Aditi Sud — Chief Marketing & Digital Officer at Jaz Hotel Group — emphasizes the importance of data and insights in improving and measuring various aspects of a business. She talks about technology as an enabler to understand and serve customers, create loyalty, and build brand advocacy.
While talking about the customer journey stages such as acquisition, interaction on the company’s platforms, and fostering loyalty and advocacy, Aditi talks about how data insights play a crucial role in understanding customer behavior and anticipating future needs.
She further highlights the need for nimbleness and faster go-to-market strategies in the travel and hospitality industry, emphasizing the importance of agility and speed in technology integrations.
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Read the complete transcript here:
You can only improve something if you can measure it, okay? And if, how do you measure it? Is that if you have the data, you have the insights. And today, since the data is so dispersed, right? You should be able to make some story because the data is as good as the story that you understand. I think you should be able to collect the data, make some meaningful insights out of the data, and put it through some actionable points. So, in order to do that, I think for me or from our functions, technology is an enabler to do what we want to do, which is understand the customer, serve the customer, create loyalty, and then build brand advocacy around it, okay?
So, if I look at the complete customer journey, so we, like I said earlier, we work with a lot of new age startups, or rather new age companies, such as yours, in understanding that how is what are the solutions of the technology solutions that can help us at every stage of customer.
So for us, the first is acquisition, where the customer is just building an intent. I mean, there are a lot of tools that are available today where we are using the data insights, using those tools so that we are number one targeting the right customer and putting out the right narrative in the story to that customer.
The second comes where it’s our own platforms where the intent has already been made, the customer is actually interacting with you on your products, right? That’s where we have invested in tools in customer data platforms, in marketing automation tools to kind of serve very personalized and experienced, a very personalized experiences when the customer is interacting with their brands.
The third bit is really about how am I creating a loyalty or a customer advocacy for a repeat behavior. So for that, I think there are enough of tools out there where we are able to capture, I mean again, give them a value for their repeat purchase behavior, I mean for a repeat purchase or even for creating an ORM, we are using a lot of ORM solutions here to have a 24×7 conversation so that we always have that connect, right?
And layering all of this is basically the data insights platform. I can’t stress more, I’ve always said this, the data is the king, content is the king, but I think today data is the king as well. So you need to have the tools where we’re able to capture all the data during the different journeys of the customer, churn it out. I mean, I really want to work with, there are some PoCs that are on in terms of putting an ML layer to it and then doing some predictive analysis and modeling around it to give me some meaningful insights of not what happens today but also in terms of how I can anticipate the future, right?
So, this is it. I think there are different tools, there are different solutions, there are different technologies which are enablers today of us to help us run the business or connect with the consumer the way we want to in different journeys.
So like I said, there are multiple platforms that we are working with, each serving its own purpose, and most of them, while there are some which are with companies situated globally, a lot of them we are co-creating with our technology development partners. I think before we close, I think this is just one, everything can’t be good. I think one of the challenges that we face, and this is something that I really urge all the companies to do, whosoever we interact with, is the nimbleness, is the faster go-to markets.
I think because anybody who understands travel and hospitality is a space we have certain fixed solutions that we work with, whether it’s for ticketing, it’s for pricing, right? I think today the need of the R is that we have to get very nimble in terms of coming up technology can be created, but it’s how fast you create so that you can take it out in the market and roll it out, right?
I think that is what we need today, is the speed to the market is something I think which industry is challenged today. I say that out of personal experience because like I said, we work with multiple technology partners. If we’re able to address the agility and the speed to market in terms of how quickly can we do technical integrations right, build up our own tech stack at the back end, I think then we are going to be right out there in terms of serving a customer and anticipating their needs. I think that’s one, I would say, a gray area that as an industry we need to address.
I’m sure there are partners working on that in terms of having like turnkey solutions, but are we yet there? No, because we can’t forget one thing, that there is a huge capital investment that has gone in already, right, in terms of getting the products that we have today.
So instead of, and I think companies do understand that, so one of the things that we also do as a company is we don’t scratch off everything and build on top of it, we actually have an existing layer of whatever tools we’re using and we’re building layers on top of it to help evolve that, right? And I think that’s where companies, technology companies, services companies, right, products, SaaS companies, are going to really help us in giving us those products that can marry in into what we have created. It’s not you cannot scrap everything and build, right? It has to be a built-on model, and that’s something that we, we have encouraged and also I think something we’re looking forward to building too.
Meet the Speaker
Aditi Sud
Chief Marketing and Digital Officer
Jaz Hotel Group
