Havas CX global leadership, David Shulman, global CEO and Arthur Fullerton, global chief technology officer were in Mumbai last month. Notably, this marked Shulman’s second visit to India since assuming his role in January this year, underscoring the Indian market’s crucial importance to the global Havas CX ecosystem.

Manifest caught up with the duo, accompanied by Prashant Tekwani, managing director, Havas CX and Ekino India to find out how important India is in the global scheme of things, and also discern how the network plans to go full throttle into the customer experience realm while tackling challenges and disparities in perceptions about what CX means across diverse global markets, and more...

What brings you to India for the second time in three months?

David Shulman (DS): There are two dimensions to it. One is, that I see how much growth opportunities there are in India. And that excites me. The brands we work with, brands that we want to work with, and the pace at which things are changing in India - it’s one of the biggest opportunities we have.

If you match that to the depth of capability that we have in our network at Havas CX here in India, which does incredible experience ecosystem work across the entire customer journey, it leads me to believe that India is not only important for our growth here but gloabally as well. That’s why I’m back along with our new CTO because we’re really very excited about what’s happening here.

Prashant Tekwani (PT): India also fuels the whole Havas growth story that has been happening for the last few years. We doubled not just the agencies or the brands, but the number of people also. So the growth is there and I think that’s why everyone from the different markets are very excited about the country. Every week, I get a call from Europe or the United States asking how India has managed to do it and, maybe pull learnings from here.

Is it because of the diversity of the Indian market that helps globally or is it because of the Centre of Excellence (CoE) part?

PT: The Centre of Excellence is by far the biggest part of the conversation. Additionally, in terms of the solution that is happening here, they are seeing the rate at which the new-age startups and unicorns are evolving and the kind of practices that they are building. They are not just a learning for people in India but they are also case studies in the making for global. And even if they can replicate some part of their learnings into the projects and the brands that they’re working on, it’s a great input.

Arthur Fullerton (AF): I have always looked at India as an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talent. There’s the standard enterprise technology experience. But then there are also a lot of new skills that are in high demand right now like Python, which is in the data engineering and data science areas.

I also have this ambition to introduce India into the deeper integrated market across all of Havas. Every time I show some of the case studies or some of the work that comes out of here to people who are primarily in the US, they’re blown away. A part of my ambition is to bring India into more global opportunities, not just as a local market but also how we can play on the international stage with it.

So would you be exploring partnerships with local Indian agencies to enhance your service offerings? If so, what qualities do you look for in potential partners?

AF:  I would love to learn more about the startup community here and identify opportunities to partner with them, maybe even potentially incubate a startup within Havas, if something is interesting to us.

‘Product market fit’ is the number one criterion - whether they are producing a viable product that has a niche or addressing a whitespace or customer need.  That’s primarily it for me. I think there are certain areas that we’re focusing on, particularly around data science, and artificial intelligence.

DS: I think the other dimension is, since Arthur just joined, he and I have constantly been meeting companies to see what’s out there and we’re open to finding those opportunities. But we also have a watchful eye and don’t want to react to something that seems ‘new and shiny’, but be very strategically aligned to our objectives.

Whether it is about finding the right partnerships, or the right acquisition opportunities, it’s easy today to get distracted by that shiny object. We want to be very targeted and specific to find the things that are going to add the most value to the work we’re doing and for the clients we’re serving.

We spoke last time (in March) about how we are finally seeing CX evolve into a frontier of its own lately, how it has evolved 180 degrees from where you have to explain what CX is and to justify the value and investment to queries around ‘how can we make it a part of our brand’. How’s that going?

DS: We see challenges as much as opportunities right now. One of the things that has been interesting - and we are seeing this globally - is that it’s still less frequent to see clients come to an agency and say, ‘here’s a brief to help me transform the experience’. That might be the need, but oftentimes, the opportunity is for us to take a brief that doesn’t necessarily use the word ‘experience’, but is perfect to add experience into how we drive the solution.

So experience can sometimes be a standalone practice, but the opportunity is to not only serve those standalone needs but also serve the collective needs.

Having said that, brands have to deliver on the promises, expectations and commitments they have made - that’s the role of customer experience. So there’s a formula we’ve created to say it. It’s MCX, wherein ‘M’ stands for the ‘meaning’ behind the company or brand. ‘C’ is for the ‘communication’ and how they project themselves and make promises and then ‘X’ is the actual customer experience that shows up.

For brands to be trustworthy, and exciting, and drive success and value, they have to deliver experiences that are on par with what they stand for when they communicate. And so that’s been the basis of our conversations with clients.

A recent YouGov survey highlighted a conflict between ‘brand executive positivity’ and ‘customer reality’. While 94% of executives claim their companies are customer-centric, only 40% of customers globally agree. Do you agree, and if so, why do you think this disparity exists?

DS: Definitely. There is a disparity in many cases. When I view the industry broadly - and this is not specific to a market, it’s a global observation - I find that companies that are legacy businesses that have been around for a while, oftentimes think they are doing a better job of serving customers through experiences than they are. They are communicating that promise but they’re not delivering on it.

Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, sometimes it is a new entrant that disrupts the category that raises the expectations. The conversation we have with clients is, don’t wait for that disruption, be the disruptor. Get ahead of it, understand what a customer wants and needs, where the customer might have a pain point, or where there could be an opportunity to do more to meet the needs of a person you want to serve. And then build truly extraordinary experiences. Because if you don’t do as customers demand, someone else will and they’re going to disrupt your business.

The research also presents an interesting analysis of how different global regions have very different perspectives about CX, with the data showing that CX is seen as primarily a ‘technology’ topic in the US (35%), an ‘operational’ topic in the UK (42%), and a ‘marketing strategy’ topic in France(40%). How do you overcome these challenges and complexities across diverse global markets?

DS: The interesting thing about what that survey points to is that it is easy for the category of customer experience to drive people to think about the mechanics and the technology that serves it. Any of those dimensions are enabling functions for what experience is.

To win an experience, you have to start by understanding a user, a customer, and their needs, and how to make their lives better. I think no matter what maturity level or nuance there is in any market around experience, I would challenge everyone, every brand, to start with really understanding the promise that they want to make and how they can make someone’s life better by delivering that promise. And then I think that’s going to drive the type of solutions that will be very valuable to the brand. So I find that research interesting to see the nuances.

And, what holds true for the Indian market, according to you?

PT: For the Indian market, the CMO and CIO both are very much ahead of the curve because they are not just engaging with the market, but they’re also learning from different markets.

Most of the conversations that I am now part of are no longer an after-effect or a by-product, but a functional conversation about being relevant and enhancing the customer journey. This is not a digital-only conversation, its digital plus offline.

More importantly, we as a market are very ROI-driven. So every action that we take today, must lead to some tangible benefits when it comes to the top line.

What emerging technologies are you most excited about that you believe will revolutionise customer experience? Would AI play a vital role?

AF: There’s quite a bit of talk about the democratisation of Gen AI and artificial intelligence.

We never really start with technology first. We still get those briefs which say ‘we want to do something with AI or AR’. But it’s really about what sort of business it is, and what challenges or problems are you trying to solve. Then we build back from there and if the solution involves some sort of emerging technology, then great. If it involves a better digital strategy, or experience strategy, perfect. And this is typically very closely related to business results for our clients. And everything has to begin there.

Arthur, you have also been serving pro bono as CTO for ‘Women Who Create’ since June 2021. What led you to take on this role?

AF:  I have been heavily involved in the DEI initiatives in pretty much every place I’ve been. I believe that representation within our industry, primarily for people of colour and women of colour, is still significantly lacking - particularly in the area of mentorship. There aren’t a lot of people who look like people of colour in senior-level positions, particularly in our industry.

So, a friend of mine that I worked with at Publicis started this company and we were banging around ideas around what we could do. Ideally what we wanted to do was to create an environment - a destination where whatever stage you are in your career, if you’re a woman of colour, you can get access to mentors - people that have been in this industry or across industry. They may be in your discipline, maybe not, but a marketplace to get access to these people, that you can create relationships with.

We wanted to build a repository, essentially a glorified searchable database online with these people, give folks certain criteria that they can select against, generate results around the type of mentor they’re looking for, and provide that vehicle to connect to them. Essentially, an honest broker to connect these people.  I’m passionate about inclusivity and allowing folks to learn from others so they can elevate their careers.

So that was really my driver for doing it and being involved in that organisation.

This article first appeared in the June print issue of Manifest. Subscribe to Manifest here