With the customer in focus

Vaishali James originally took up an assignment with Servion Global Solutions to help with event management. Fifteen years later, she is still there – as head of Marketing, having accumulated experience in that and sales along the way. A graduate in Botany who dreamt of becoming an interior designer, she ultimately earned a Masters in Business Management from the Open University of London.

Customers are treated unfairly all too often, she says, and that had her pushing Servion to set up Custommerce, an organisation that focuses on improving customer service in all spheres. As marketing head at Servion, she manages all brand-related activities and her team works on PR and events, customer satisfaction measurement and reporting and marketing communications. She has designed modules centred on customer experience that are a part of Servion's consulting practice.

When she's not drawing up marketing plans, she doodles, travels or reads.

My most memorable marketing initiative …

Is Custommerce. With consumers being short-changed ever so often, it became evident that the industry needed a dedicated platform/forum that would bring together multiple stakeholders who would put their heads together to change this situation. In simple words, to work with corporate India to enable them to focus on commerce, but with the customer genuinely at the centre of everything that was done.

Being personally convinced that this is something the industry requires is one thing. Convincing Servion to invest resources in a thought leadership initiative was another thing altogether.

Post-that, selling the idea to those who would eventually form the governing board, to put away personal time to provide impetus to the movement was yet another intense task.

Seven years on, Custommerce today is a not-for-profit, Section 25 company that takes pride in being a movement that works towards creating a globally competitive, customer-driven Indian economy.

My first product launch …

Was an unconventional one. We were launching a product called Response Application Platform – a multichannel response engine that handled interactions from various touch points on a single platform. During a brainstorming session, it got abbreviated to RAP. Because of the sound of it and other associations, the name stuck. With that began the completely unconventional identity creation. We used rap-like music, African instruments to represent the brand, African-American models in the lead of the launch video and an African-American mascot.

A great idea that never took off …

Is a digital marketing campaign that I was and continue to remain very excited about. While it has been on the backburner for over six months and has not yet seen light of day, I'm hoping I will be able to launch it. In some form or the other.

A setback I have learnt from

For almost eight months, we tried unsuccessfully to plan for a thought leadership roundtable series in APAC. We partnered with a leading ‘research' firm from that part of the world, explained what we would like to achieve and asked them to create a theme. After much back and forth, we realised we would need to do this ourselves. The concept was thus created and passed on to our partner for execution. We had to pull out exactly a week before the event because the agency could not garner enough participation.

While I've always been picky about not outsourcing events in India, after the APAC experience I don't think I'll try it anywhere else in the world.

My marketing idol

Jack Trout. His work on differentiation is so applicable and relevant, not only to the corporate world but also to one's own life. Everyone must read and understand Differentiate or Die . Sometimes, it comes in handy in the most unlikely/unconventional situations. The concept of differentiation is so ingrained in so many people that we use it ever so often, without sometimes thinking about the origin.

My insights come from …

Conversations. With just about anyone. It could be a child, colleague, customer, co-passenger, family or peers from the industry. Each one has experiences to share, knowledge that could be specific to their line of work/lifestyle or a perspective that could be very different from mine. It is important to file these away and pull them out when necessary.

One big takeaway from B-school

I joined B-school five years into my work life. B-school after you've been hands-on for five years quickly tells you that you're not going to learn anything dramatically new. At least not in your chosen area of specialisation. However, you'll learn to put the experience into frameworks and concepts that enhance knowledge, value and structure any idea or theory that is being discussed or presented. Specifically because they are tried and tested across regions and industry verticals. The other thing it does is that it provides you a wider angle from which to appreciate the complexities of business and strategies.

So, strictly from a takeaway perspective, I believe that work experience is critical before one decides to take the plunge into a management curriculum.

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