Consumer-driven Innovations: What’s Next? Balancing Customer and Employee Satisfaction in Thailand
Close to half of Thailand’s businesses prioritise enhancing customer experience and engagement follows, across industries when it comes to investing in digital transformation
We heard about developments in Thailand’s consumer services landscape this year at the 45th ASEAN Innovation Business Platform Conference & Exhibition Thailand, and found that optimising customer experience with AI and data analytics for product development is essential in today's competitive business environment. Leveraging these technologies allows organisations to gain unique insights into customer needs and preferences, driving more effective and personalised product offerings.
Key Takeaways from the discussion include:
We will be diving deeper into discussing key focus areas of Thailand’s at an upcoming Executive Networking Discussion this November in Bangkok (be part of the discussion here ). The discussion will include:
While technology can help, there is still an important role for human critical thinking and analysis in translating data insights into successful new product development. More importantly, in different consumer-facing industries, regulations and customer preferences will still differ - there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
The retail sector is subject to legacy infrastructure for brick-and-mortar operations, which they seek to overcome by building in API gateways as much as they can. It is essential to evaluate whether the business model is cost-effective or profitable.
Our guest panelists shared their insights and experiences
领英推荐
For us, insights mean you know something that your customer didn't know, you didn't know before, and your competitors either. This is the only thing you know for yourself, that is the insight. You cannot look at the trend, the trend is in research, reports, and everybody can read. It's not the insight for your business. We use a lot of techniques, and combine a lot of research from different institutions. In the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) sector, you have a very big department called consumer insight who does that. But they only give you the trend, the possibilities. What they didn't give you is the implications. What does that imply for your next product? You still need to think critically, incorporate the human touch to produce the right products.
Pajaree Saengcum, Head of Supply Chain & Digital Technology, Osotspa
For Big C online, we still utilise our stores (for fulfilment) we need to deliver the last mile to our end customer. At the beginning, the coverage area is run by radius, where there will be some households that could be served by multiple stores, making the routing less optimised than it should be. So we came up with AL/ML for service area determinations of a store - optimising the distance, the number of orders. (A customer) marks their household in the app, which will automatically select the store that optimises the routing as much as it could. We are expected to save around 10 million on last mile delivery this year, and also we improve our customer satisfaction, because they get their goods on time.
Surachai Hirannitichai, EVP - Digital Technology & Transformation, Big C
In the age of Gen AI, enterprises are also cautious about security and protecting their assets as much as they can. While there remains a focus on keeping customer data secure in their data-driven strategies for players in the retail sector, the heavily regulated banking and financial services sector have added responsibilities amidst the regulatory, risk and legal controls in place, amidst which SCB strives to be nimble and keep their focus on their mission to be a digital bank.
In the example of Gen AI and LLM, we usually notice that there's a high risk of hallucination. So using LLM purely just for investment advice or customer service requests might not be the right fit. So when we go through this kind of thought process and exercise, we usually involve a lot of teams around compliance, legal and also the IT technology solution and combine efforts. What is the right way to do it? … How do we mix an LLM, plus our own proprietary solution and model to make it actually work for different use cases. So it's about being proactive in engaging the risk team, the people that are relevant, and also to make sure that we I know that we don't like to fail, but try to fail as fast and as cheap as we can.. Try and build small pilots, POCs, to prove if it works and to find loopholes to refine further.
Anak Tangtatswas, Head of Customer-Centric Operating Model, Siam Commercial Bank
The maturity of an organisation in terms of digital literacy is crucial; while anyone can learn, the challenge lies in enabling and motivating them to do so. Additionally, while the agility of leadership is critical, this agility must be reflected across all functions and operations to ensure true organisational autonomy and effectiveness.
Stay tuned for the upcoming Retail Executive Workshop and Networking on “Consumer-Driven Innovations” where we will delve deeper into actionable insights and strategies that can help businesses in navigating the complexities of technology adoption. Register your interest here (limited passes, on first-come-first-served basis).