders by providing them with information to advance their adoption of specific products and solutions. You can read his most recent columns here. You can also watch his video Q&A with us above from earlier in the year.
This is part of our end-of-year series celebrating our top CMSWire Contributors of the Year for 2022. These are regular CMSWire Contributors whose articles this year greatly resonated with our community of professionals. These Contributors simply serve as great ambassadors of our brand in the world of marketing and customer experience.
When in Doubt, Zoom Out
What excites you most about the space you cover?
Customer focus is the only constant for any business that exists, and I feel great that my work has a direct connection with customer interactions with the business. My work lies somewhere between customer experience and digital transformation, where the world has been most focused for the last decade. In my workspace, creativity, orchestration and innovation make the passing grade, and that’s what excites me the most where continuous data-driven learning and strategic decision-making, deliver customer digital experience, while the tech stack is optimized to its best outcome.
Currently we are in a market where customer experience matters more than ever. Human psychology is complex. It’s not easy to predict the next action based on previous data as humans may behave differently in different situations or different times in similar situations. It involves making experiments, developing patterns, processing it through the human brain and artificial intelligence (AI), making a best guess, learning from it, and continual improvement. This is what excites me in the space I cover at work.
Related Article: Your CX Design Is Not Working. Are You Doing It Right?
What trend(s) do you think will emerge in 2023?
The customer experience economy will continue to grow as companies are investing a lot more to unify the digital experience across all channels to deliver consistent and seamless experiences with performance, automation orchestration and security. Ecommerce can go through very interesting transformations as data security and privacy matters keep getting tighter.
B2B ecommerce is also picking up lately. Over the last two years there’s been double-digit growth in this industry, according to eMarketer. Cookieless and contextualized experience design approaches have the capacity to redefine the personalized digital engagement.
Learning Opportunities
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The State of Outsourcing: At the Crossroads of AI, Quality, and Cost Savings
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The metaverse is something I’m not too much into, but there’s been lot of talk about it everywhere. I feel this will continue to evolve as I see it is relevant in multiple industries. And, I also believe, ESG and SDG, sustainability is being prioritized to save the planet.
Related Article: Put Your Things Together for an Awesome Customer Experience
What's the best career advice you ever got?
“When in doubt, zoom out.”
This is very powerful in all situations. I always question myself in whatever I do. There's gotta be something that I may be missing, so I look at an even bigger perspective. Analytics data shows improvement, but revenue is not getting better? Zoom out, you might be missing another dimension. Employee performance dropping? Zoom out, possibly that’s from the non-work part of life. Feeling saturated at work? Zoom out, pick a problem from the boss’s list, and help solve it. There are more problems than solutions out there. No time for exercise? Zoom out, it’s all about defining priorities, and you’ll suddenly find all the time you need.
When in doubt, zoom out before you quit, and your perspective will change.
Related Article: Struggling Through Your Digital Transformation? Prioritize Employees
What's the best personal advice you ever got?
My mother always reminds me: Boy, you should keep gratitude, compassion and empathy with you. You should be known as kindhearted before whatever you become in life. You need to leave the world better than when you got in.
I am totally into it now. My purpose in both professional and personal lives is to be kind first.
Related Article: What's Your Future of Work Path With Artificial Intelligence?
Tell us something about you not related to your work field of interest.
When I’m not working:
- I read. I’m always reading something on topics like leadership, emotional intelligence, motivation, biography, health/nutrition/fitness, collectibles and current affairs. Reading is my newest hobby, which I developed over last couple of years.
- I collect postal stamps, currency notes and coins, books, antique pieces, etc.
- I listen to music. I’m a fan of Sidhu Moose Wala (a Punjabi singer), Backstreet Boys, George Michael, Eminem, Dr. Dre and most music from '90s. Coolio’s "Gangsta’s Paradise" is my all-time favorite.
- I hang out within my family of six, including my beautiful wife, two sons (16 and 5), and two dogs (a German Shephard-Husky male, and a chocolate Labrador male). This is the fun part for sure.
- I eat and workout. I am an epicure, so working out is a necessity to keep myself fit. On the other hand, I love squats and deadlifts, so they go really well with me.
- There’s a little self-acclaimed car genius in me as well. At times, I mess around with my Land Rover and attempt to fix a bunch of issues myself. I love it.
